Monitor recommendations. What's good?

I dug out my old 4:3 Dell monitor and tried it out. It's not as bright overall as my current Asus monitor, but it doesn't show the same issues with the gradients that the Asus does. On the Asus it looks blobby. For reference, this screenshot is what I'm talking about, with the fog in the lower half of the image.

IMAGE(http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/30728136113999317/464CD403BFC879E2CEEAC38FD24030353B69C4BE/)

Interesting... I can see the effect a little bit on my laptop screen which I think is IPS... but I'll check on my external IPS monitor to be sure.

edit: Hm dunno. I can see some posterization on my IPS screen as well, which may be that it's not high end one capable of displaying 1 billion colors (which would result in less gradation). It's very slight for me, so I might not notice if I wasn't looking for it. Hard to say how it compares to what you're seeing without doing a direct comparison, unfortunately. Maybe you're eyes are just better than mine

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Interesting... I can see the effect a little bit on my laptop screen which I think is IPS... but I'll check on my external IPS monitor to be sure.

edit: Hm dunno. I can see some posterization on my IPS screen as well, which may be that it's not high end one capable of displaying 1 billion colors (which would result in less gradation). It's very slight for me, so I might not notice if I wasn't looking for it. Hard to say how it compares to what you're seeing without doing a direct comparison, unfortunately. Maybe you're eyes are just better than mine :)

Remember that what you're really looking at is the least common denominator.... you're seeing a picture of his screen, displayed on your monitor(s). Wherever you're looking, there are three devices involved: his screen, the camera that took the picture, and your screen. What you'll end up with is the worst of all three... and it's hard to tell which device is the worst.

FWIW, I don't see any posterization or banding in that image, but I'm not especially sensitive to it.

The image is a screenshot taken through Steam, so no camera involved, but it is a JPEG so there may be compression artifacts. Regardless, even just comparing the screenshot between my two monitors showed the same effect so I doubt there's much difference between the live game and hitting F12. It's possible I could take a photo of the monitor but I'm not sure how useful the image would be.

Ah, a screenshot is even less informative; it's an idealized version of what the picture should look like, and how we see it on our monitors is not affected by how you see it in yours. It's only really useful for direct comparison, when you can look at the monitors side-by-side or in quick succession.

From here, all we can tell is: yep, that's an image. We can't tell what you're seeing, only what you're trying to display.

It's useful to me to have someone say that it looks fine on their monitor, though. I'll try to take a picture when I have time today and see if the effect shows up.

Well, for what it's worth, the black is fairly uniform; there's some lighter bits down at the bottom, especially on the left side. It's definitely deliberate, however, as the spots move around with the image, they're not part of my screen.

The medallion... looks like a medallion, I guess. I don't see anything weird about it. The edges have some artifacts, but that's probably the JPG conversion.

Well, I couldn't get a decent picture of the problem. I tried capturing some video which did a somewhat better job, mostly if you look at the right side of the screen. Make sure it's playing at 720p, as well.

Yeah, I see the posterization in the fog. That does look like a TN panel's color inaccuracy. Probably any of the IPS variants should solve the problem, I would imagine.

Just to verify that it is a TN panel, what's the make/model of the monitor that's giving you the problem?

This is an Asus VE258Q

Well, it is a TN panel, but all the specs and reviews seem to indicate that it should be doing a full 16 million colors. I wonder if something else might be wrong.

Do you have any other sources you can try it with? Maybe a Blu-Ray player or something? I'd be interested to find out if you still get the banding with a different source. I do think it's probably the screen, but I'm not absolutely certain. Another possibility might be something set wrong in the OS's color calibration, or if you're doing any kind of color adjustment or enhancement in the video drivers. In the NVidia control panel, for instance, that's called "Adjust Desktop Color Settings", and you'd want to be sure it was all disabled.

edit: you might also verify that you're in 32-bit color: in Win7, right click on the Desktop and choose Screen Resolution. Look for the small blue label, "Advanced Settings", and click that. Then go to the Monitor tab in the popup, and verify that it's True Color (32-bit).

Also, you might want to verify in Skyrim that you're in 32-bit mode.... I haven't run it in a long time, but if it has options for resolution that are X by Y by 16, the 16 at the end is the color depth. You want the "x32" settings.

It looks to me like your posterization problem is a result of compression. Either the video card is compressing the colors too much at render time, the video playback is too compressed (looks like alpha compression issues we have with low Bink video compression rates at my job), your HDMI cable might have too low a data transfer rate, so the signal is too compressed ( Are you using HDMI, or did I miss when you said what kind of connection you use? Either way, I had this issue with no-name HDMI cables and my PS3 when I first got it), or your monitor maybe can't handle the higher data rate and is doing it's own compression (no idea if monitors do this).

Malor's suggested troubleshooting is a good start either way. If you're still having the issue, see if you can't get a higher quality cable and see if that helps. Personally, I've had great luck with Cmple cables from Amazon, FWIW.

I'm using DisplayPort, actually. Haven't tried HDMI.

Malor, I tried your suggestions. The NVidia color correction was turned off. I ran through the Windows calibration a few times (running 8.1), and it was slightly improved, but it's still definitely there. Tried some of the monitor's built-in presets for gaming, movies, etc, and it mostly just affected how bad the problem was rather than eliminated it.

(looks like alpha compression issues we have with low Bink video compression rates at my job),

You know, I just had a thought: it could be Youtube's compression causing that problem, not the screen at all. Or it could be the camera's compression. Trying to share what a screen actually looks like, via another screen, is REALLY tricky.

your HDMI cable might have too low a data transfer rate, so the signal is too compressed

I don't think it works that way. AFAIK, HDMI is not compressed at all. It should either work perfectly, or not work at all. There shouldn't be any interim degradation, at least not at 1080p resolutions. You could see it falling back to 1080p on a higher-res screen if the cable wasn't fast enough, but the color would still be bit-perfect from the original signal. The compression happens in the video, not on the HDMI cable.

Another thought that occurs, though: if it is connected via HDMI, you can run into weird color space problems. It's not compression, but rather that the HDMI spec, by default, doesn't do the full 0-255 range on colors, but rather 16 to um, 239, I believe. Colors outside that range are forced into it, which can cause slightly odd results... I would think floating white on black would be a likely candidate, exactly like that Skyrim opening image.

Beanman: if you're connected via HDMI, try switching to DVI. It's a simpler, more computer-oriented interface, and there's less to go wrong.

Oh, you posted while I was writing that. DisplayPort should be fine, but if you've got a DVI cable lying around, it would be interesting to see if the results are any different, that way.

edit: another thing to try: in those same Advanced settings, go two tabs further over, to Color Management, and then click on the Color Management button. Do you see any profiles listed with that device? It should tell you what's actually active, the color correction profile that's in use.

Don't change anything, just tell us what's there.

Malor wrote:

Oh, you posted while I was writing that. DisplayPort should be fine, but if you've got a DVI cable lying around, it would be interesting to see if the results are any different, that way.

edit: another thing to try: in those same Advanced settings, go two tabs further over, to Color Management, and then click on the Color Management button. Do you see any profiles listed with that device? It should tell you what's actually active, the color correction profile that's in use.

Don't change anything, just tell us what's there.

No difference when using DVI. In the list of profiles for this monitor is the profile I created today while mucking with the Calibration tool.

OK, well, I don't think the monitor is supposed to be doing that, but A) you have a TN screen, and B) you have another monitor that more or less works properly. Given those two truths, replacing the monitor seems very likely to work... I don't know anything else, offhand, that you're likely to be able to try in software, so a hardware fix would seem to be the only remaining option.

As far as actual replacement recommendations go, I'm not a very good source. Maybe you can give us a budget range, and hopefully, other folks will chime in with specific suggestions. Since color accuracy is the primary reason you want to replace that screen, I think you'll probably want one of the IPS technologies. At least from what I can determine, the one you have is supposed to be pretty good, for a TN, so I don't think any TN is likely to make you happy.

Yeah it's disheartening seeing all the glowing reviews on the web for the monitor that convinced me to pick it up in the first place.

Anyway, I don't really want to spend more than $400, which should be more than plenty for a 1080p or 1900x1200 resolution monitor. 24 inches will suit me fine, though if there's a deal for larger and it still looks good, I can go for that. Something like this might suit me? Thoughts?

Well, that looks at least reasonable, although it's using a 6-bit colorspace, interpolated to 8, much like what TN screens use. Both Anand and Toms say that it's okay out of the box, and can be calibrated to fairly good accuracy, but that 6-bitness thing kind of worries me.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good for the price range. Lag's reasonable, and quality seems decent. But 6-bit native colorspace makes me wary.

Yeah, so, that Monoprice monitor? It broke. It broke very badly. It no longer keeps sync, and the computer makes weird noises when it's plugged in.... it's obvious that current is going where no current should go. And the video card seems to have been damaged; it now makes vaguely similar noises under load. (note: the sound is coming out through the back panel ports.)

Very unhappy. It's not just a dead monitor; I think I probably also need to replace the video card.

Have you contacted Monoprice? From what I understand their customer service can actually be pretty reasonable.

Thin_J wrote:

Have you contacted Monoprice? From what I understand their customer service can actually be pretty reasonable.

Yeah, about five minutes after I posted that. We'll see what they do. I think I just want a refund at this point, I'm scared of using those monitors anymore. But I'm >just< past the 30-day window.

I just got my.Monoprice monitor last night for Christmas. I ended up getting 3 fluffy bright white pixels that only really shown on white or gray pages. I'm not sure what to call them since they aren't dead. It doesn't show when I play games just on static white. It's also more fuzzy than just a stuck or dead pixel. I'm still within the 30 days so I contacted them to try to RMA it. I hope I don't need to pay for shipping. If I do I may just suck it up and keep it since it disappears when u play games.

Other than the white spots the monitor is gorgeous. The colors are fantastic and the text quality is awesome. It's hard to look at my old monitor. I just wish I didn't have the white fuzzy pixel problem.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/TXGj4sQ.jpg)

I just ordered this: BenQ GL2460HM. At 159 bucks, seemed like a crazy good deal, especially since I'll be upgrading an old 22inch Acer with 8ms slow refresh. Will be nice to do 1080p finally.

Acer has the XB270HU coming out supposedly in March. It's a 1440p, 144hz, Gsync, IPS panel based monitor that represents the first real competition for Asus' ROG Swift display..

IPS being what it is I can't imagine it not being a smeary mess in action, but who knows, maybe they've figured something out. Certainly something I'll be keeping an eye on.

Monitor arrived today, it's beautiful. I feel like I've been looking through foggy glasses for the last 5 years.

Framerate has definitely taken a hit, my 560 Ti might be on it's last legs.

Malor wrote:
(looks like alpha compression issues we have with low Bink video compression rates at my job),

You know, I just had a thought: it could be Youtube's compression causing that problem, not the screen at all. Or it could be the camera's compression. Trying to share what a screen actually looks like, via another screen, is REALLY tricky.

your HDMI cable might have too low a data transfer rate, so the signal is too compressed

I don't think it works that way. AFAIK, HDMI is not compressed at all. It should either work perfectly, or not work at all. There shouldn't be any interim degradation, at least not at 1080p resolutions. You could see it falling back to 1080p on a higher-res screen if the cable wasn't fast enough, but the color would still be bit-perfect from the original signal. The compression happens in the video, not on the HDMI cable.

SUPER late response, sorry, but I wanted to say: You are probably right. I really don't know how exactly HDMI works. What I do recall is that I went from a $6 no-name HDMI cable from Micro-Center to a well-reviewed HDMI 1.4 Cmple cable, and saw a very visible difference in the picture quality playing Uncharted 2. Where the picture had visible compression squares, most noticeably during fast-paced/motion-blurred gameplay or in brightly-colored environments, and the Cmple cable did not. Maybe they weren't compression squares after all-- maybe they were just weird gfx artifacting from the PS3. Either way, they seemed to go away with the better cable.

NSMike wrote:

I want this.

Yeah, I am waiting patiently for the 21:9 1080p + displays to come down in price.

I don't plan on doing much gaming on it but would love it for my audio editing, writing, and development.

Oh, and for those reading this saying "get multiple monitors" used to have several but never really liked it that much.

I started a new job, and part of the hardware kit they gave me is one of those 27" Apple thunderbolt displays. Holy hell is this thing pretty.

The problem is the thunderbolt connector. The laptop is a macbook pro, which I had them set up to bootcamp into Win7. Unfortunately, Windows only checks for thunderbolt connections on restart, so connecting or disconnecting the monitor requires a boot under Windows. OSx supports hot swapping it though. So I was faced with deciding whether to keep using Win7 and get a smaller Dell monitor, or use this monitor and use OSx.

I'm using OSx. This is a pretty monitor.