LCD Banding

Factual Questions
1

I have a NEC Multisync LCD 1700V monitor, refurbished. This monitor seems to work fine the majority of the time, but once in awhile I will find a form of banding, where there will be bright horizontal stripes fading into dark horizontal stripes across the whole monitor.

This occurs when I have a pure black background as well as when I go to logout of my Windows XP OS. I don’t believe it’s a problem with dithering, as it doesn’t happen all the time (ie: not happening right now as I post this msg with many different areas of solid colour).

Does anyone know what may be causing this? Are there any ways to fix or avoid this problem? Is it simply that I have a refursbished first or second generation LCD?

If it helps I also have a 17" ViewSonic LCD that doesn’t display any of this sort of banding whatsoever. I have noticed this banding on some newer LCDs as well; it is especially noticeable in Windows 2000 when you go to logout, when the dialog comes up to ask you whether you’re sure you would like to logout.

2

Interesting you mention dithering. My more recent experience with banding on an LCD screen came about because it was being run at a lower resolution for quite a while during an OS install. When set to the right resolution, the banding showed up. It fixed itself after being on overnight. I assume the resolution mismatch stressed the hardware and it needed to cool down for a while. Does this sound similar to what you are experiencing?

3

Think I may have found a partial solution: Check the refresh rate of the monitor. I switched mine around a bit and found I could virtually eliminate the banding at some vertical refresh rates.