55 Contour Lines on High Resolution Monitors:
Description
This article is from the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video Frequently Asked Questions, by Michael Scott with numerous contributions by others. (v1.0).
55 Contour Lines on High Resolution Monitors:
These fall into the category of wavy lines, contour lines, or light and dark bands even in areas of constant brightness. These may be almost as fine as the dot pitch on the CRT or 1 or 2 cm or larger and changing across the screen. If they are more or less fixed on the screen and stable, then they are not likely to be outside interference. (However, if they are locked to the image, then there could be a problem with the video board.)
One cause of these lines is Moire (interference patterns) between the raster and the dot structure of the CRT. Ironically, the better the focus on the tube, the worse this is likely to be. Trinitrons, which do not have a vertical dot structure should be immune to interference of this sort from the raster lines (but not from the horizontal pixel structure).
You can test for Moire by slowly adjusting the vertical size. If it is Moire, you should see the pattern change in location and spatial frequency as slight changes are made to size. Changes to vertical position will move the patterns without altering their structure - but they will not remain locked to the moving image.
The patterns will remain essentially fixed in position on the face of the CRT for horizontal size and position adjustments - the patterns will remain fixed under the changing image.
How to eliminate it? If Moire is your problem, then there may be no easy answer. For a given resolution and size, it will either be a problem or not. You can try changing size and resolution - Moire is a function of geometry. Ironically, I have a monitor which is nicer in this respect at 1024x768 interlaced than at 800x600 non-interlaced.
Another cause of similar problems is bad video cable termination creating reflections and ghosting which under certain conditions can be so severe as to mimic Moire effects. This is unlikely to occur in all colors with a VGA display since the termination is internal to the monitor.
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