[Lcdproc] imonlcd and 0038 breakage...

[Ethan Dicks]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 4:57 AM, Dave Liquorice <allsorts at howhill.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:22:42 +0200, Berend Dekens wrote:
>
>> To be sure, here is a picture of my display:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/41748755@N08/3906626228/
>
> Well at first glance that looks VFD to me but these days some LCDs also have
> a similar appearance.
>
>> The only issue I have now is that the contrast sometimes seems to
>> disappear making the whole LCD light up (looking at it from a weird angle
>> shows that there is still text on the display, its just not readable).
>
> Not sure I follow that.

If you are talking about 'contrast', it's LCD.  VFDs have brightness
since the elements emit light.  LCDs block light, either from room
ambient light (reflective) or a backlight (transmissive).  LCDs are
polarized elements, so they have a viewing angle issue that VFDs do
not.

> Best bet is to look at the actual display module itself without any filters
> or stuff in the way. A VFD will be a vacuum sealed glass enclosure with lots
> of fine wires, grids and meshes inside. A LCD will be a flat sandwich of a
> couple of bits of thin glass with no bits of wire or mesh.

Yep.  Also, if you take it apart far enough to inspect, VFDs have a
vacuum "nipple" that LCDs do not.

-ethan