Topic: Setting up a new flatscreen monitor

So....
For the past few months it seems I have been using the wrong wipes to clean my 19" CRT screen. It appears I have been using an anti-static wipe rather than one specially made for monitor screens .
I can be such a twerp at times.
This oversight has caused a very thin layer of (I think) anti glare to wear off parts of the screen especially the corners. Ah well, there y'are! I take myself off to the local trusted computer supplier to peruse the goodies on offer and I found this from Computer Plus
I could hardly wait to get it home and play. In fact I had to wait another day because the company had sent the monitor out to me but when I unpacked it, it only had a European plug lead and socket. not the "kettle" lead we use here in merrie Englande. I was not a happy camper, and told them so on the phone.
The correct plug arrived the next day. When I connect everything and switch on it feels like the whole room is illuminated like in the film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was bright bright BRIGHT. The default setting on the OSD for Brightness and Contrast were set to MAX.
I try to alter the brightness and contrast and manage to get close to a good set-up but the colours are sort of washed out, like as if a photograph has been left in the sun too long.
If I change the resolution to anything other than 1680x1050 the backgroung colours blur into the text when viewing anything with text on it, web pages, WP documents and so on. I phone Computer plus and they advise me to get in touch with V7 direct. This I do but as it is a non-native English speaker on the phone I spend so long , NO I said so= S. O. long= L. O. N. G. explaining my situation that my credit ran out on my phone. Happy days indeed.
Now this is the first flat screen LCD I have tried to set-up and I'm bashfull to say I have failed. I can't get the screen colours looking right. Nearly all the photographs I have taken in the past now look too bright on this screen.
Questions:
(1) How do you set up your monitors, especially flat screen, to ensure colour consistency?
(2) Has anyone heard of V7 and are they as crapelicious as I fear or is it perhaps just this one monitor?


Those who look for monsters should look to it that
they do not become monsters. For when you gaze
long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

I have only done this once. I used the Star Wars Ep. I DVD. There is a special feature on there for calibrating tv's. It should work about the same for this.

There was also something that Lucas Arts put out especially for this though. It was ~$30USD though. About the same thing that came with my Star Wars movies.

At work we have something for calibrating monitors to calibrate the colors with a printing press. But it's about $2000USD and I don't think you want to go through that much trouble

Later,

C:\

never heard of V7.
if you are looking for professional information about flatscreens, check out http://prad.de/en/index.html . it's a german site, but it became very popular and is now also available in english.
concerning the color problems, did you try Adobe Gamma Loader? i've been using it for all my TFTs so far and i'm very satisfied (i had the same problem - too bright or pale images). also, if you have a nvidia graphics card you can use the software which comes with the most recent drivers. it offers quite the same options as Adobe's Gamma Loader does.
hope this helps


The Space Between Us | My Blog: lukas.grumet.at

(Edited by mas on 05-12-2008 18:40)

Prad seem to have your monitor in their news section, here - looks like you got a fairly good deal on the price to me.

You might find it useful to try the free 'Monitor Calibration Wizard', downloadable from Hex2Bit or SoftPedia. This makes it much easier to at least get the hardware close to something pleasant before playing with the drivers.

I may well be wrong, but I think that altering output through the drivers essentially discards digital information and compresses output ranges. I only use software/driver gamma/colour calibration for infinitesimal fine-tuning (or when I have an old game with poor gamma/rendering options), and as a last resort.

(Edited by White Hawk on 05-12-2008 22:15)

fixed the link

Thanks for the links guys.
I've not solved the problem yet as I'm away from home in a library again atm.
I went back to the shop and talked to to sales tech fella. They say bring it in but understand if we find no fault I have to take it back and pay for the "service" to the monitor, plus all the delivery charges to and from the shop
I say "look here, Ibought plenty of things off you in the past, even monitors all have been fine. TRhis is without doubt the worst monitor I have ever used, ever. For photographic and graphic uses it is, to use an often quoted saying, not fit for purpose.
Sales guy says, well you should have got a better monitor then, what do you expect for ther price!!!!!!!!!
I did not explode.
I walked out calmly.
I walked back in calmly and informed them I would be taking legal advice.

More to follow, but I think I'm going to have ti bite the bullet on this one.
Buyer beware indeed.


Those who look for monsters should look to it that
they do not become monsters. For when you gaze
long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

I picked up a little gem the other week, took a while to get the profile working in vista ultimate 64 but now i am very happy.

I have the 24" HP w2408h very nice and love its pivot feature, only problem is the software for auto switching the desktop to portrait mode only works on HP pc's so u have to manually set it to portrait when rotating it.
other than that colours are great would recommend this to anyone looking for a good mid range 24" screen.

wow, now i'm jealous the w2408H is truly a gem!


The Space Between Us | My Blog: lukas.grumet.at

Nice monitor tom, makes all the difference dunnit.
Well, I twiddled and I tweaked with the monitor. In both the NVIDIA controls and the OSD monitor controls and somehow it's looking slightly better, but this is totally whacked. My settings now are 1440x900 @ 60Hz and I don't seem to have the option to select 1680x1050 as recommended. The highest I can go now is 1600x1200 but that looks just weird.
I did press the "Reset" button on the monitor OSD controls, from thence I think the wackiness ensued.

quote:

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White Hawk said:

I may well be wrong, but I think that altering output through the drivers essentially discards digital information and compresses output ranges. I only use software/driver gamma/colour calibration for infinitesimal fine-tuning (or when I have an old game with poor gamma/rendering options), and as a last resort.

---

I had not thought of it in that way White Hawk thanks. DO we know if there is a preferred method for calibrating monitors, CRT and TFT?
Now that I think of it, in the past I think I've most often used the monitor itself to adjust settings. I only started using the NVIDIA controls here when the other method failed to get good results.
I've downloaded that software but will leave trying it till later today, and I'll read through the V7 manual, er, I mean again
Perhaps not being used to flat screens does not help either.
I've got some photos to upload later so perhaps, if I'm working on a monitor that I perceive as too bright, the photos I upload may appear rather dark to others? It's not a precise art I know but may give some indication.
Sweet dreams.

ZZzzzzzz

Just remember TFT screens come with a native resolution which means they are designed to display at one resolution only for best results. Unless your monitor is like my HP and has HDMI input aswell and then i can switch to full HD 1080i mode at 1920x1080

check your monitor drivers most good manufacturers supply a icm profile for the screen.