Is smearing on an LCD monitor possibly a sign of having a splice on the monitor cable?

I'm travelling in China, staying at backpacker hostels and cheap hotels. Many cheap hotels don't have Wi-Fi but have a desktop computer in the room with Internet access.

The hotel I'm staying at now in an obscure city has severe blurring/smudging/smearing from left to right across the monitor. Similar to ghosting but one blurred image getting fainter to the right, rather than a secondary faded copy of the main image.

photo of blurry screen
^{The photo is out of focus due to my cheap camera not being great at macro, but the smearing is still pretty evident.}

I've never seen this on a flat panel monitor before but it's pretty common on old-style CRT monitors with actual picture tubes (cathod ray tubes).

Since I'm in a cheap hotel and since it's in China, I'm wondering if this could be caused by having some kind of "splice" or "splitter" between the monitor and the computer. Because I remember trying one of those devices many years ago when I had a CRT monitor and got a similar streaking effect.

I don't want to move the computer and fiddle with the wires and I know the monitor is bolted or glued in place anyway and it's a tiny room. So I'm asking more about the general concept and don't actually care if some guy at the front desk is looking at what I type here.

So generally, if you see a picture that blurs on a flat panel display, is having a splice in the monitor cable one potential reason that could happen?

Or is that only possible with analog/CRT monitors and therefore more likely to be just a worn out display or some other unrelated issue? Possibly VGA vs some more modern cable?

hippietrail

Posted 2014-01-07T16:22:20.673

Reputation: 3 699

1As Hicks writes, it's possible that this is a mere problem with the cable. I have an old BenQ screen and have had this problem come up very strongly today. Then I checked the PC's VGA out and surely enough, after tightening the plug, the problem went away completely. – polynomial_donut – 2018-02-19T17:15:21.887

3It could be cable related, if the cable connection is analog. Most likely just a crappy monitor, though, or perhaps a buggy display adapter. In any event, probably nothing you can do anything about. (Except that it may be worth it to double check that all the cables are securely plugged in.) – Daniel R Hicks – 2014-01-07T18:16:24.083

1That looks similar to the skew adjustment we get on powered cable extenders but that is caused by the physical lengths of the cable. If it is a short cable, clean/reseat the connectors. It could also be caused by poor mains supply or the monitor itself. – Tog – 2014-01-22T08:22:03.530

2You're assuming that the display has a digital connection, but this assumption need not be true. I have an older LCD that has a VGA out, and when the plug is loose, I get exactly this kind of screen behaviour. – polynomial_donut – 2018-02-19T17:16:48.553

3VGA/D-SUB connectors are analog though, and judging from the description, I'll bet the monitor doesn't use DVI, HDMI nor DisplayPort ;) – abstrask – 2014-01-07T18:03:13.310

In other words, does the cable to the back of the monitor have a blue connector (analog/VGA) or a white connector (digital/DVI)? If it has a blue head on it, the problem can be cable-related; if white, no. – K7AAY – 2014-01-07T18:11:23.913

@K7AAY: It's black. But like I said I don't want to fiddle with this hardware too much, it's more for curiosity and in case other people worry about this. – hippietrail – 2014-01-07T18:27:21.790

Black, and less than an inch wide, is HDMI and newer small computers often use than in lieu of DVI and VGA nowadays. – K7AAY – 2014-01-07T19:08:23.227

1I've encountered plenty of black VGA and DVI too. Sounds like OP knows the difference though and could have detected which it was in the event that s/he looked (or could look) behind the monitor – Nick – 2014-01-11T22:16:52.100

The powerboard everything was plugged into was not stable. When I tried to move things around to check the cables I lost power. I ended up getting moved to another room and that computer didn't have the smearing effect on the monitor. I'm pretty sure the first one had a VGA connector though. Anyway people might come across this question via Google in the future so I'll leave it here. – hippietrail – 2014-01-13T04:54:08.510

Is smearing on an LCD monitor possibly a sign of having a splice on the monitor cable?

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