WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Remember the days when it seemed like every office computer on the planet endlessly played 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.400 those mystify your mind or 3D pipes screensavers when the workday was over? 00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:13.440 Oh, that's good times. But today, you barely see anyone using a screensaver anymore. 00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:17.200 I mean, you even have to work a little bit to find the setting to enable it in Windows 00:00:17.200 --> 00:00:20.240 11. So, why were they so common back in the day? 00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:24.880 Well, the reason they were called screensavers is that they literally helped save your monitor 00:00:24.880 --> 00:00:29.080 from an early death. It's rough out there for monitors. 00:00:29.080 --> 00:00:34.160 Those bulky monitors that everyone used to use called CRTs worked by blasting electrons 00:00:34.160 --> 00:00:38.880 at the inside of the screen, which was coated with chemicals called phosphors. 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:43.600 When electrons hit the phosphors, they'd light up, producing an image. 00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:47.640 But this process also wore down the phosphors over time. 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:51.920 So if you had the screen showing the same thing for long periods of time, such as text 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:56.920 or logos, the phosphors in those areas would wear down more quickly, creating a problem 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:04.960 called burn-in, where you'd see the ghost of those screen elements permanently, ooh. 00:01:04.960 --> 00:01:09.360 Older CRTs that mostly just displayed text were more susceptible to this than what we 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:17.000 used in the days of, say, Windows 98. But all CRTs have the potential to suffer from burn-in, making the screensaver popular 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:23.760 well into the 2000s. By showing a continually moving image, screensavers prevented phosphors in one area from wearing 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:29.480 down. It didn't hurt their popularity that they also looked, uh, pretty cool. 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:33.760 And even though you could just turn the monitor off instead, screensavers provided a good 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:38.000 solution for folks who frequently had to walk away from their systems, or who didn't want 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:42.040 to wait for their monitor to warm back up after it had been powered off. 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:48.360 Once LCD displays started coming down in price, they quickly displaced the older CRTs and 00:01:48.360 --> 00:01:53.400 with them, the need for a screensaver. LCDs work completely differently than CRTs. 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:59.520 They don't have phosphors. And while the liquid crystals can get temporarily stuck in one orientation, if you leave the 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:03.880 same image on the screen for a long time, this effect usually isn't permanent like 00:02:03.880 --> 00:02:10.120 it was on CRTs. So you simply don't need a screensaver on most modern flat panels, except in extreme 00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:15.160 cases. So why are screensavers still around then? Do they even serve a purpose anymore? 00:02:15.160 --> 00:02:19.640 So besides looking cool, screensavers are still kind of useful as a screen lock. 00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:23.640 You can apply a screensaver and set it to return your computer to the login screen once 00:02:23.640 --> 00:02:27.600 someone moves the mouse or presses a key so that your system won't just be completely 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:35.080 unsecured if you step away and forget to lock it manually. But you can also set your PC to lock after a certain period of inactivity without involving 00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:40.320 a screensaver at all. So are they anything more than purely decorative? 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:45.240 It turns out that the answer is actually yes, particularly for OLED screens. 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:51.160 The organic LEDs that make up the picture in OLED displays degrade unevenly over time 00:02:51.160 --> 00:02:55.720 if you're displaying a static image on one area, leaving them more susceptible to burn 00:02:55.720 --> 00:03:02.960 in than other flat panels. It's therefore quite common for OLED displays to have burn-in mitigation features with screensavers 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:09.040 being one of them. If you've used an LG OLED TV, you've probably seen how a fireworks-like screensaver appears 00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:14.040 after a short period of inactivity, and these TVs also move the image very slightly ever 00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:19.240 so often, which prevents burn-in through the same principle as a screensaver, although 00:03:19.240 --> 00:03:25.600 with less fun pipes. And it's not at all a bad idea to set a screensaver if you have an OLED monitor for your PC, which 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:31.880 are a little more common now than they used to be. Some screensavers are even interactive, like this one that allows you to play old-school 00:03:31.880 --> 00:03:37.240 NES games on the screensaver, but at that point, is it really a screensaver or are 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:41.840 you just playing a game on your computer? 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:48.680 Let me know. And I'd like to let you know that I'm very thankful to you, and there's comments below 00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:51.280 you can talk about. Don't forget to subscribe and follow.