Display Type

Fish finder technology is changing and in their effort to keep up with changes, fish finder and GPS manufacturers may offer differing display technologies both within their own product lines and across different companies.

Although, the cathode ray tube (CRT) has been synonymous with television and PC viewing, the technology with most growth today is liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, necessitated by laptop computing and more recently flat panel TV display. Here we identify fish finder displays and offer a brief technical explanation.

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)

• A thin flat display
• Uses low power
• Color or monochrome
• Pixels positioned in front of light source or reflector
• Highly suited for battery powered electronics
• Each pixel is created from a layer of molecules aligned between two transparent electrodes
• More about LCD technology

Color LCD

• Each individual pixel is made up of not one, but three cells or sub-pixels, red, green, and blue (RGB)
• RGB sub pixel intensity is controlled electronically to output up to millions of colors

Thin Film Transistor (TFT) usually color LCD

• Like LCD but each pixel has its own dedicated transistor
• TFTs are usually used in the construction of an active matrix display

Active Matrix

• A type of flat panel display
• An active matrix display providing brighter and sharper images with quicker response times
• More information about Active Matrix

Super-Twisted Nematic (STN)

• A type of monochrome display
• Passive matrix nematic display (not active matrix)
• Super twisted nematic supports more viewing contrast than twisted-nematic
• Less power consumption and less expensive than TFT
• Lower image quality than TFT
• Lower response time than TFT
• More information about Film Super-Twist

Film Compensated Super-Twist Nematic (FSTN)

• Like STN with added compensating layer to improve sharpness and contrast

Color Super Twist Nematic (CSTN)

• Color version of STN
• Much slower response times than TFT
• Good for wide-angle viewing
• Lower color cost than TFT

Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)

• Transmits a beam of electron to phosphorescent coated screen
• Produces images by changing the intensity of the scanning beam
• Beam is made up of a stream of electrons emitted by an electron gun

Super Video Graphics Array (SVGA)

• This is a standard to promote interoperability
• It is not a viewing technology
• Describes display capabilities in resolution, and color, and more
• VGA refers to 800 x 600 pixels
• Super VGA may refer 1024x768 8-bit pixels and above
• High definition (HD) and XGA could be considered as an upward progression from SVGA but not really offered in the fish finder and GPS domains