IPS (In Plane Switching) was introduced to try and improve on some of these drawbacks. It was developed by Hitachi and was dubbed “super TFT”. They improved on viewing angles up to about 170H. This was done by controlling liquid crystal alignment slightly differently, but unfortunately, can affect response rate of the pixels. As such they are not as good for gaming as TN panels. They didn’t make any improvements on black reproduction really either, but dead pixels only show as black, not bright colours. IPS panels were later developed into Super-IPS (S-IPS) panels and production costs were lowered which has meant they have become more widely used. S-IPS offer perhaps the most accurate colour reproduction available in the TFT panel market, but response times and black levels remain inferior to those of MVA/PVA technology.
The third type is VA (Vertical Alignment) panels. The early VA panels have been scrapped due to poor viewing angles, and in their place came the MVA and PVA panels. These offer superior colour reproduction compared with TN film, but not quite as good as IPS / S-IPS. They do however have the advantage of being able to show good black levels and viewing angles are also very good . This is done by having all the colour elements of the panel split into cells or zones. These are formed by ridges on an internal surface of filters. The purpose of this design is to enable liquid crystals to move in opposite direction to their neighbours. It allows the observer to see the same shade of color irrespective of a viewing angle. There have been improvements to the MVA (Multidomain VA) and PVA (Patterned VA) technologies which has given birth to the Premium-MVA (P-MVA) and Super-PVA (S-PVA) technologies. More info on all of these can be found here.
