UltraSharp 2408WFP rev A01 is here, or so I think

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@waterloo87 wrote:

Thats right. I feel so lucky!.

I ordered it on June 11th 2 weeks ago when it was at 499$ (200$ off for Dell people choice deals) and I just got it today June 26th.

 

It says on the back it was made June 08.

So far, I hooked it up to my desktop at 1900 x 1200 via DVI w/o any problems.

 

I'll go try out my 360 via VGA now.

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Waterloo87,

How did you determine this was an "A01"...?   Jimmy_P stated at: 

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_monitor&message.id=92492#M92492

that: 

@DELL-Jimmy_P wrote:

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Due to a Dell internal process change many of the 2408's that will ship new with the revised firmware will have a different part number and not a different revision number. The only way you will be able to tell if it's the revised firmware is to check the sharpness setting, if the setting is in multiples of 10 then it is the revised firmware if it's in multiples of 25 then it's not. The part number has nothing to do with the revision but someone decided since we are changing the part number anyway the firmware will be A00 on that part number. I thought it was kind of confusing but it's not my idea;)

I will post here when I have a firm date that the new firmware is shipping.

thanks,

Stephen

One quick test to confrim whether ur A01 got the main fix would be navigate to the sharpness screen in the OSD and make sure u can increment by 1s or 10s .. i am not sure .. but its should not be 25s.

Ok, So I was wrong. I finally got an answer from Jimmy himself:

"It does not have the revised firmware, the rev A01 part number could be from any part change, the panel or even somthing as simple as a power button."

so how is your version waterloo?

Any apparent aberrations?

like text sharpness issue,input lags,pink tinge,greenish tones etc etc?

If there's no revision to firmware in the A01, I think it's unlikely that the text sharpness issue is fixed.

As far as I can tell, the text sharpness problem (that is, where small details - most obviously small or thin text - look blobby and irregular, like badly-applied mascara) is caused by the processing in the monitor. I think that pesky sharpness function is to blame - the giveaway is the "ringing" on what ought to be sharp edges (creating a light halo around the edge of dark objects). Just like badly-applied Photoshop unsharp-masking. And the effect gets worse if you turn the sharpness up a notch.

Why is the 2408 applying sharpness processing to a 1920 x 1200 DVI signal? For a digital signal, at the native panel resolution, no sharpening or softening should be required, pixels should simply be reproduced exactly the way the computer is spitting them out.

I mean, as far as I know, that's how every other digital LCD monitor has functioned in the past. The old 17" Dell LCD I bought nearly ten years ago was nicer to look at than this.

I suspect that the sharpening and other processing that the monitor is doing is also responsible for the "input lag" that people are reporting. All that processing takes time.

If Dell could add a selectable mode that does away with the pixel processing - even if that means that things like the PIP function would be disabled - I have a strong suspicion that would clear up 85% of owners' complaints, and would actually make it a pretty good computer monitor. I can get by with the colour rendering the way it is, but right now, using mine for, oh I don't know, some rarely encountered computer function like *reading or entering text* makes my head hurt. It took me about five minutes after switching it on to realise something was wrong.

I'd return the 2408, but it'd save a lot of arguing with my dealer if Dell could just release a firmware update that made it work properly. Here's hoping. :smileywink:

PS of course I'm glad that there have been some revisions to warrant an A01 designation. Shows that Dell care. So if it's not firmware, can anyone see what *has* changed? 

@popelife

1.How did they hack the 2408WFP to avoid text processing ?

2.What if u set the sharpness to 0.Does that solve the problem ?

1. By using a DDC/CI utility to fiddle with the monitor configuration. There's a couple of threads on here about it somewhere. Apparently it only sort of worked.

2. No, if you reduce the sharpness from 50, the image gets progressively more blurred. At 0 it looks like you need glasses. It's completely out-of-focus. 

Crank the sharpness up from 50 and the ringing effect gets more and more obvious... which is what makes me think this is a sharpening artefact rather than anything to do with the panel.

I don't see why you would ever want to either sharpen OR blur a 1920 x 1200 DVI signal. 

I haven't had any of the mentioned issues. I've hooked up my 360 via VGA at 1080p with no noticeable lag (I play mostly FPSs). I was very worrried at first since I am a hardcore gamer but everything runs fine :) An interesting thing to do would be to run an input lag test with another display next to it.

I hooked my desktop through DVI also at 1920 x 1200 and everything looks fine. Maybe, the mouse seemed slow, but that's since the screen is so big you have more distance to move the mouse, I haven't really done any real tests, but so far everything is good.

Well, I'll grant you, the text readability issue is subtle... but it's there. You notice it more as a "Reading this is really hard going" sensation. You have to look carefully to figure out why... and of course, it helps to have another model of LCD to compare it with.

The Dell must be doing a bunch of processing to enable it to do things like scaling, sharpening, de-interlacing, PIP, etc, etc. But scaling and sharpening aren't necessary when you have a DVI connection at native resolution. There should be the option to switch it off.

Another artefact I've just noticed is that on-screen objects that fade-in or fade-out don't do it smoothly. They flicker as they fade out. For example, the command-tab application switcher in Mac OS X. It looks a bit odd on the Dell when it fades out - it flickers. On an Apple monitor, the fade-out is smooth.

In the video world, this kind of thing is a dead giveaway that you're using a less-than-brilliant scaler or deinterlacer or suchlike. Everything's fine as long as the image is still, but as soon as something moves, you get artefacts.

Is there another monitor on the market that uses this PVA panel? That would be an interesting monitor to compare things with. 

I think the 2408s are probably all the same. But some people are happy because they use their monitor in applications where the flaws aren't so apparent. I'm surprised at the number of people who are primarily buying a 2408 to play games on, either on a PC or a console (not that I'm knocking that particular pastime :smileyhappy:). They're not likely to spot the text legibility problems, since you don't get much (any?) in-game text where the stroke is about 1 pixel across.

In the meantime, graphic artists and photographers especially are concerned about the fairly wild colour rendering. I notice it too, but it's not a big issue for me at the moment.

In many ways, I'm your average computer user, working with web pages and software development, and lots of windows full of small anti-aliased text. I have to read PDFs and web pages all day, and I'm noticing things aren't as readable as they were on my old monitors (which were stolen recently, hence the need to get at least one new monitor in a hurry). My old monitors weren't expensive - a couple of five to ten year old 17" monitors, one a Samsung, the other a Dell.

My laptop, which thankfully is still around, is definitely easier to read.

It's possible that I'm wrong about the processing and it's something to do with the panel itself, but the fact that there's a sharpness control at all for digital inputs makes me highly suspicious.