Originally posted by: Tabb
So CRTs dont do damage to our eyes?
I am actually going to comment more on the eye issuse. Maybe our eyes cant go in and out of focus 100 times a second, however they are trying as best as they can to keep up. Maybe thats what causes eyestrain.
That's actually a very-good point. I wonder how much research has been done in this area.
If you think about it, eye-focus is basically a continous, autonomous, analog feedback-loop.
Now, CRTs are raster-scanned, there is no real "image" at any precise moment, only a single dot moving so very quickly across the screen, that at least physiologically, it would be impossible for an eye to accurately track. But I'm sure that at some subconcious, autonomous level, it probably tries. The nerve impulses probably get sent by the brain and eyes to the eye-muscles. But the fact that the system is analog, tends to "smooth out" those high-freq control signals. (hypothetically speaking here) But they still cause a strain on the system.
The whole reason that the CRT display "works" for humans, is because of persistance-of-vision effects, and the fact that it basically "overloads" our visual-perception circuits.
If our "eye circuits" were much faster-acting, then we would see what is really there, which is only a high-speed moving dot. Much the same, if you took a photograph with sensitive high-speed film.
So I think that necesarily, there is going to be some "strain" on the visual perception circuitry there, whether it be physical (muscular/mechnical), or neuro-checmical/electrical.
I hope it's obvious how higher refresh rates for CRTs attenuate the "stress" effects on the human visual system slightly, but necessarily, they can never eliminate them, unless we move to a different, continuous-display technology such as "liquid paper displays".