Samsung 226BW color banding/gradient during video playback

The111

Member
Nov 29, 2004
141
0
0
Not sure if my terminology is correct...

I bought a 226BW fully aware of the panel lotteries (and now being unable to tell which panel you have). I really wanted a 22" 16:10 monitor and it seemed to be the best option (lesser of the evils). It goes really well with my Samsung VP930B in dual screen since they are both about the same height in both inches and pixels, so the screens line up well.

The 226BW has exceeded my expectations for gaming, and for general usage the colors actually seem pretty good. In some ways, I think photos and general application usage looks BETTER on my 226BW than on the VP930B which was a huge surprise to me.

BUT, when I view compressed video files on the 226BW I have two big problems.

1) The video looks dull and non-coloful compared to the VP930B (which is ironic since everything ELSE looks brighter and more colorful on the 226BW... why would video only look inferior?).

2) Also in compressed video, there are often "bands" or "gradients" visible, if I'm using the right terminology. It's most visible in flesh tones, for example if somebody is talking or moving their head, you will see bands visible in their skin colors that are the same shape as the exterior of the profile, for example several bands going down someone's jaw that are all shaped to the countour of the jawbone. Does this make any sense?

Somebody suggested to me that the banding/gradient issue could possibly be fixed by calibrating the monitor... which I've already done with nVidia nView as much as I know how. Is it possible I have some other setting (overdrive? gamma?) too high? I don't know much about this stuff. Also, I had the 226BW for several weeks before I noticed this banding, and it coincidentally happened right after I upgraded video card from X1900XTX to 9800GT. That's when I started seeing the banding. So then I went BACK to the X1900XTX just for a test and could still see the banding, even though I THINK it wasn't there before. So either I'm crazy, or the new video card somehow calibrated the monitor permanently to bad settings somehow? Is that possible?

Thanks!!
 

MustISO

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,927
12
81
I think the term for what you're seeing is false contouring. It's actually not uncommon on LCD panels.
 

gpse

Senior member
Oct 7, 2007
477
5
81
I have a Samsung 2232GW which is pretty close to your 226BW, in the OSD make sure:
Magic Colour: OFF
Gamma Mode: 1
Colour Tone: Normal
Other than that, I have my brightness set to 50%, and contrast default at 75%. If your using Vista DON'T USE THE SAMSUNG COLOUR PROFILE, instead use the Default "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" profile in Colour Management. With the Samsung "Natural Colour Pro" colours in pics and video only looked terible, and it was because of the Samsung driver. I noticed desktop\games, etc. looked fine but flesh tones looked way off in video and pic's, once I used the default\generic driver these problems went away.