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Extending Life of LCD backlights




If you have been using TFT LCD monitors for quite some time, you might have come across different short-comings of LCDs including the inability to produce quality black levels and the performance of the tubes (CCFL).




A CCFL Assembly



Although these problems are being worked upon including the move towards LEDs for backlighting, you can still improve the performance of your LCD and extend its life as well.


First of all, CCFLs are just like the normal tubes used in homes for lighting, a high voltage inverter circuit is used to turn them on and operate them. Just like the "tubes", LCD backlights have two shortcomings; limited start-up cycles and reduction in brightness with age.


An ordinary tube-light

However, the way to extending their life, also comes from the way ordinary tube lights work:
1. Set the brightness and contrast to 80 % from monitor controls.
This helps the lights to start-up easily.
2. Use software to control brightness, contrast, colour and gamma settings

This helps to make the display legible while allowing more control over the picture with different profiles for different media like games, movies, etc. I have found out that using this method, I can also achieve much "truer blacks" ( I use AMD/ATI's Catalyst Control Center)


Hope this helps!

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