How do I tell if this LCD is 6bit or 8bit?
- Thread starter yacoub
- Start date
It says:
? Color Systems
16.2 million
This almost certainly means 6-bit dithered to 16.2 million colors.
? Color Systems
16.2 million
This almost certainly means 6-bit dithered to 16.2 million colors.
YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Moderator<br>A/V & Home Theater<br>Elite member
- Aug 6, 2001
- 31,204
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You're right. 8-bit and 6-bit color, when used in reference to LCDs, applies to each of the three subpixels and describes the limitation of each of that panel's cells.
YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Moderator<br>A/V & Home Theater<br>Elite member
- Aug 6, 2001
- 31,204
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The closest that I think you can come to this at the moment would be the latest version of the Viewsonic VP191B. See this forum thread for more information on this monitor. In particular, follow the link in there to the review of this monitor at Tom's Hardware.
I'm pretty sure that this monitor uses a MVA 8-bit panel. It's response times are closer to 16 ms than 8ms, but this is across the board and not just for black to white transitions, which is what your typical fast 8ms TN panel (6-bit) is bragging about.
Space
Actually the VP 191B is probably the best response time monitor on the market.
It claims a 8 MS reponse time for gray to gray but thats never been the true story of response time.
When tested the VP191B (At least the newest model) never went above 16 MS during any test. Thats extremely impressive as most all 8ms monitors may be 8ms on the low end but they dip alot higher sometimes (This was tested against the pride and joy of the TN panels the L90D+ and the VP191B was faster overall). So consider response time just like max fps in a game. They may attain that level of performance but none of them stay at that level all of the time.
And yes the VP 191 B is a true 16.7 Million color MVA panel. Right now I would guess it is the best standard (Non wide screen) 19" LCD panel that can be had. Although I have heard Viewsonics customer service can be a pain.
It claims a 8 MS reponse time for gray to gray but thats never been the true story of response time.
When tested the VP191B (At least the newest model) never went above 16 MS during any test. Thats extremely impressive as most all 8ms monitors may be 8ms on the low end but they dip alot higher sometimes (This was tested against the pride and joy of the TN panels the L90D+ and the VP191B was faster overall). So consider response time just like max fps in a game. They may attain that level of performance but none of them stay at that level all of the time.
And yes the VP 191 B is a true 16.7 Million color MVA panel. Right now I would guess it is the best standard (Non wide screen) 19" LCD panel that can be had. Although I have heard Viewsonics customer service can be a pain.
That's a great analogy. It would be nice if the response times were defined as the average value across the entire range of grey.
is the hyundai LD90+ a 6 or 8-bit monitor? it is a PVA Samsung panel with 16.7 million colors so i'm wonderin if it might be an 8-bit panel.
the reviews i've read says its a 6-bit but i keep on hearing that 16.7 million indicates its an 8-bit.
the reviews i've read says its a 6-bit but i keep on hearing that 16.7 million indicates its an 8-bit.
That's cuz they like to trick you. Marketers have lots of ways for that.
As already mentioned, for LCDs, the number of bits is per subpixel (color), rather than per pixel. Thus 8-bit is LCD is the same as a 24-bit CRT. Also the same as a 32-bit CRT, since the last 8 bits for most video cards is just a set of 8 dummy bits (made so that the data transfer lines up; 4 bytes of data is much more convenient to work with code-wise than 3 bytes). Let me know if there are any CRTs that can actually display 4+ billion colors, as that number of bits implies.
Anyway, 8 bits is 256 shades (0 to 255) per color (subpixel), or 16777216 total colors per pixel (3 subpixels per pixel, so it's 256^3). You'll see this get reported alternately as 16.7M or 16.8M colors. 6 bits is 64 shades (0 to 252, in the progression 0, 4, 8, 12, etc.) per color, or 262144 (262k) total colors per pixel. 6-bit is faster, so smaller response time, but the image quality suffers because you only have 64 shades to work with instead of 256. So they get around it another way by using different controller circuitry. The two main ones that I know of are dithering and frame rate control. Dithering means that if you want to display 193, the two closest that the monitor can display is 192 and 196, so every square of 4 pixels, it'll display three 192's and one 196. The eye averages them out to be 193. Incidentally this is the method that my Amptron Eureka laptop uses, but I ain't complaining because it was one of their old discontinued ones that was just sitting in storage that they let me have (I hope it doesn't break down).
The other more advanced method is to use frame rate control. It's basically dithering across time rather than across space. If you want to display 193, a pixel outputs three frames of 192 and one frame of 196. By alternating which pixel during any given frame is flashing the 196, the eye again averages things out, but this time you don't notice that there's dithering used.
Getting back to the number of colors, being able to display 0 to 252 means 253 colors, and 253^3 = 16194277 = 16.2M colors. So 16.2M colors means 6-bit with dithering used, but people think that 16.2M is about 16.7M is 8-bit and thus fall for marketing campaigns that say 16.2M or "over 16 million" or whatever. Some marketers have also taken to saying 8-bit meaning 6 bit + 2 bits dithered, although it's not full 8 bit the way we think of it. It's also possible to come up with a dithering scheme that covers the full range of colors and thus justifying say 16.7M colors. Manufacturers will sometimes also update the panel with another one but forgetting (purposely or not) to update the specs on their website. And finally, there's always outright lying -- like response time, brightness, contrast ratio, or viewing angle, most consumers don't know the difference anyway.
So what are we to do? Well, the best thing to do is to test it out ourselves. After all, manufacturers are hardly willing to do that for us, at least in a way that doesn't cover up the product's deficiencies. The most elementary test is to see if you can see the missing colors (253, 254, and 255, or possibly 0, 1, 2); if you can't, then that indicates either it's a 6-bit monitor or you're not looking closely enough (these missing colors are hard to see), and if you can, it indicates either an 8-bit panel or a really advanced dithering scheme that the test can't detect. I've put up a couple of those tests on Amptron's website ( http://www.amptron.com/chuck/bittest.bmp and http://www.amptron.com/chuck/6bit8bit.bmp , look to see if you can see the boundaries, I put down the brightness for each box). There's also tests out there that rely on the fact that dithering produces artifacts, so they're based on varying a shade, for example, an image that's 255 in one corner and gradually becomes 0 in the opposite corner; the gradient is smooth in 8-bit but may produce diagonal lines in 6-bit. However this works for some and not for others; I don't see the lines on my laptop for example (though you can tell that dithering is used if you look closely enough). I'll try to put one up of those sometime, except I don't have Photoshop so I have to do it the "old-fashioned" way in M$ Paint.
Samsung makes 6-bit TN panels, as well as 8-bit PVA panels. The LD90+, and a couple of similar Samsung models, are using one of Samsung's TN panels.
Space
I know that Anandtech has made that point about the Hyundai, but I'm not sure how much more one needs to be concerned about this with their monitors than with anyone else's.
For example, it's been noted on these forums that some Dell 1905FP may be coming with a AU Optronics MVA panel instead of the Samsung PVA panel that was used when Anandtech reviewed the Dell. And, Viewsonic frequently keeps the same model number for their LCDs as they go through upgrades. I think the VP191B is on its third revision, now.
So, while the point made in the Anandtech article is worth keeping in mind, I don't know how much it applies to Hyundai to any greater degree than it does to many other LCD manufacturers.
Space
For example, it's been noted on these forums that some Dell 1905FP may be coming with a AU Optronics MVA panel instead of the Samsung PVA panel that was used when Anandtech reviewed the Dell. And, Viewsonic frequently keeps the same model number for their LCDs as they go through upgrades. I think the VP191B is on its third revision, now.
So, while the point made in the Anandtech article is worth keeping in mind, I don't know how much it applies to Hyundai to any greater degree than it does to many other LCD manufacturers.
Space
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