"Dell fesses up to 2007WFP banding problem"
- Thread starter BroadbandGamer
- Start date
You're supposed to send it in to have the firmware applied. AFAIK, you will recieve the same monitor you sent in. BTW, this "fix" is more of a crippling IMO. It seems they disable the Faroudja processing in desktop mode. That the banding was apparent in all 3 modes apparently didnt occur to them.
Follow instructions here:
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums...?board.id=dim_monitor&message.id=56617
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums...?board.id=dim_monitor&message.id=56617
Yeah.
I think the reason they did this is that the vast majority of users were not complaining about any problems (sorry, but even a couple of hundred people on forums complaining is probably just a small percentage of the number of monitors that have been sold), and I believe that due to them disabling the Faroudja processing, it might make the monitor less capable at other aspects (such as scaling content, etc.), and so they wanted to at least give users a way to enable it, thus the other two modes not having it disabled.
I certainly won't be purchasing one of these monitors until they do a real change to the internals and fix whatever issues have cropped up.
I don't understand the negative reactions to Dell's fix.
The Faroudja video processing is for video - you know, stuff that moves. Leaving it enabled 24/7 in desktop mode - where you've got lots of stuff that doesn't move and is supposed to have specific color values - sounds like a really bad idea. Much as I like PowerDVD's image enhancer, for example, I wouldn't try to hack it into processing my whole desktop 24/7.
If anyone does manage to invent and implement a perfect video enhancer that works just makes anything look better without any tradeoffs whatsoever, let me know - we'll patent it and retire on our own personal planets.
The Faroudja video processing is for video - you know, stuff that moves. Leaving it enabled 24/7 in desktop mode - where you've got lots of stuff that doesn't move and is supposed to have specific color values - sounds like a really bad idea. Much as I like PowerDVD's image enhancer, for example, I wouldn't try to hack it into processing my whole desktop 24/7.
If anyone does manage to invent and implement a perfect video enhancer that works just makes anything look better without any tradeoffs whatsoever, let me know - we'll patent it and retire on our own personal planets.
The reason this is bad is that they're not actually fixing anything, they're disabling a feature to try to resolve another issue. Also, what are you supposed to do if you run videos in a window and not fullscreen? You'll either have to put up with color banding or give up the processing.
Not only that, but I've yet to see confirmation that this actually even resolves the color banding. Who knows what other compromises they might have made to get rid of the color issue (will we start to see motion blur or other issues crop up because they've disabled the image processor?). From what it sounds like, the only way they can fix this is by changing actual hardware.
From what I can tell, the reason this isn't bad is that they're fixing a design error. Your monitor can't tell whether it's running video or displaying a screensaver. The video card just sends out a 2D image 60+ times a second. Even when you output 3D, the video card just sends out a 2D projection of the 3D scene.
A digital monitor is just a dumb device that plots pixels, so a video enhancing algorithm built into a monitor is at best just making intelligent guesses as to which pixel patterns and pixel change patterns denote video. When it guesses wrong, well, you've seen the results.
If you want video processing, you use software that actually knows it's processing video - like a DVD player or a PVR app. And even then, digital video enhancers are inherently imperfect; the best ones just have the least noticable mistakes. What do you expect from a little piece of software designed to second guess millions of highly paid content creators who use very expensive digital video processing equipment?
You may as well demand that Dell's 2x09 models implement fragment anti-aliasing. Monitors just don't have access to the 3D geometry. They could guess, of course, but then no algorithm is perfect - or more correctly, perfect algorithms cannot be implemented, any more than we can have chips with perfect branch prediction and infinite cache - so what happens when the guesses are wrong?
We're back to square one; users would start demanding that Dell fix the seemingly-random font blurring. Moreover, users would then cry foul when Dell disabled the idiotic - from an engineering perspective - notion of treating everything displayed on a 2x09 monitor as a 3D scene. If you want fragment anti-aliasing, you have to implement it in the 3D renderer's hardware and/or software...
I'm not really sure what your whole point there is. Your going way off tangent.
The fact is, if this causes ghosting, or image artifacts (say from just even moving the mouse on your desktop), then its not a fix, even if it resolves the color banding issue (which we don't know if it actually does or not yet).
The only way this could be considered a fix is if the processing didn't actually do anything, in which case it doesn't make sense for it to even be there in the first place, and they should be turning it off for all modes, but since they didn't, it would seem to me to serve some purpose.
Since they had the processing being applied at all times in the three different modes, it seems apparent to me, that it was the purpose/intention of it to be working all the time, and its not something thats just there for video or movement, but rather is there for processing the image always. One of the things that Faroudja's processing has gotten praise for is its ability to scale non-native content, and thus this would help for running a DVD full screen, and not because its video, but because its a different resolution.
Again, I'll reiterate why people aren't pleased with this. Its a compromise, not an actual solution. They're giving you the option of giving up the image processing or put up with color banding. As far as I can tell, they designed this monitor such that the image processing is something you want, since they originally made it work at all times, and so its giving up a feature of the monitor to try to overcome a problem it has.
Until I see an almost unanimous response that this has actually fixed the color banding issues and that no one notices any difference between the image processing on or off, this can't be considered a fix.
To restate it briefly: You were talking about a video processor in a monitor being somehow applied to improve video in a window on your desktop, and I was telling you it's not possible to do that without causing artifacts on the rest of the desktop because monitors don't know which pixels are for which windows.
I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about here. There is no magic "make it better" chip that's somehow going to take the input from a DVI cable and improve it. That data is digital. A video processing chip can't "make it better" without mutating the color data, and any algorithm which does that is going to have tradeoffs. Period.
That's interesting conjecture, but when Windows says to the video card, "Draw pixel (23,192) in color (128, 128, 128) on your primary buffer," and the monitor receives pixel (23, 192) in color (128, 128, 128), will you please tell me what the magic "make it better" algorithm is for improving on it? How does the monitor divine what that pixel is for? Is there some kind of prognostication chip that says, "Aha! The video card is sending out pixel (23, 192) in color (128, 128, 128) during this refresh - it must be part of a window border! So we'll just leave it alone." Yeah, I'll bet.
And you are saying this because...?
BTW all the DVD player applications I know of use their own scalers and deinterlacers to upscale to the desktop's current resolution. FYI if you kept switching to a 480 (?) resolution continually to let the monitor upscale the video, your desktop windows would shrink, so it's not exactly a very practical use for the Faroudja chip in a computer LCD. And in any case, you don't play scaled content in desktop mode; you use - drumroll, please! - video or gaming mode.
I know what they've said. When I said, "I don't understand [it]," that is just a colloquialism for "Your dissatisfaction is unfounded," and my first post essentially continued (paraphrased), "and here's why..."
No, as I said before, I think it's an actual solution to a design flaw.
If an architect designs blueprints for a building with a closet but includes no closet door, that's a design flaw. The materials used to build the walls are not at fault, and demanding to have both the wall space and the door before you'll pay the builder would be ridiculous.
Hey, we agree on something!
1. Video processing algorithms don't magically make everything better; they have tradeoffs.
2. I don't recall seeing this so-called "feature" advertised as such. We don't even know exactly what it does. How can you call it a feature? I want to see some hard data on what this Faroudja chip does for the Dell LCD. There's no specific information available on Faroudja's website or Dell's website.
If the video processing shouldn't have been enabled on everything the LCD displays in the first place, then disabling it in desktop mode is a fix even if you lose some of the advantages of the video processing in desktop mode. I certainly don't see why anyone would want a video processor active in desktop mode at native resolution, which is where most of the reported problems occur. But I, too, would like confirmation on this fix.
The Faroudja algorithms aren't responsible for response time compensation, that is separate. So disabling the Faroudja things on Desktop mode should not affect anything else, providing they are infact only disabling Faroudja things. Faroudja shouldn't be enabled under Desktop mode in the first place anyway, especially not under native resolution/DVI. People think they're losing something. Actually, you're gaining quality because now Desktop mode works like it does on every other monitor that does not suffer the banding problem.
I've been following the banding issue from very early on, and while I'm pleased that Dell is trying to make it right, I'm displeased that I don't understand the solution at all
I've heard of Faroudja processing before in the context of movies, but not in an LCD panel. I thought Faroudja was built into DVD players. Is Faroudja doing anything for me when I'm playing games? Personally I've always thought DVDs looked kind of ****** on computer monitors, and I assumed it was because the monitor had way more pixels than in the DVD source, so I don't know what kind of impact this will have.
Bottom line, if I can leave the monitor in Desktop all the time, not see banding in games movies or anything else, and not have anything look ******, I'll be happy, even I don't understand why any of it is working!
I've heard of Faroudja processing before in the context of movies, but not in an LCD panel. I thought Faroudja was built into DVD players. Is Faroudja doing anything for me when I'm playing games? Personally I've always thought DVDs looked kind of ****** on computer monitors, and I assumed it was because the monitor had way more pixels than in the DVD source, so I don't know what kind of impact this will have.
Bottom line, if I can leave the monitor in Desktop all the time, not see banding in games movies or anything else, and not have anything look ******, I'll be happy, even I don't understand why any of it is working!
Heartbreaker
Diamond Member
- Apr 3, 2006
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Ryan, did you notice the text blur and have you started the process to get a new panel with the fix? The reason being is Dell refuses to acknowldege the text blur issue so they don't say if this will fix it. So we need someone who is on the fix list who can see the text blur. Possibly it is on all the panels but is subtle you need sharp eyes and know what to look for ( a clean comparison LCD would help).
Picture of my 2007fp vs my 2405:
http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59944402.textComp.jpg
I returned mine for a refund and I won't buy again until I know all issues are solved.
Picture of my 2007fp vs my 2405:
http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59944402.textComp.jpg
I returned mine for a refund and I won't buy again until I know all issues are solved.
You're text blur looks like the pixels leak light. Or the neighboring pixels are picking up a reflection. It could also be image processing. Are you sure it's not the Faroujda processing that creates the problem? It could be some kind of edge enhancement as well. I'm fairly certian this is what edge enhacement or using sharpen in the monitor controls would look like up close.
That doesn't seem to be a good comparison image. Your font rendering settings are different; the 2404FPW shot has subpixel rendering on, and the 2007FP shot's settings are unspecified. Have you tried disabling ClearType and font smoothing on both monitors?
That said, I do see the "shadow" above the text. The shadow appears to have the same color as the text, which would seem to indicate an electrical problem or a natural result of the video processing. (AFAIK edge enhancement just artificially lightens the pixels being drawn to the right side of the text; I had this on both my 22" CRT and 17" LCD.)
Heartbreaker
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I have neither monitor right now. Neither monitor had cleartype on. Cleartype doesn't look this clean at this size. I starts to break out into sub pixel colors. Not happening here.
I am talking about that "shadow" it is clearly an issue with the electronics. I Actually think it is a high speed jitter. When I took photos of both screens the 2405 was rocks solid black text on white, while it was almost impossible to the get the white background on the 2007, instead it produced rainbows. They should not be there with a stable background if you know how LCD works there is no off cycle displaying a steady image.
Another sample that is not mine:
http://simon.fearby.com/temp/ocau/reviews/2407_Test.jpg
Note the rainbow on the 2407. I say the blur is caused by a pixel jitter as that would explain both the blur and the rainbows. I am looking for response that this issue gone before I would consider purchase again (I returned mine for refund).
I am talking about that "shadow" it is clearly an issue with the electronics. I Actually think it is a high speed jitter. When I took photos of both screens the 2405 was rocks solid black text on white, while it was almost impossible to the get the white background on the 2007, instead it produced rainbows. They should not be there with a stable background if you know how LCD works there is no off cycle displaying a steady image.
Another sample that is not mine:
http://simon.fearby.com/temp/ocau/reviews/2407_Test.jpg
Note the rainbow on the 2407. I say the blur is caused by a pixel jitter as that would explain both the blur and the rainbows. I am looking for response that this issue gone before I would consider purchase again (I returned mine for refund).
My mistake! I'm not used to looking at LCDs magnified that much.
The rainbow effect looks like moire on a CRT. It definitely shouldn't be there.
EDIT: From that second pic you posted, guidryp, I just noticed that the 2007FPW doesn't have the problem when connected via VGA. It must be something in the DVI hardware, though I'd have thought that a direct digital path would have the least possibility of problems. Maybe that's how Dell QA missed the problem?
The rainbow effect looks like moire on a CRT. It definitely shouldn't be there.
EDIT: From that second pic you posted, guidryp, I just noticed that the 2007FPW doesn't have the problem when connected via VGA. It must be something in the DVI hardware, though I'd have thought that a direct digital path would have the least possibility of problems. Maybe that's how Dell QA missed the problem?
Heartbreaker
Diamond Member
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As mentioned previously. Hard to photograph and you need sharp eyes to spot. I think it is not as bad on the 2007 as the 2407 but it is there and I can see it on the 2007 vga shot. Look inside the letters like O and D in the word dodgy. Notice on the inside letter at bottom it is like the bottom row is filled in with a shade of grey(the shadow). Compare to the 2405 (not there) and 2407 (also has it).
Actually, I was referring to the rainbow effect, which is conspicuously missing from the picture of the 2007FPW connected via VGA. This would seem to indicate that the rainbow effect and text blur are symptoms of different problems, interestingly enough.
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