MONITOR/VIDEO SPECIFICATION

Monitor – A monitor is a output device that is used to display the data that is in memory for output

Video adapter – is a input device, which come in the form of expansion card or integrated chip on the motherboard, that provides the capability to displaying text and graphics on a monitor.

Item

Description

Monitor – A monitor is defined by six features: resolution, dot pitch refresh rate, image quality, number of colors, speed;

Resolution: This is the measure of the number of individual controllable dots of light on the monitor screen. The higher the stated resolution, the more the information can theoretically be displayed

Dot Pitch: The Monitor specification tell you how close together the dots are. The finer the dot pitch (the lower the number)

Refresh Rate: Also called vertical scanning rate, this is a measure of how often the monitor rewrites the screen, the higher the refresh rate, the more stable the image appear and the less chance of apparent flicker.

Image Quality: Some monitors are simply higher quality than others, using better and brighter phospors or better electronics that can produce brighter whites and more brilliant colors.

Number of colors: The more colors that monitor (and its associated video card) can produce, the more apparent depth and realism in a onscreen image. Think of color as information; the ability of a display to show 30 variation of forest green, for example, permits much more detail in a wildlife scene. In order to use more colors, a display adapter needs a great deal of video memory

Speed: How fast a video adapter can construct graphic image and send then the monitor for display becomes a very important measure as graphic programs and graphical user interfaces like windows take over. The more the color and the greater the resolution, the harder the video adapter has to work to produce images.

Video adapter: A Video Adapter come in many forms: MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA and are defined by resolution, color depth, number of color, video memory

MDA: The simplest and the first available display type was the IBM monochrome Display Adapter (MDA). It was introduced along with the IBM PC in 1981. The MDA video card displayed text only at a 720 x 350 resolution. One interesting point is that the MDA card also incorporated a printer port and was fir the first multi-function adapter card available.

CGA: The Color Graphic Adapter (CGA) was introduced along with the IBM PC in 1981 and for many years was the most commonly used video adapter. The CGA adapter has two basic modes of operations: alphanumeric, and all point addressing, In alphanumeric the card operates in 40 column by 25 lines mode or 80 column by 25 line mode with 16 colors. In all point addressing mode two resolutions are available medium resolution color mode(320 x 200) with four colors available from a palette of 16 and two color high resolution mode (640 x 200)

EGA: The IBM Enhanced Graphic Adapter was introduced in 1984, just after the IBM AT system, It was discontinued when the PS/2 systems were introduced in April 1987. With the EGA adapter, the IBM color monitor display 16 color monitor display 16 colors 320 x 200 or 640 x 200 mode and the IBM monochrome monitor shows a resolution of 640 x 350 with a 9 x 14 character box (text mode).

VGA: When IBM introduced the PS/2 system on April 2, 1987, It also introduced the video graphics array (VGA). The VGA displays up to 256 colors onscreen. Resolution of 640 x 480, Form a palette of 256,144(256K) colors, Because the VGA outputs an analog signal, you must have a monitor that accepts an analog input

SVGA: When IBM’s SVGA, competing manufacturing chose not to attempt to clone these incremental improvements on their VGA product, VGA produces a resolution of (800 x 600 to 1,024 x 768)