How does a display actually work?

At some point I had swapped a display from a laptop.

I noticed that a flat cable is used to control the laptop.

Now it is not clear to me how every single pixel of the display can be controlled with it. Of course there's some kind of processor or microcontroller or something that processes binary signals from the graphics and converts them into signals that are visible to us.

But how are the individual pixels controlled? Is there a plus and minus connection for each pixel?

As far as I know, the individual color tones are caused by the opposing tension.

How do you want to control at least 3 colors per pixel with a binary signal?

If I knew, I wouldn't ask this case. The signal is surely converted into a kind of so and so many volts to the cell.

There are of course different interfaces. But images are usually transmitted point by point serially, whereby, of course, with large numbers of points (high resolutions) several such transmission paths are bundled.

The most common displays are of the TFT type. The display consists of a matrix of cells. There's also a transistor on each cell. Then you have rows and columns. So you don't need a separate cable for each cell, but a cell becomes active when it is addressed by the combination of row + column. The differences in brightness are, I think, made by switching on and off quickly - possibly also different voltages. The colors come from a simple color filter. There are 3 cells per pixel with upstream color filters, red, green, blue.

TFT is a special case of LCD. Modern IPS displays special cases from TFT. Look at Wikipedia for the keywords.

https://www.touchandscreen.de/displayanschluss

Brightness in the pixel is regulated by the voltage. Depending on the voltage, the crystal is more or less open.