pitch dark background - good or bad for LCD?

I have a background (desktop) that is pitch dark. I suspect that it may save battery life a bit.

But can it damage the LCD in anyway?

 

I read somewhere that white uses less power on lcd screens... about 1/2 actually.... The main thing that eats power on an lcd screen is the backlight....


and no, this will not damage the lcd, motion wears down the lcd, but even if you play a video nonstop for about 5 years, it should be fine....

edit: BTW, the difference between a completely white screen, and a completely back one would be like 1% on the battery life... not really worth it IMHO since black is a lot better for your eyes....

 

it's pitch black... not pitch dark... and like pcharouz said, a black screen doesn't really damage your lcd so quit worrying. most of us here use dark backgrounds.

 

The will be no difference in battery life, not even 1%. The backlight behind the LCD panel is always on at whatever brightness level that you specify. Voltage is applied to each of the pixels to let through different amounts of light from behind the panel and thus produce different colours. When a pixel is black, it blocks all the light and when it is white it lets through all the light. But in both cases, the backlight is still on and therefore there is no difference in battery life.

 

actually, there is a difference! but it is very negligible...

interesting article by the way....
http://chironbramberger.blogspot.com/2008/04/rip-crt-lcd-vs-crt-vs-trees-vs-michael.html

 

Well that all depends on the LCD panel.. I was under the impression that an LCD pixel blocks light by default, and lets it through when a voltage is applied. That article seems to suggest the opposite.

It's an interesting article but still unscientific, because you can't really make one measurement and assume that it applies everywhere. Different designs will yield different results, but really the power consumption of an LCD panel is mostly determined by the backlight - especially in a notebook panel, where designers really try to optimize power requirements. It is very possible that the 1W difference that the guy measured was just a measurement error.

Technically though, yes, whichever colour (black or white) requires the least voltage might end up using minutely less power. It really depends how it's all designed, but in an LCD display (especially a notebook one) it shouldn't be noticeable.

 

yes.. it wouldnt be noticeble(1% as said before... ) an lcd doesnt block light by default, at least to my understanding, every pixel has 3 colors in it, Red Green, and Blue, and since its a liquid crystal display, the black liquid that is in the screen blocks the pixels(have you ever seen a cracked LCD? ) so for example, if you want to have all blue screen, the liquid will cover all the red, and green parts on every single pixel on the screen leving the blue uncovered, these are then light up by the LED or CCFL lighting ...

I might be completely wrong, but this is how I thought it works