Why is it in some computers the screen looks at an image differently?

Question

For example, this image:
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e286/zamouse/HSM%20Icons/501.jpg
In my computer, the coloring is fine.
But in my sister's brand new laptop, the coloring is all faded and yucky looking. Why is that?

Also, if you have a newer screen/monitor, can you tell me if this looks faded to you?
http://i22.tinypic.com/16lai2t.jpg
[I know it's small]

Answer 1

Short answer:

Because laptop screens are not very good.

Long answer.
colour reproduction is done by combining different levels of red green and blue light coming from the monitor. These little dots of light are so small and so close together that they look like a different colour as opposed to little red green or blue dots.

For CRTs the light comes from a phosphor that has been mixed with other chemicals to change the colour, this is then excited with a beam of electrons to produce light. For a LCD the light comes from a bright florescent bulb and is then blocked in varying levels by the liquid crystal material and then passes though red green or blue filters to produce coloured light.

So for a CRT, you are limited by what colours you can persuade the phosphor to glow. You can not get the full range (gamut) of colours that you can see, but you can get 75% there easily.

For an LCD however you are blocking most of the light. >50% of the light is lost going through the polarizer and liquid crystal material, then you lose more light going though the filters. The more saturated you make the filters the more light you lose. So there is a trade off, you can have a bright picture, but with washed out colours, or more saturated colours available but with a dim picture. Laptop screens are the worst because for a discrete monitor you can up the power of the backlight to get a brighter picture with the more saturated filters, but a laptop is space, power and heat constrained so the panels tend to let though more light at the cost of colour reproduction and blackness.


Interestingly Sony announced the other day that they were going to produce a 11" OLED TV. This is going back to an emissive (light producing rather than light blocking) technology. More brightness and colour than a CRT, less size and power than an LCD. But at £850 still kind of pricey. But that is where LCD monitors were at less than ten years ago.

Answer 2

It might be the color quality settings on the laptop. To check that you right click on the desktop, click on "Properties", click on the "Settings" tab, and look to see if it's set to 32 or 16 bit.

Also, there are hardware settings on the monitor itself. There's usually a "Menu" button on the monitor where you can change the contrast, brightness and color settings on it.

Answer 3

different screen(monitors) have different qualities...
u cannot see the same colours on every screen of different brands..

there's little u can do abt it -- changing brightness, contrast, colour temperature, video input level, etc.

i guess the images are too small to actually notice a big difference... anyways... dont worry... its something u cant do much about...