Calibrating Dell 2209WA

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shizdan

[H]ard|Gawd
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I read through most of the very large Dell 2209WA thread but am still confused. I do no picture editing or graphic art. I just game, browse the interweb and listen to music.

I'd like to calibrate my LCD for the best picture available. What are the settings that most people are using with the 2209WA?
 
Brightness to 0, Contrast to 74, check the Sharpness setting using the lagom.nl Sharpness Test (should be either 40 or 50 sharpness), and you should be good enough.

Calibration is almost entirely meaningless for gaming - games tend to use their own color space at their own whim, and it's not like you're going to print out your screenshots.
 
Graphics mode, standard, brightness 0, contrast 74, sharpness 40

looks great
 
Whoa.. why would one need to change sharpness? If the monitor is connected with DVI, then you would want each pixel to be exactly what is sent from the graphics card, and wouldn't altering sharpness (even by 1) change that?
 
Xcelerate said:
Whoa.. why would one need to change sharpness? If the monitor is connected with DVI, then you would want each pixel to be exactly what is sent from the graphics card, and wouldn't altering sharpness (even by 1) change that?
Click to expand...

I agree.

If you're using DVI you shouldn't mess with sharpness. The goal should be to display each pixel the same as it left the PC. Screwing with sharpness only begins a process where the display's engine starts changing the picture - artificially boosting localized contrast to make things appear sharper.
 
Surly73 said:
I agree.

If you're using DVI you shouldn't mess with sharpness. The goal should be to display each pixel the same as it left the PC. Screwing with sharpness only begins a process where the display's engine starts changing the picture - artificially boosting localized contrast to make things appear sharper.
Click to expand...

Monitors don't necessarily ship with correct sharpness settings. The Dell 2209WA's sharpness control adjusts in increments of 10; you get to choose values between 0 and 100 (0, 10, 20, 30, etc). Many people running the lagom.nl sharpness test on a 2209WA find that the best setting is 40 rather than the factory setting of 50.

On my NEC 20WMGX2 monitors, the sharpness can be adjusted between 0 and 100% by some odd increments that I haven't figured out (0.0%, 2.0%, 4.1%, 6.2%, 8.3%, etc), and the best value for the lagom.nl test is 8.3%. That definitely wasn't the factory default setting, and it's very obvious visually that 8.3% is much better than 0 or 50%.

Are you two saying that the lagom.nl sharpness test is somehow not valid?
 
I am saying that if the display is doing anything other than displaying each pixel exactly as the GPU put it on the wire, it is modifying what is displayed. The sharpness control creates the ILLUSION of sharpness (the same way UnSharp Mask does in photo editing software) by modifying the colours on each side of a light/dark transition and emphasizing them.

In the land of pure digital displays (ie. DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort) the "contrast" control should also be unnecessary. "Brightness" sets the backlight intensity without involving pixel blocking. Digital "Black" should be full blocking, "white" should be no blocking, and the gamma should be 2.2 - period. I understand though that most displays mess this up somehow, showing problems with gamma tracking and black or white crush. CRTs, where the terms originated, are completely different. "Brightness" adjusted the black point and "Contrast" adjusted the white point. Frankly there was a lot more going on in the CRT days which needed careful adjustment.

I wouldn't go spending the time and cash searching out IPS displays because I'm a purist, then turning on effects which alter the data being sent by the PC, regardless of what a subjective test like lagom.nl shows. Over-sharpening is a newbie mistake made on photographs, setting up HDTVs and many other places because most people think this illusion looks better. Part of properly commissioning an HDTV usually involves lowering the factory preset amount of sharpening. While the sharpening gives the illusion of greater sharpness it actually masks detail present in the picture. Once a viewer gets used to cranking down the sharpness a little bit they usually begin to see details they never saw before. I don't need halo effects around all of the text on my screen, thanks. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the number of people saying they find text hard to read on their new LCD - they've been messing around with sharpness. I don't use Cleartype, and just how much "sharper" do you think the text can get than the pixels of the letter are black, and the immediate neighbouring pixels are white? The adjustment is pointless, in my view, directly addressing every on-screen pixel is as sharp as it gets.

Along similar lines, this is the same idea as finding HDTV displays with a 1:1 pixel mode so that when you're using sources such as gaming consoles and computers the television isn't scaling to provide overscan and you're getting the best picture without modifications by the display (just to provide overscan in this case). One pixel output from the computing device equals one pixel on the display. Without looking for this mode specifically, your 1080p computer output will never look as good as it is supposed to.

What I don't understand is why at least higher end displays don't have a clearly "disabled", "pass through" or other such setting on controls like sharpness and contrast where adjustment shouldn't be necessary when connecting to computer-style display devices. My 2490 manual indicates that "40%" sharpness is the neutral setting where no sharpening effect is performed. I adjusted it just for fun and anything other than 40% just looks strange.
 
Surly73 said:
What I don't understand is why at least higher end displays don't have a clearly "disabled", "pass through" or other such setting on controls like sharpness and contrast where adjustment shouldn't be necessary when connecting to computer-style display devices. My 2490 manual indicates that "40%" sharpness is the neutral setting where no sharpening effect is performed. I adjusted it just for fun and anything other than 40% just looks strange.
Click to expand...

How, then, does the user determine what the neutral sharpness setting is when the monitor maker does not mention it in the manual? Do we assume the factory setting is correct? Is there some test besides the lagom.nl test that shows us if it's correct?

The sum total of what the Dell 2209WA manual says about the Sharpness control is: "This feature can make the image look sharper or softer. Use + or - to adjust the sharpness from '0' to '100'." In the manual for my NEC 20WMGX2, the only thing said about the Sharpness control is: "Adjust the image to get distinct or as soft a picture as is preferred." No mention is made anywhere in either manual about neutral sharpness settings.

I did find in the prad.de review of the 2209WA that the reviewer said "In the factory settings, the value is set to 50 and should not be changed for digital image display and in the native resolution because it achieves the best result." But they don't say how the best result is judged, and only show pictures of 0, 50 and 100, so I'm not sure they actually compared 40 to 50.

I also found this post about 20WMGX2 sharpness settings, in which someone else found that the lagom.nl tests indicated that 8.3% rather than the factory default of 26% was the correct sharpness settings; the response to this was "It might be that the factory default enhances the sharpness, since it makes the display 'look good', and that helps sell more displays."

The lagom.nl test itself says this:

lagom.nl said:
LCD monitors often have a "sharpness" control, which can emphasize or deemphasize boundaries between light and dark areas. Ideally, it does neither, unless you like a bit of fuzziness or like small letters to have more contrast. If the sharpness setting is correct (i.e., neutral), all blocks in the image below will blend in when you look at the screen from a distance or while squinting your eyes. If the gamma of your display is correct as well, then the central disc will blend in, but we will have a better look at this in the next test. If the sharpness setting is far off, you may be able to see fringes around the white and black bars in the center.
Click to expand...

When you run the lagom.nl test on your 2490, what does it indicate the neutral setting to be? I'm not debating that the sharpness setting should be set to the neutral setting - I'm debating that default sharpness settings are always correctly neutral, which, considering the monitor market's propensity to tweak settings to make them look better in the showroom, seems highly unlikely. In other words, I don't trust the monitor makers to set the sharpness correctly, want a way to determine the correct setting, and the only test I've found is the lagom.nl test. If you've got a better way to test sharpness, I'm all ears.
 
evilsofa said:
How, then, does the user determine what the neutral sharpness setting is when the monitor maker does not mention it in the manual? Do we assume the factory setting is correct? Is there some test besides the lagom.nl test that shows us if it's correct?
Click to expand...

An excellent question. Had I not seen your link on the 20WMGX2 8.3% issue, I may have been inclined to say that factory default is "correct". I still think that in "most" cases it will be and the more up-market the monitor the more likely this is true.

Sadly I don't know of a better way to check it since my first LCD is a 2490. USM sharpening effects can be quite effective, at first, without visible halos so it can be tough to dial it in.

You've included some excellent reference to this thread - thank you.

When you run the lagom.nl test on your 2490, what does it indicate the neutral setting to be? I'm not debating that the sharpness setting should be set to the neutral setting - I'm debating that default sharpness settings are always correctly neutral, which, considering the monitor market's propensity to tweak settings to make them look better in the showroom, seems highly unlikely. In other words, I don't trust the monitor makers to set the sharpness correctly, want a way to determine the correct setting, and the only test I've found is the lagom.nl test. If you've got a better way to test sharpness, I'm all ears.
Click to expand...

I'm on the road right now and lacking my 2490. I'll be happy to take a look at it and post here when I get back home. The laptop TN I'm on seems to have the sharpness right (of course the gamma sucks)...
 
You're filling this thread with too many words telling us what we already know. The point is some monitors don't default to a neutral sharpness setting, which is why people are recommending specific sharpness settings.

The Lagom sharpness test is accurate as far as I can tell. Even before that test existed, I was telling people the optimal sharpness for the 20WMGX2 is 8.3% instead of the default 16.6%, and the optimal sharpness for the Planar PX2611W and DoubleSight DS-263N is 40% instead of 50%. That was based on what I saw with my own eyes, and the Lagom sharpness test verifies those are the correct settings.

For the Dell 2209WA, it should be 40% instead of the default 50%.
For the Samsung 226BW, it should be 16% instead of the default 20%.

The NEC LCD2490WUXi defaults to the proper sharpness, 26.2%. Unless they changed something, 40% is sharpened.
 
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ToastyX said:
You're filling this thread with too many words telling us what we already know.
Click to expand...

Sorry, it didn't look like everyone knew everything when I read this thread.

The NEC LCD2490WUXi defaults to the proper sharpness, 26.8%. Unless they changed something, 40% is sharpened.
Click to expand...

You may well be right as I'm away from my 2490. My memory probably failed me.
 
The 2490 has default sharpness of 26.2%, which also appears to be unsharpened according to lagom.nl
 
Try hooking up split dvi/hdmi and tell me you wouldn't need to adjust the sharpness after about the 6th tv/monitor.......... Of course in theory the gpu does drive each pixel but we live in an analog world. a digital signal is only a dsitinct analog wave with a logical representation of the data. Voltage drop does occur even in parrelal slightly not just in a serial connection.(if you split the source up to many times). If you take one part of a parrlal circut thats 20 miles of wire you will have enough resistance as a 1 foot wire as if a certain resistor is attached with a certain voltage drop. The cables are meant to drive one monitor and if you split them the Wattage of the output is at a stable steady voltage which will allow voltage/current drop as it is. If you have a dvi cable that was bent are crimped are one that just has to high of a resistance for some reason.then it will have an exact lower voltage signal then another cable. only you will notice the diffrence if you are there.as at certain times you will have artifacts. are it could just be that the card itself may have a screwed up output. .I have 2 diffrent dvi cables and one of them is slightly blurrier then the other when hooked to the same monitor. I adjust my sharpness slightly with them as well. No not clock and phase with a d-sub. now we would both agree that the cable could be at fault but my point is that just becasue it's digital doesn't mean its not going to have an error. Also ive had numerous cards in the past that i would take the digital connection out on
and it would be dirty compared to the analog out on the same card....

Please don't tell me that just becasue its digital you have a signal or you don't becasue that is utter bullcrap. Hook it to an ocilliscope and tell me there isn't a voltage drop.
or
for that matter for the people who have digital tv,dish network,direct tv. What does it do when there is a connection but it raining outside..... (artifacts)
who's to say that it couldn't be blurry.

which brings you back to the conclusion....... if it was purly driving each pixel logicaly (WHY PUT THE ADJUSTMENT IN THE MONITOR IN THE FIRST PLACE AND STILL HAVE IT AVAIABLE FOR A DIGITAL CONNECTION.)
sorry for screaming and no disrespect but its there for people who have analog retina's not digital ones and to them a softer are sharper image then you would look at may be perfect.


:) sorry had to do it
 
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Sure, there's voltage drop, but the receiver at the other end turns it into a zero or a one. That's the essence of being digital. "Digital" signals transferred inside of our multi-gigahertz CPUs and read from our multi-terabyte PRML hard disk platters aren't full voltage, clean square waves. They are "probably 0" and "probably 1", which is translated by the receiver as 0 and 1. If a bit is mis-read it is still a 0 or a 1 (and an error), it doesn't become 0.5 or "blurry".

Artifacting, flickering, corruption? Sure. Blurry? Not likely. A nice gaussian blur is an analog phenomenon, and is unlikely to be seen when digital transmission is pushed to its limits.
 
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Surly73 said:
Sure, there's voltage drop, but the receiver at the other end turns it into a zero or a one. That's the essence of being digital. "Digital" signals transferred inside of our multi-gigahertz CPUs and read from our multi-terabyte PRML hard disk platters aren't full voltage, clean square waves. They are "probably 0" and "probably 1", which is translated by the receiver as 0 and 1. If a bit is mis-read it is still a 0 or a 1 (and an error), it doesn't become 0.5 or "blurry".

Artifacting, flickering, corruption? Sure. Blurry? Not likely. A nice gaussian blur is an analog phenomenon, and is unlikely to be seen when digital transmission is pushed to its limits.
Click to expand...

voltage drop from for a 0 and a 1 are analogus. :rolleyes:but errors are when the voltage itself isn't high enough are to high corrupting the digital data. This can manifest itself in many diffrent ways. As i stated there are many reasons that a dvi can become blurry. ive had 2 distinct vidoe cards that wouldnt each give a clean signal on several dvi cables but fine with d-sub. now i understand this is not the monitors fault and that being digital is suppost to fix all analogus errors. Monitors themselves keep this feature available for dvi to correct this. Mostly ghosting per pixel becasue it is digital. but this doesn't neglect the fact it could be the card are the cable. we live in an analogus world. these measures themselves are here to correct even digital problems. Besides that. even if it were clear as i said the retinas of our eyes are analog so it may be clear to you and blurry to him. But since he owns the monitor. he adjust it to be clear to him and guess what its blurry to you. Why! becasue the light transmission from the monitor to your eyes is not digital!.


Now i understand that the equipment could be at fault as digital is supposed to be clearer and in my opinion it is. But every peice of individual factory hardware is diffrent. which is why calibration for one monitor is not going to calibrate another exact model. we live in an analogus world. sometimes the equipment itself is fine and the picture is perfect. ( don't tell me manufactuers spent thousands of dollars for a feature for nothing)but instead of telling someone that they shouldn't adjust something that is there for a reason becasue it artificaly boost something is wrong you haven't seen first hand what his setup up is.

read up

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dvi+blurry
 
Corrupted digital data does not end up with blurred text or ghosting.

Either you tried a non-native res, or the monitor went berserk because you tried feeding it more than 60 Hz, or you stumbled upon the Nvidia DVI bug (where the digital output was somehow affected by VGA timings)... Or it was just something that wouldn't pass on a double-blind test.
 
Sathsayin said:
voltage drop from for a 0 and a 1 are analogus. :rolleyes:ibut errors are when the voltage itself isn't high enough are to high corrupting the digital data. Ths can manifest itself in many diffrent ways.


read up

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dvi+blurry
Click to expand...


I actually do have a degree in this field. While that hardly means I know everything, I have done lots of reading, testing, design and prototyping in my day.

Just for kicks I did google "dvi blurry". Every random link I clicked into someone was running non-native resolution, scaling the image, scaling between aspect ratios, or confusing untuned ClearType with being blurry.

Not one confirmed story of blurry output from digital transmission.

Now, if I turned the sharpness down below neutral, the image processor in my LCD would make it blurry for me. If you're jacking around with the sharpness control you should be aware that less-than-neutral sharpening is blur, and it has nothing to do with the digital signal path from GPU to display.
 
Blurry DVI? What are you talking about Sathsayin? Unless there's some hardware screwing something up, each pixel is going to be what is digitally sent to it plus or minus a kazillionth of what your eye can see..
 
Sathsayin said:
I have 2 diffrent dvi cables and one of them is slightly blurrier then the other when hooked to the same monitor
Click to expand...

Are you using DVI-A or DVI-I cables plugged through VGA adapters to a VGA monitor? If so, then that could be possible, because your setup would be analog, not digital. If not, and you have a fully digital connection, then you are delusional and rational discussion would be wasted on you.
 
Sorry to dig this up, but I can't get the sharpness like the way it says on that site. I get boxes no matter where I set it. This monitor is killing my eyes, something isn't right.
 
im having sharpness issues as well..nothing seems right - ill try that sharpness test when i get home.

really straining my eyes
 
anyone using cleartype with this?
i set sharpening to 40 and it became slightly better

enabled cleartype and the majority of things seem easier to read/less strain on my eyes.

still experimenting / haven't fully decided if i like cleartype yet
 
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