A pixel is.... ?:confused:

M

MrWizard6600

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this is probibly a more advanced question, but one in which im wanting to know the answer.

what is a pixel? as both a fragment in the Rayathon tube and a partical in as a Liquid Crystal. what exactly is it? its capible of 16.7 million colors on a monitor. which is.... 2^24, meaning a pixels color doesnt fit in a byte, if a monitor was capible of only 256 colors then it could fit in only 1 byte (this is why it gives you the option of only 256 colors, its convienient for the computer to save... i think). so a current monitor needs 3 bytes per pixel, and has to decode them in order (a 24bit thread?).

anywho im sorta guessing repetidly, but none of this makes any sense to me. is a pixel just a magnet that displays as a differant color depending on the angle its viewed? so a magnetic field is created for each pixel, rotating it, and as the view changes so does the color? is that what your monitors refresh rate is? the ammount of re-flashing the magnetic field does every second. (remembering 1Hz is one change per second, so a 60Hz refreash rate would be 60 changes per second)?

i dono. i like asking questions, and this is one mike(the biggest computer nerd i know) couldnt answer, hoping maybe a hard forum guru will step up.

please note: both google and how stuff works failed me on this one.
 
electronics stuff.... i seached monitors, pixels, LCD, CRT, Rayathon, Liquid Crystal in "computers" with no results... LOL.

thanks, how bout good old rayathon?
 
this is pretty good start at CRT stuff, explains a lot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube

Here's the video card side
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAMDAC

research phospors, Cathode Ray Gun, Shadow Mask, RAMDAC

BTW I didn't even know that LCDs use subpixels. If I take a macro shot of my laptop LCD, I cannot see these SUB pixels, nor do I have 60x magnification, though on my .22 dot pitch CRT I can see them with my camera. If my LCD was .28 DP my LCD sub pixels would be .09 DP, maybe thats why? Are CRT phospors measured from Red-to-Green in DP or from a complete phospor group (RGB) to the next, i forget ?
 
I think the point of the howstuffworks article is that, passive matrix LCD's have sub-pixels to make the colors, a lot like how if you take a magnifying glass to a CRT you see the RGB dots. For active matrix TFTs, each pixel is a capacitor and a transistor..? I think?
 
MrkXCeL said:
BTW I didn't even know that LCDs use subpixels. If I take a macro shot of my laptop LCD, I cannot see these SUB pixels, nor do I have 60x magnification, though on my .22 dot pitch CRT I can see them with my camera. If my LCD was .28 DP my LCD sub pixels would be .09 DP, maybe thats why? Are CRT phospors measured from Red-to-Green in DP or from a complete phospor group (RGB) to the next, i forget ?
Click to expand...

The LCD subpixels are overlapping, so you can't see the individual ones. If it has a .28 dot pitch that means the pixels are .28 mm wide.
 
truffle00 said:
The LCD subpixels are overlapping, so you can't see the individual ones. If it has a .28 dot pitch that means the pixels are .28 mm wide.
Click to expand...
The subpixels are not overlapping, 3 subpixels makes up one pixel. Each subpixel is capable of 256 shades. 256x256x256 for each subpixel gives 16.7 million colours. LCD has 2 layers of polarized filter arranged at 90 degree to each other giving the dark/black background as the back-light cannot penetrate (non-efficient - backlight bleeding). Between those layers are the liquid crystals with the red,blue and green filters. The 256 shades is made from the ability of of the liquid crystal (ideally) to twist the light 0 to 90 degrees for the darkest shade to the brightest. The deference of less than half a degree for one shade to the next.

Wikipedia refer to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
 
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