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3 Posts
2
82054
XPS 15 9550 with 4K Display Not Outputting Proper Black Levels
I bought a new XPS 15 with the 4k infinity display, and for some reason the laptop display is suffering from extreme black and white crush. I have tried calibrating the display, and it seems that the lowest and highest video levels are being clipped. The result is that dark areas of an image merge together with absolute black creating terrible color banding and blockiness in shadows of images.
I have tried making adjustments to settings in dell premier color (tried uninstalling it as well), windows internal display settings, the intel integrated graphics control panel, and none of them have made a difference. Even with brightness, contrast, or black level set to max in settings, lower video levels are indistinguishable from absolute black. Same on the opposite ends with white.
The issue is identical to outputting the wrong video level to a display (for example outputting full pc range to a regular TV with limited range), but I see no means of adjusting it for the laptop's internal display settings.
For the record, black levels output to a TV via HDMI are fine, so it's clearly an issue with the signal to the laptop display or the laptop display itself, and not an overall system issue.
To be clear, this is an extreme amount of clipping. I understand that most displays cannot output a full video range of 0-255 without some banding. However, on my laptop it's so bad that anything containing shadows looks terrible. Even uncompressed photos of space have terrible blockiness that makes it looks like those 4bit images from the early 90s.
N1cksys
4 Posts
3
April 25th, 2016 18:00
My issue is resolved now. The culprit was the Intel HD Graphics 530 drivers (version 20.19.15.4390, released 2/18/2016). I'm using an older version (20.19.15.4331, released 11/18/2015).
The clipping, banding has been completely remedied. The system on occasion is prompting to install the new driver's. I'll have to hold out for the next. I'm not certain if there is a performance degradation somewhere else.
Latest drivers on Dell's support page below:
Version
Category
Release date
Last Updated
N1cksys
4 Posts
0
March 29th, 2016 20:00
Just toying around with my new XPS 15 fully spec'd out. I'm having the same *** issue. NOT IMPRESSED! Tried disabling Dell's Premier color software to no avail.
di19026
5 Posts
0
March 30th, 2016 22:00
I had the same issue. In my case it was due to bad RAM (I had installed a 32GB upgrade from Crucial).
The 32GB upgrade seemed to work fine initially, machine booted up, system showed 32GB ram etc..
I noticed the clipped shadows right away in Photoshop (I am a photographer).
Thinking it was a driver issue, I went to the Dell website and ran their hardware test, which discovered the error in the RAM.
Took out the 32GB and put back the original 16GB that came with the machine and everything is back to normal now with the colors and shadows.
I have returned the RAM to Crucial and they are sending me new ones.
heymanitsme
3 Posts
0
April 16th, 2016 15:00
I can confirm the same issue here (9550; 4K display).
Both white and blacks are clipped and no amount of contrast/gamma/brightness adjustment will correct. Using a grey scale from 0 - 255, then the display thinks 3 is the darkest black and 252 is the brightest white. 0 - 3 are all *absolute* black (even with brightness turned up so high that 4 looks almost white!)
Shadows in youtube videos look like a screen shot from a ZX Spectrum.
di19026
5 Posts
0
April 17th, 2016 14:00
UPDATE:
Received new 32GB RAM kit from Crucial. Everything looks fine now and it passed Dell's memory test.
heymanitsme
3 Posts
0
April 18th, 2016 04:00
I find it difficult to see how this could be connected to the RAM. Perhaps the issue was fixed as a side effect of dismantling the laptop...
di19026
5 Posts
0
April 18th, 2016 06:00
The Intel graphics utilizes RAM
There is also the fact that Dell's memory test failed. The new memory passed the test.
heymanitsme
3 Posts
0
April 26th, 2016 13:00
Thanks! I ran a RAM test with no issues found, but this driver rollback fixed it for me.
dlm999
1 Message
0
May 13th, 2016 03:00
Hi there
Having the same issue - do you have a link for where I can download the older version so I can roll back?
Cheers
Duncan
N1cksys
4 Posts
1
May 27th, 2016 22:00
Go into device manager and find the Intel video card, proceed to delete the drivers for it . Windows will install a generic version. Use it for the time being until something better comes along.
enternet
3 Posts
1
May 30th, 2016 17:00
The Dell XPS 15 comes with an application called Dell Premier Color. It launches at startup and, if not already running, within a few seconds or minutes, the screen will adjust by itself, which looks like an automatic brightness adjustment. This in turn would cause the black color to appear blocky and not purely black. I would test it out by watching different videos on YouTube in HD. Before the adjustment, the black screen appeared fine. After the application set in, any black color, images, or shadows appeared blocky with some shades of light grey.
In order to solve this, the application needs to be disabled.
Go to: Task Manager >Startup tab > Dell Premier Color row & Status column > Disable.
Shut down and start the computer. Test it out with different videos.
This completely solved the black color issue for me. I did not need to install, uninstall, or alter anything.
michaellatter
1 Message
1
June 2nd, 2016 23:00
I have the latest HD Graphics drivers and the screen still clips blacks
Whathecode
62 Posts
0
August 29th, 2016 06:00
I noticed the same problem. I also reverted to .4331. Subsequent releases seem to be problematic. Versions after .4331 are also somehow related to increased brightness flickering, even though, this version (just like a recent BIOS update) seemed to be there to address these exact issues.
Noteworthy the .4331 version does not include the 'gamut' slider in advanced color settings. In later versions I noticed the incorrect color representations were linked to this slider. When the slider was maxed out, I did not encounter the issue described here, any other setting introduced incorrect color representations.
I hope the team working on these drivers is aware about these issues, as it seems some changes after .4331 and included in BIOS A10 are best rolled back. Seeing what exactly changed might help you in finding the root cause.
Andrew Rise
1 Message
2
December 1st, 2016 01:00
So, i have tested several solutions and came up with this one:
Install A05 driver for HD graphics, reboot
AND Uninstall Dell Premier Color, reboot. (If you don't have it installed - install and uninstall it :D it's not a joke )
Color banding is gone. Black to white gradients are great.
samos1111
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
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490 Posts
0
December 3rd, 2016 09:00
I rolled back to the 4331 Intel HD video driver from Dell site. I haven't installed the latest BIOS because of "of no use" reports.
The heavy posterization in the blacks was gone, so was the brightness flickering. The blacks in test charts were even darker than before initially. But they are adjustable by setting gamma from 1.0 to 1.3 etc in Intel HD graphics control panel.