I just received my 2408 2 days ago and find the problems with black text on white backgrounds (red and blue halos) extremely disappointing. I also have a 2407 at home and at work - no such issues on those. I am actually typing this on my work 2407 and it is perfect with text. Even my old 20" dell ultrasharp looks better on text.
So my question to Chris_M is this - what do you advise me to do? Currently, I don't have any other issues like dead pixels, brightness or color. I don't want to swap for another 2408 with the same (or worse) problems. Should I just return the monitor and wait for the next rev? Your post seems to indicate that the problem will not be fixable without an exchange.
I just received my 2408 2 days ago and find the problems with black text on white backgrounds (red and blue halos) extremely disappointing. I also have a 2407 at home and at work - no such issues on those. I am actually typing this on my work 2407 and it is perfect with text. Even my old 20" dell ultrasharp looks better on text.
So my question to Chris_M is this - what do you advise me to do? Currently, I don't have any other issues like dead pixels, brightness or color. I don't want to swap for another 2408 with the same (or worse) problems. Should I just return the monitor and wait for the next rev? Your post seems to indicate that the problem will not be fixable without an exchange.
i think the best solution for you now is to wait for confirmation of a new revision before requesting for an exchange, since u got a good panel and the prob u have only can be fixed by a newer revision, not just any replacement.
It might need to be an exchange to get the finer control into the OSD, but it certainly doesn't need an exchange to enable existing owners to control the sharpness more finely than the OSD currently allows. The DDC interface already allows 17 steps from 0 up to 100, most importantly including 31, 37 and 43. All someone needs to do is to release a program that will send the relevant commands over the DDC/CI.
To prove this I ran the Linux ddccontrol program. Here are some examples:
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 11
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 12
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 13
which set the sharpness to 31, 37 and 43 respectively. Once set, these sharpness numbers show up in the OSD (so I now have 37 in my OSD on my A00 2408WFP). The setting is saved over powering off the monitor, so you can set it once using Linux and then retain your setting for use under Windows if you wish.
i tried softmccs as per the above suggestion but could not see a sharpness setting anywhere. I am not familiar with the program so I could be wrong.
On the issue of text halos, I found an acceptable solution by adjusting my brightness and color settings after someone suggested that the overly bright and vivid colors might make the subpixel hinting of cleartype too pronounced.
I settled on the following settings and text looks acceptable to me, although the picture is not as dazzling on pictures and movies.
brightness: 5
contrast: 50
sharpness: 50
gamma: pc
Color mode: graphics
color preset: custom (rgb)
Red: 75
Green: 75
Blue: 75
As you can see, I have basically just dulled the monitors factory settings. I have NOT used a hardware calibration tool as I don't own one.
I tried et328's suggestion and tested out http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm. If you use the command-line editor under the "Command Interface" section, you can send the monitor a datagram to set the sharpness. I was able to set the sharpness to 43, which is a huge improvement (especially if you are using the monitor on a Mac )
The datagram I sent was: 03 8C 00 0D
03 = is the set command
8C = the address of the sharpness setting
00 = the High Byte
0D = the Low Byte
I must admit... i was expecting to use something like 28 for the Low Byte ( 40 in decimal ), but I noticed that when I had the value set to 50 on the OSD, the low byte was 0E. So basically I just sent it 0D, since it was lower than 0E :smileywink:. You can get the current value by sending 01 8C in the command-line editor.
I hope this helps... my monitor does have a slight red tint to it on the left hand side, so I plan on returning it as soon as the new revision is out.
I tried also the http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm utility, indeed I managed to set the sharpness in between 25-50%. That helps alot to alleviate this problem, great job et328, many thanks for the hint!
However, the bad news is that the red/green text afterglow on www pages remains almost unchanged. With my unit the afterglow goes down to acceptable level only, when I set the sharpness to 25%, which is obviously too soft for work with text.
It is actually very much visible when I'm typing the text here, so a good test case for DELL engineers how to reproduce my problem :)
To have it even more perceivable if I mark the text here, my white marked text on the black mark becomes blueish on left and reddish on right.
Has anyone managed to setup this monitor in a way that the text afterglow is completely or at least significantly down with acceptable sharpness? (at least 40% with DVI input)
Isn't that afterglow just Cleartype? Turn it off. Or buy a display adapter that allows you to reduce desktop saturation, for example Radeon 3850/3870.
(I don't use Cleartype since I really hate the way Cleartype makes fonts show those colors even with regular LCDs and I guess the effect must be much worse with Dell's oversaturated colors.)
Nope, I tried both w/ n w/o ClearType. You're right, the ClearType makes the look very frequently much worse, hence I switched it off.
I already reduced the saturation in the custom profile, it didnt help too much. I tried also with the graphic card settings, once the afterglow was reduced te colors were generally not acceptable, completely dull.
AS I wrote before, I managed to clean it greatly using VGA input with KVM switch, but the overall pic quality was not that good, so I dont consider it a solution.
While its not perfect or indeed as good as my old 2407WFP its much improved, I also dropped my brightness down to about 20-30 and left the contrast on around 50.
I bought a 2408WFP because of the razer sharp clarity of the 2407wfp that I have at work. Since then, I too have been trying to improve the sharpness of my 2408WFP. Using SOFTMCCS, as others have posted, the sweet spot seems to be around 0C or 0D, but text still isn't clear enough for my taste, especially compared to the 2407WFP.
My question is, could there a way to turn of the sharpness processing altogether, possibly using SOFTMCCS? This doesn't seem like a capability you'd want on a digital input, especially with the 1:1 pixel mapping that a digital input normally provides.
In certain situations, if I lean in to about 1-2 inches from the screen, I can see the red subpixels on the left side of pixels are also lit (at least before my eyes start to water). This is especially noticeable with a small pitch white font on a dark or black background. Make sure ClearType is turned off when you do this. Google for a program called ClearTweak for an easy way to do this. The overall affect is that text still appears ever so slightly fuzzy at normal viewing distances. If I didn't have a 2407 as a basis for comparison, I'd think it was just my imagination.
So can the Sharpness function be disabled altogether? Or will we have to wait and see if rev A01 resolves this?
lunchbox99
2 Posts
0
April 21st, 2008 00:00
I just received my 2408 2 days ago and find the problems with black text on white backgrounds (red and blue halos) extremely disappointing. I also have a 2407 at home and at work - no such issues on those. I am actually typing this on my work 2407 and it is perfect with text. Even my old 20" dell ultrasharp looks better on text.
So my question to Chris_M is this - what do you advise me to do? Currently, I don't have any other issues like dead pixels, brightness or color. I don't want to swap for another 2408 with the same (or worse) problems. Should I just return the monitor and wait for the next rev? Your post seems to indicate that the problem will not be fixable without an exchange.
CrymsonArray
133 Posts
0
April 25th, 2008 08:00
i think the best solution for you now is to wait for confirmation of a new revision before requesting for an exchange, since u got a good panel and the prob u have only can be fixed by a newer revision, not just any replacement.
ddcwfp
1 Message
0
May 18th, 2008 04:00
It might need to be an exchange to get the finer control into the OSD, but it certainly doesn't need an exchange to enable existing owners to control the sharpness more finely than the OSD currently allows. The DDC interface already allows 17 steps from 0 up to 100, most importantly including 31, 37 and 43. All someone needs to do is to release a program that will send the relevant commands over the DDC/CI.
To prove this I ran the Linux ddccontrol program. Here are some examples:
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 11
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 12
ddccontrol -p -r 0x8C -w 13
which set the sharpness to 31, 37 and 43 respectively. Once set, these sharpness numbers show up in the OSD (so I now have 37 in my OSD on my A00 2408WFP). The setting is saved over powering off the monitor, so you can set it once using Linux and then retain your setting for use under Windows if you wish.
Hope this helps someone!
et328
16 Posts
0
May 18th, 2008 06:00
This DDC control program works with Windows, maybe it allows you to set sharpness:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm
(I don't have the 2408 anymore so I can't test it)
lunchbox99
2 Posts
0
May 18th, 2008 07:00
i tried softmccs as per the above suggestion but could not see a sharpness setting anywhere. I am not familiar with the program so I could be wrong.
On the issue of text halos, I found an acceptable solution by adjusting my brightness and color settings after someone suggested that the overly bright and vivid colors might make the subpixel hinting of cleartype too pronounced.
I settled on the following settings and text looks acceptable to me, although the picture is not as dazzling on pictures and movies.
brightness: 5
contrast: 50
sharpness: 50
gamma: pc
Color mode: graphics
color preset: custom (rgb)
Red: 75
Green: 75
Blue: 75
As you can see, I have basically just dulled the monitors factory settings. I have NOT used a hardware calibration tool as I don't own one.
xfm
2 Posts
0
May 21st, 2008 18:00
Hi,
I tried et328's suggestion and tested out http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm. If you use the command-line editor under the "Command Interface" section, you can send the monitor a datagram to set the sharpness. I was able to set the sharpness to 43, which is a huge improvement (especially if you are using the monitor on a Mac )
The datagram I sent was: 03 8C 00 0D
03 = is the set command
8C = the address of the sharpness setting
00 = the High Byte
0D = the Low Byte
I must admit... i was expecting to use something like 28 for the Low Byte ( 40 in decimal ), but I noticed that when I had the value set to 50 on the OSD, the low byte was 0E. So basically I just sent it 0D, since it was lower than 0E :smileywink:. You can get the current value by sending 01 8C in the command-line editor.
I hope this helps... my monitor does have a slight red tint to it on the left hand side, so I plan on returning it as soon as the new revision is out.
Andre66
33 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2008 13:00
Hi,
I tried also the http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm utility, indeed I managed to set the sharpness in between 25-50%. That helps alot to alleviate this problem, great job et328, many thanks for the hint!
However, the bad news is that the red/green text afterglow on www pages remains almost unchanged. With my unit the afterglow goes down to acceptable level only, when I set the sharpness to 25%, which is obviously too soft for work with text.
It is actually very much visible when I'm typing the text here, so a good test case for DELL engineers how to reproduce my problem :)
To have it even more perceivable if I mark the text here, my white marked text on the black mark becomes blueish on left and reddish on right.
Has anyone managed to setup this monitor in a way that the text afterglow is completely or at least significantly down with acceptable sharpness? (at least 40% with DVI input)
BR
et328
16 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2008 14:00
Isn't that afterglow just Cleartype? Turn it off. Or buy a display adapter that allows you to reduce desktop saturation, for example Radeon 3850/3870.
(I don't use Cleartype since I really hate the way Cleartype makes fonts show those colors even with regular LCDs and I guess the effect must be much worse with Dell's oversaturated colors.)
Andre66
33 Posts
0
May 22nd, 2008 16:00
Nope, I tried both w/ n w/o ClearType. You're right, the ClearType makes the look very frequently much worse, hence I switched it off.
I already reduced the saturation in the custom profile, it didnt help too much. I tried also with the graphic card settings, once the afterglow was reduced te colors were generally not acceptable, completely dull.
AS I wrote before, I managed to clean it greatly using VGA input with KVM switch, but the overall pic quality was not that good, so I dont consider it a solution.
BR
stormyuk
19 Posts
0
June 18th, 2008 20:00
Wow that program is a great find, I have managed to almost resolve my blurry/oversharpened text and the halos.
With the following:
Red 64
Green 67
Blue 80 (I prefer cool screens but you might wanna drop that)
Plus the command line recommended above which gives 43 sharpness, thanks xfm.
Is there a way to get the sharpness between 43-50 ?
Cheers,
Mike
stormyuk
19 Posts
0
June 19th, 2008 05:00
While its not perfect or indeed as good as my old 2407WFP its much improved, I also dropped my brightness down to about 20-30 and left the contrast on around 50.
Hmmm.
Polydactyl
11 Posts
0
June 22nd, 2008 15:00
My question is, could there a way to turn of the sharpness processing altogether, possibly using SOFTMCCS? This doesn't seem like a capability you'd want on a digital input, especially with the 1:1 pixel mapping that a digital input normally provides.
In certain situations, if I lean in to about 1-2 inches from the screen, I can see the red subpixels on the left side of pixels are also lit (at least before my eyes start to water). This is especially noticeable with a small pitch white font on a dark or black background. Make sure ClearType is turned off when you do this. Google for a program called ClearTweak for an easy way to do this. The overall affect is that text still appears ever so slightly fuzzy at normal viewing distances. If I didn't have a 2407 as a basis for comparison, I'd think it was just my imagination.
So can the Sharpness function be disabled altogether? Or will we have to wait and see if rev A01 resolves this?