How to determine if a LCD displays 32bit color?

[FreshPrince]

Need to know for my research.

thx!

 

[Budmantom]

Right click, properties, settings

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Budmantom
Right click, properties, settings

Umm, no. That'll tell you if your video card displays 32-bit color, not your monitor. LCDs downsample 8-bit to 6-bit internally.

There really isn't any way to detect it that I know of, although I suppose that theoretically there could be some sort of a test pattern image that could bring it out.

If you don't notice any dithering, you pretty much have to contact the manufacturer to see if it's a 6-bit per channel or 8-bit per channel display.

 

[FreshPrince]

Originally posted by: Tostada

Originally posted by: Budmantom
Right click, properties, settings

Umm, no. That'll tell you if your video card displays 32-bit color, not your monitor. LCDs downsample 8-bit to 6-bit internally.

There really isn't any way to detect it that I know of, although I suppose that theoretically there could be some sort of a test pattern image that could bring it out.

If you don't notice any dithering, you pretty much have to contact the manufacturer to see if it's a 6-bit per channel or 8-bit per channel display.

what's the difference between a 6bit and 8bit display?

does 6bit = 24bit and 8bit=32bit? ignore the math...

 

[GoSharks]

6 bitx3colors = 18bit total
8x3=24bit total. the extra 8 bits are for the alpha channel.

 

[Tostada]

15-bit hi-color = 5-bit channels = 32 shades of red/green/blue = 32,768 colors

16-bit hi-color = 5/6/5-bit channels = 32 shades of red/blue + 64 shades of green = 65,536 colors

18-bit color = 6-bit channels = 2^6 = 64 shades of red/green/blue = 262,144 colors

24/32-bit true color = 8-bit channels = 2^8 = 256 shades of red/green/blue (+alpha) = 16,777,216 colors


Shuttle XP17 Preview: A better looking 16ms LCD

As kind of a dirty hack, LCD panel manufacturers have been opting 6-bit LCD panels over 8-bit LCD panels for high response time applications. 6-bit LCDs are capable of quicker response times due to the smaller amount of circuitry. The 6-bit panels are subjected to some particular method of dithering basically to make the image "appear" like 16.2M colors. Don't be fooled; the color saturation between an 8-bit LCD and a 6-bit one are still night and day for some people. Particularly when the brightness is turned up too low or too high, signals near the extreme lights and darks tend to wash out quickly; an issue that we have talked about before.

6-bit LCDs really aren't as bad as some people think, though, since the conversion from 24-bit color to 18-bit color is the last step. A lot of people don't even think 16-bit color looks bad. Keep in mind that running your display in 16-bit color degrades it quite a bit, because internally your video card does everything in 16-bit, so color problems get compounded and you'll see a lot of banding in gradients. OTOH, if you're running your video card in 32-bit color and then outputting to an 18-bit (6-bits per channel) LCD, it's not nearly as significant. Some displays do a better job than others, though, and you should definitely get a peek at a screen in person and not just order it blindly if possible (well, duh!).