What causes dead pixels and how often does it occur?

[ADE]

I have a CRT (Don't laugh) And will be upgrading soon to an LCD monitor. Don't know which one, just want to know all I can (without blowing a circuit in my brain) as simple as possible. Starting with those 2 main things. I know most of you must know quite a bit on the fact that most of you have them.

 

[Bobo]

Almost all LCD screens are TFT, which means Thin Film Transistor. Having a transistor for each pixel means that it can turn on and off faster, or Active Matrix. Generally, a dead pixel results from the failure of the transistor. This can either be a manufacturing mess-up(generally is) or it could short out later.

Because manufacturing costs are high for LCDs, the manufacturers can't just throw away all the screens with one or two dead pixels. A screen's pixels cannot be tested until it is fully assembled, but at that point, they are generally just shipped anyway.

 

[lovely?]

unfortunately, he is very correct, fortunately he is also correct. (you might be thinking 'huh???')

in one sense, companies do not throw away bad screens, but in another sense, the ones that they do throw away hurt them financially, forcing them to study ways to better make screens, and in a little while, i believe that they will find a way to manufacture these screens so that they will have no dead pixels. when that happens, they will not be under financial pressure from throwing away screens, and they will lower prices because of that.
(hence fortunate and unfortunate)