A fresh look at an old favorite: my new NEC LCD2490WUXI SV

Snowdog said:
Other differences. I notice in your preferences, you are using auto luminance. That may be doing some automatic backlight control. I have this off. You are using a targeted contrast as well. I am using monitor default.
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The auto luminance results from targeting a numerical value instead of setting it with the slider, IIRC. Are you saying that you have targets like "140" and don't show auto-luminance?

I originally used "monitor default" contrast, I set it to 500 to see if that helped anything when I was getting low 200s at first. It's clearly not even making 500 so I wouldn't think that was lowering it but I'll set it back to default for my next run.

Colorcomp. I started with it off, because I wanted max contrast. I was going to use it off and see if I noticed anything that needed compensation. I didn't so I kept it off.

I have the exact same vintage of monitor as you D2, 2008/06.
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Well, so much for any of those theories. I have toggled colorcomp just to see what it was doing, and I feel it is removing some blotchiness. I will play with it when I have a chance (maybe later tonight).

Your curves are significantly different than mine. It looks like your uncalibrated setting was already matching the calibrated line almost perfectly requiring almost no correction. Mine diverges as the you go up the range. Requiring the correction line to drop below the 1:1 slope to compensate.

But yours is oddly perfect except at the black end of the scale where mine does nothing, your correction line is clearly indicating a pull up on the blacks?? Wierd. It is almost as if you specified you wanted a .35 black and it is pulling the LUTs up to comply.

curvesgh1.png
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"Oddly perfect". Go figure. As far as I know I have completely disabled the video card LUT modifications which were being applied for my CRT (not that I'd expect it's needs to match uncal'ed 2490 needs). All of the profiles in Vista colour control show NEC settings from SVII. I have to admit I'm a Vista WCS N00b. I think everything is right in there and I know that SVII goes and sets any system color control up properly after finishing a calibration.

On pulling up the black, that's exactly what I think is going on but I have no idea why. I also don't know what's going on with "oddly perfect" but I'm curious. When I run a cal I see it retargeting the whitepoint color balance so I know it isn't actually perfect...

I guess at this point I should just do another round of factory resets followed by a recal with some changes to the options? Do you know a way to change the default expansion to "ASPECT" for all modes? Sometimes I let the panel do some scaling for certain applications and it defaults to FULL which bothers me.

Thanks again,
 
Surly73 said:
The auto luminance results from targeting a numerical value instead of setting it with the slider, IIRC. Are you saying that you have targets like "140" and don't show auto-luminance?
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No I don't use targeted setttings as mentioned. I thought the auto-luminance was using a sensor on the monitor to dynamically adjust the backlight.

But It does appear to be your correction curve that is strangely pulling up your black.

I have no clue why it is doing that. I have no more ideas. Since your corections are apparently doing very little, maybe run uncalibrated?

Good luck.

BTW: After the monitor has been on for hours. White 142, Black 0.20
 
I turned off colorcomp, blew away all of the SVII settings (but didn't factory reset the panel), checked some more SVII settings (gamma, prioritize contrast, monitor default contrast level etc...).

I set it for manual brightness and used the panel controls instead of the slider as well - this worked fine. For the first run I set brightness 0%, no low light mode, colorcomp off. Now I ended up with 0.13 black and 109 white, or something like that, and high-700s contrast.

I ran it again at brightness of ~18% and ended up with 0.17 and 130 or so, and a contrast over 800.

I'll have to do more playing to see if it was colorcomp, something else, or simply luck.... (?)

Also interesting to note, my initial curve doesn't look as suspiciously perfect either.... I did 10 calibrations with various settings over a number of days to see the (strange) results I had previously. Now in one shot it acts totally different.
 
When doing your final calibration that you plan to work with, warm up the panel for at least an hour. Heat seems to affect panel output. Mine was brighter in the summer. Yesterday I ran it for 6 hours before black cracked .2, but it did finally (at 0%).

This morning my panel has been on for 20 minutes. My measurement was 106.3 and 0.1427. 30 minute warmup like recommended is not nearly enough.

Now that you have your contrast back, what is your subjective opinion of the contrast and black?
 
Well, I have a little followup to this....

After shutting down last night and rebooting this morning the monitor was very dim and SVII thought (at launch time) that settings had changed and prompted me about reloading the last calibration. The OSD said brightness was at 100% (clearly not) and low bright was locked. I told it to reload the previous calibration and it came around to look about right for the last cal (at ~18%) but brightness still said 100% in the OSD.

I think that it did not like me setting the target whitepoint brightness using the OSD instead of the SVII slider provided. I left the SVII brightness slider at 100% and set 0% (or 18%) brightness in the OSD, no low light etc...

The picture looks OK but clearly things are a little screwy because reloading these two configs doesn't result in proper monitor settings and/or the OSD isn't matching what the display is actually doing.

As writing this I just pulled it out of programmed gamma and color and set it for 2.2, sRGB, and 18%. When I went to OSD panel it had unlocked lowbright and it was set to "on" again (lowbright on and 100% brightness). I set it for 18% w/ lowbright off and it's dimmer than the SVII settings which should have been the same as this....

I guess I'll do a factory reset on the panel and a recal after it's been on for a couple of hours today. I don't know what keeps turning lowbright on when in PRG mode.
 
More weirdness. I left the PC long enough for the Vista monitor power save to kick on. On resume, LOW BRIGHT was ON again. Prior to the blanking, I was out of programmed mode altogether and it came back on differently. Auto brightness is also off, so it shouldn't have been a room sensor thing. Definitely doing a factory reset before re-cal.
 
like the 2690 nec is updating the 2490 which should be out first qtr 2009.



note to self... hope the grammer police don't bitch about my writing ;)
 
chevysales said:
like the 2690 nec is updating the 2490 which should be out first qtr 2009.



note to self... hope the grammer police don't bitch about my writing ;)
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Do you have any links? I'd be interested in what the new capabilities are...
 
Weird. Mine never goes into low brightness mode.

I bet any update to the 2490 will go wide gamut, in which case, I wouldn't consider it an upgrade.
 
Another update.

I noticed annoying colour variations in my white (a little rose-tinted on the right side of the screen) so I turned on colorcomp. This evened everything out to perfect white at level 3.

I re-ran another calibration. I still have excellent contrast, but now my "uncalibrated" curve is now very close to the calibrated target. Thus, colorcomp was responsible for so little correction being necessary in my earlier calibrations.

It had no significant detrimental effect on contrast. I can't remember if I set 20 or 25% brightness. This yielded around 120 cd/m2 and mid-700s contrast.

Personally, I'd suggest that folks leave colorcomp on to get the most out of their fancy panels.
 
Surly73 said:
The auto luminance results from targeting a numerical value instead of setting it with the slider, IIRC. Are you saying that you have targets like "140" and don't show auto-luminance?
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Some quick comments -

If you want to get the maximum contrast ratio possible:

1. Set the "Calibration Priority" to "Maximize Contrast Ratio" in the Preferences.

2. Turn off "Use Auto Luminance" in the Preferences.

3. Set the "Contrast Ratio" in the Target to Default.

4.
a) Set the "Intensity" in the Target to either "Maximum Possible"
or
b) Choose a value that is very near the minimum range of the brightness control (i.e. calibrate with "Maximum Possible", then adjust the brightness down to 0 via the OSD, and measure the value using the colorimeter tool. Do not try and use the "Low Bright Mode". Enter the measured value in as a new Target Intensity and recalibrate.)

Once you have calibrated the monitor you should not need to make any adjustments using the OSD controls. As soon as you do that the calibration is invalidated and the changes will be reset anyway the next time you recalibrate. The software will set all of the monitor settings to the correct values to begin with.
 
Monitor Guy said:
Some quick comments -

If you want to get the maximum contrast ratio possible:

1. Set the "Calibration Priority" to "Maximize Contrast Ratio" in the Preferences.

2. Turn off "Use Auto Luminance" in the Preferences.

3. Set the "Contrast Ratio" in the Target to Default.

4.
a) Set the "Intensity" in the Target to either "Maximum Possible"
or
b) Choose a value that is very near the minimum range of the brightness control (i.e. calibrate with "Maximum Possible", then adjust the brightness down to 0 via the OSD, and measure the value using the colorimeter tool. Do not try and use the "Low Bright Mode". Enter the measured value in as a new Target Intensity and recalibrate.)

Once you have calibrated the monitor you should not need to make any adjustments using the OSD controls. As soon as you do that the calibration is invalidated and the changes will be reset anyway the next time you recalibrate. The software will set all of the monitor settings to the correct values to begin with.
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From the OSD, I thought that "Auto Luminance" and a numerical brightness (in cd/m2) went hand-in-hand. But from the SVII side (in manual brightness mode) I'm not sure.

I current have auto-luminance and colorcomp enabled and I still have 754:1 contrast. What EXACTLY does auto-luminance do? They describe it as keeping luminance uniform but that isn't very informative. How is it done? What are the tradeoffs or side effects?
 
Will, that is essentially what I suggested, except I prefer to using manual intensity.

Also I have a Spectraview II suggestion(pet peeve).

SV2 turns up the backlight before it gets back to the backlight adjustment phase when manual backlight instead of target is chosen. This messes with the CCFL stability. It defeats the purpose of letting the panel stabilize before calibration. I consider this a bug. Is there somewhere bugs can be submitted.

On zero% brightness, my backlight white level will stabilize to be about 140 cd/m2.

But if you crank the brightness to full before turning it back down, it will bump up to as high as 160 cd/m2 do to extra CCFL heating (my assumption). When you turn it down, it will then fall during the rest of the calibration toward the 140 cd/m2 stability point, but it will never reach it. So calibration does not happen and the stability point and it is in fact changing quite rapidly throughout calibration.

A better way to work when someone wants to do a calibration with manual backlight control setting is to not touch the backlight setting at all until that step and if the user was thinking ahead, they already have that level set and stabilized, so backlight stability can be maintained throughout calibration.

Note this will also affect targeted white level calibrations, but it is a simple fix for manual, targeted almost certainly has to mess with backlight levels till it finds a match.
 
Snowdog said:
On zero% brightness, my backlight white level will stabilize to be about 140 cd/m2.
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At 0% brightness and low light disabled (as far as I know) I end up getting about 110 after calibration is done. It's usually a little higher before it runs the curves. At ~20% I get about 125 post-calibration with colorcomp = 3. Colorcomp would account for some of the brightness difference, but I don't know about 30-40 cd/m2 - possibly.

I still don't know why my panel seems to like to turn lowlight mode on. My last cal was 20% manual brightness with autoluminance and colorcomp on. That results in a cd/m2 stated in the OSD brightness setting and lowlight controls not shown (locked).

I think I'm getting the hang of all of the 2490's settings, I just wish it wouldn't get "smart" and change things on its own sometimes.
 
Surly73 said:
From the OSD, I thought that "Auto Luminance" and a numerical brightness (in cd/m2) went hand-in-hand. But from the SVII side (in manual brightness mode) I'm not sure.

I current have auto-luminance and colorcomp enabled and I still have 754:1 contrast. What EXACTLY does auto-luminance do? They describe it as keeping luminance uniform but that isn't very informative. How is it done? What are the tradeoffs or side effects?
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When you are adjusting the monitor by the OSD only, then the numerical brightness value gives an indication of the actual luminance as calculated by the monitor itself. This is based off of the current settings and the internal luminance sensor. If the value is continually flashing, it means the monitor can't actually achieve the value you have selected.

When you calibrate the monitor by software, that OSD luminance value is no longer totally accurate since measurements are being done based on the sensor you are using to measure the light output from the front of the monitor, rather than measuring the internal backlight luminance and calculating the output.

The "Auto Luminance" mode will try and keep the CCFL brightness stable by constantly measuring and compensating for any variations internally. Obviously there are limits to how much regulation can be done.

The current SV software v1.0.42 doesn't always give the optimal contrast ratio results if Auto Luminance is used, which is why I suggested to turn it off. The next version to be released will fix this. If you want to preview this new version, send a request via the SV feedback form (see the README for the URL).

The "Low Bright Mode" is decreasing the Intensity by using the internal 12 bit LUTs. So it should only be used if you are manually adjusting and want to dim the screen further than what you can using the Brightness (CCFL) control. So you will loose some contrast ratio if you use this setting. On the LCD3090 and LCD2690WUXi2 the Brightness and "Low Bright Mode" controls have been combined into one control that changes color to magenta when you are adjusting in a range that is using the LUTs to decrease the brightness.
 
Snowdog said:
Will, that is essentially what I suggested, except I prefer to using manual intensity.

Also I have a Spectraview II suggestion(pet peeve).

SV2 turns up the backlight before it gets back to the backlight adjustment phase when manual backlight instead of target is chosen. This messes with the CCFL stability. It defeats the purpose of letting the panel stabilize before calibration. I consider this a bug. Is there somewhere bugs can be submitted.

On zero% brightness, my backlight white level will stabilize to be about 140 cd/m2.

But if you crank the brightness to full before turning it back down, it will bump up to as high as 160 cd/m2 do to extra CCFL heating (my assumption). When you turn it down, it will then fall during the rest of the calibration toward the 140 cd/m2 stability point, but it will never reach it. So calibration does not happen and the stability point and it is in fact changing quite rapidly throughout calibration.

A better way to work when someone wants to do a calibration with manual backlight control setting is to not touch the backlight setting at all until that step and if the user was thinking ahead, they already have that level set and stabilized, so backlight stability can be maintained throughout calibration.

Note this will also affect targeted white level calibrations, but it is a simple fix for manual, targeted almost certainly has to mess with backlight levels till it finds a match.
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The manual Intensity feature was really only intended to be used once in order for you to determine visually what luminance value you want to use. The idea was that you would then create a Target with that desired luminance value and use it for the next calibration, rather than having to manually adjust a slider each time you calibrate. This feature is actually being removed from the next version of the software because it caused some confusion and another method for visual adjustment is being used.

Feedback on SV is welcomed and can be done by submitting a form on the NEC website. See the README file for the feedback form URL.

I understand your comments regarding the CCFL brightness reset. Yes you are correct that by temporarily setting it to 100% it does mean that it needs time to re-stabilize. There are pros and cons for doing it either way and I'll see what we can do for the future. Thanks for your feedback.
 
Surly73 said:
At 0% brightness and low light disabled (as far as I know) I end up getting about 110 after calibration is done. It's usually a little higher before it runs the curves. At ~20% I get about 125 post-calibration with colorcomp = 3. Colorcomp would account for some of the brightness difference, but I don't know about 30-40 cd/m2 - possibly.

I still don't know why my panel seems to like to turn lowlight mode on. My last cal was 20% manual brightness with autoluminance and colorcomp on. That results in a cd/m2 stated in the OSD brightness setting and lowlight controls not shown (locked).

I think I'm getting the hang of all of the 2490's settings, I just wish it wouldn't get "smart" and change things on its own sometimes.
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So are you saying that after you have calibrated the monitor by SV and NOT touched any of the OSD controls, the "Low Bright Mode" is ON? When you calibrate by SV it should be automatically turning that setting off. What version of SV are you using?

Again, if you are calibrating by SV, you should not be making any kind of manual adjustments via the OSD afterward since it basically defeats the purpose of calibrating.
 
Thanks for the info Will. I must say I really wouldn't like to lose Manual. I think targeted is even more problematic when considering backlight instability and the fact that it is turned to high during the calibration run.

A use case:
I determined my minimum from measuring a stable manual setting. My stable minimum backlight setting is 140cd/m2, so I use that as a target. Now I get the brightness boost during auto calibrate to a target, so my actual measured minimum at this point will be 150cd/m2. So calibration software will lower it to 140cd/m2 with panel blocking, sacrificing some contrast. Furthermore when in usage and it does stabilize, it will be lower than 140cd/m2. So in the end, you lose contrast and have an inaccurate setting.

I would much rather use manual. I want control to maximize contrast and minimize brightness, or in the future turn it up to my chosen range as the backlight ages and 0% is no longer bright enough. Numeric levels are just about meaningless. The visual is more important for home users.


Monitor Guy said:
The manual Intensity feature was really only intended to be used once in order for you to determine visually what luminance value you want to use. The idea was that you would then create a Target with that desired luminance value and use it for the next calibration, rather than having to manually adjust a slider each time you calibrate. This feature is actually being removed from the next version of the software because it caused some confusion and another method for visual adjustment is being used.

Feedback on SV is welcomed and can be done by submitting a form on the NEC website. See the README file for the feedback form URL.

I understand your comments regarding the CCFL brightness reset. Yes you are correct that by temporarily setting it to 100% it does mean that it needs time to re-stabilize. There are pros and cons for doing it either way and I'll see what we can do for the future. Thanks for your feedback.
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Surly73 said:
At 0% brightness and low light disabled (as far as I know) I end up getting about 110 after calibration is done. It's usually a little higher before it runs the curves. At ~20% I get about 125 post-calibration with colorcomp = 3. Colorcomp would account for some of the brightness difference, but I don't know about 30-40 cd/m2 - possibly.
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I did a recalibration with Colorcomp = 3. My white level dropped from 140cd/m2 to 120cd/m2. Black stayed at .20. So contrast dropped 100 points and it was visually noticeable. So color comp can grab quite a bit of brightness and panels will vary. Also important yours has almost 3000 hours, mine about 1200 hours. The more hours of usage, the dimmer the panel will get. I have seen a drop off in my brightness already at 1200 hours.

I also noticed the correction vs original curves are almost identical as in your previous example. So colorcomp is essentially a factory calibration in addition to panel area corrections.

Since I don't notice that much panel uniformity issues compared to the loss of contrast, I am going back to colorcomp off, to get that contrast back.
 
Monitor Guy: I think you're going to be a God-send to this thread :)

I don't have time right now to put together a bunch of my thoughts, questions and "issues" coherently so I'll have to check back in later. I'd love to get some info straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
 
Snowdog said:
I did a recalibration with Colorcomp = 3. My white level dropped from 140cd/m2 to 120cd/m2. Black stayed at .20. So contrast dropped 100 points and it was visually noticeable. So color comp can grab quite a bit of brightness and panels will vary. Also important yours has almost 3000 hours, mine about 1200 hours. The more hours of usage, the dimmer the panel will get. I have seen a drop off in my brightness already at 1200 hours.

I also noticed the correction vs original curves are almost identical as in your previous example. So colorcomp is essentially a factory calibration in addition to panel area corrections.

Since I don't notice that much panel uniformity issues compared to the loss of contrast, I am going back to colorcomp off, to get that contrast back.
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Yeah colorcomp should only be turned on if you notice uniformity issues or if you absolutely, positively NEED that kind of uniformity :).

I love all the tweaks you can do with this panel. It can be setup to perform exactly the way anyone needs.
 
Hey Snowdog did you ever get a chance to compare this with the HP LP2475W? Thanks.
 
montana said:
Hey Snowdog did you ever get a chance to compare this with the HP LP2475W? Thanks.
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No. The only way I could do this is if I bought one. Which I won't be doing. I didn't want wide gamut which is why I didn't wait for this monitor to come out. If it had been sRGB I probably would have waited.
 
Stanley Pain said:
Yeah colorcomp should only be turned on if you notice uniformity issues or if you absolutely, positively NEED that kind of uniformity :).

I love all the tweaks you can do with this panel. It can be setup to perform exactly the way anyone needs.
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I agree, the ability to control the panel is fantastic.

I really notice a difference with ColorComp, personally, and will suffer through 760:1 contrast in order to get white and grey background which look like flat pieces of paper on the screen in front of me. After running with ColorComp off for a couple of days, when I was doing some photoshop work last night with it back on the uniformity was very impressive - perhaps one of the largest "first impression" wow factors of a display such as this.

Who knows how many of these sorts of features are incorporated into display such as, for example, the Apple HD displays when they first came out? Without a spec sheet stating that there's an internal map correcting uniformity issues all you do is say "wow" when you look at it.
 
Hey no fair. You now have more contrast than me. :D

Mine peaks around 700. 600 with colorcomp =3.

Certainly I would be happy with 760 with colorcomp. But mine drops from 700 to 600 and this is noticeable.

Anyway I am glad you have your contrast back. I agree this is a great monitor. None are perfect but these have some unique features (A-TW polarizer is a key one for me) + IPS + tons of control + internal LUT calibration.
 
Had mine for a few weeks now and the monitor is phenomenal. It is the single piece of hardware no computer owner should hold back on. Worth every penny.

Quick question for you guys. If I wake up my monitor from standby I hear a faint click, I assume it's just a relay to the ccfl lamps but want to make sure before my 30 day return period is up.
 
@mike: I can't recall hearing any distinctive click. I just power cycled mine using the front panel power button and there could have been some very faint noise associated with the CCFL but I hadn't noticed it until you mentioned it. If it's a relay, it's itty-bitty, or yours is louder than mine.

@Snowdog: Yeah, well... :D Frankly I'm not sure what brought my contrast back. I'm noticing some weird behaviour, kind of like bugs. Perhaps that was involved in giving me a crappy correction curve even after setting it to prioritize contrast.

@Monitor Guy (+ Snowdog):

Hopefully I'll be able to express these points clearly.

1. What EXACTLY is overdrive? What I've read of it indicates that it's something to do with driving the pixels with higher voltage for more rapid response, but I see people erroneously (in my opinion) thinking that it has some effect on how many frames of lag the monitor will exhibit. Smearing, tearing and ghosting aren't the same as lag and I assume overdrive corrects the former. What's the down side of having it on? If there wasn't a downside it wouldn't be switchable (IMO).

2. I am running SVII 1.0.42 build 62625 with a DTP-94 colorimeter on an nVidia GTX260 (180.48). I was running Monaco EZColor suite on my CRT and I believe I've removed all of the profiles from loading at boot. I'm running Vista Ultimate x64.

3. For some of my inquiries, I notice a difference between how things operate when controlled by SVII and how they operate via just the OSD. For instance, low bright modes. This is locked and invisible when SVII is at the helm and programmable gamma and color are used. This is sometimes confusing as I'm having trouble guaranteeing things such as "I am at the minimum brightness without using the LUT". Easy on the OSD - brightness 0%, LOW BRIGHT OFF, AUTO LUMINANCE OFF. It seems like SVII "manual" goes dimmer than that level (by eye) and you've indicated that manual may be going away as it isn't the "right" way of doing things.

For those of us who are interested in lower brightnesses, but specifically don't want LOW BRIGHT LUT functionality, how should we set that brightness in SVII?

4. I've often had the display become confused after calibration. For instance, after my latest calibration the display was put to sleep by power saving. On waking, it was at 0% with LOW BRIGHT ON. This happened more than once from a manual 20% calibration. Presently, every time I boot the system it says that "settings have changed" and prompts me to reload. Again, this was a 20% manual brightness calibration. If I reload the settings I end up with AUTO-LUMINANCE @ 400cd/m2. I completely understand that adjusting the OSD should "invalidate" the calibration (remember I was doing this on CRTs - no SVII programmable LUTs and DDC monitor control - HANDS OFF THE MONITOR after calibration) but why is it so confused about the proper settings? I can't be sure if I'm dealing with bugs, or features, or what...

4a. I'm assuming that I could go into the OSD and set it back to sRGB and 2.2 gamma, use it, then return it to PRG on both and it would be calibrated again? Or worst case "load previous calibration data" and it's all good without pulling out the colorimeter, right? I may use this for the rare usage in the middle of the night - turn on LOW BRIGHT etc... outside of calibration to work in the pitch blackness, then return to proper settings.

5. The factory settings reset doesn't seem to reset EVERYTHING. For instance, colorcomp doesn't come back on. Is there a REAL factory reset somewhere? Clearly I'm OK with hour meter, serial# staying intact. If my firmware is a little confused, a real reset might do it some good.

6. So AUTO-LUMINANCE uses a CCFL output sensor and closed-loop control? In OSD-only mode, it seems that auto-luminance goes hand-in-hand with setting the brightness in cd/m2. But in SVII you can set a cd/m2 numerical target, but opt in or out of auto-luminance in preferences.... What's auto-luminance really doing? What are the recommended settings? What's the down side?

7. Some sort of "advanced manual" would avoid a lot of these questions. Saying that auto-luminance helps control brightness output isn't enough for a lot of people spending >$1k for a display with lots of knobs to adjust who are OCD about tweaking to perfection. The users manual reads like a motherboard manual a lot of the time. (you know: "RAS-CAS delay: This adjusts the RAS-CAS delay")

8. [EDIT] What is with the sharpness control? When you're running in native resolution, I feel it should do nothing, not need to be set at 26.2% and be able to make native resolution content blurrier at lower settings... Seems odd to me and what a way to generate some unnecessary complaints and bad press when it gets screwed up accidentally. I can see the usefulness when the scaling is being used. In those cases one may want more than 26.2% but you're stuck leaving it there so that native resolution stuff doesn't get all weird.

I've had a soft spot for NEC since I got my Multisync II back in the day, thank you for making the Multisync 90 series great and for participating on this forum.
 
Surly73 said:
@mike: I can't recall hearing any distinctive click. I just power cycled mine using the front panel power button and there could have been some very faint noise associated with the CCFL but I hadn't noticed it until you mentioned it. If it's a relay, it's itty-bitty, or yours is louder than mine.
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It's only when it comes out of standby. If I power it on and off using the front button it is silent. Sorry should have added that bit of info.
 
Another great thing about these NECs is that they 0 power when in standby (or at most 1w). Pretty darn impressive too :D
 
Surly73 said:
Do you have any links? I'd be interested in what the new capabilities are...
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isn't that funny... i would have bet money i read from "monitor guy" on dpr the 2490 was getting "refreshed also". guess it wasn't monitor guy and no one would know more would they.
 
Snowdog said:
Weird. Mine never goes into low brightness mode.

I bet any update to the 2490 will go wide gamut, in which case, I wouldn't consider it an upgrade.
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why not... windows 7 will have worked that into the os and browser... only 2 years late thats all.

while i was a staunch anti wide gamut user i sold my 2490 and went wide gamut...then again 90% of my work is with my nikon d700 and NX2. and before that with my canon 40d and DPP. so for photography use and working in truly color aware programs with tagged pics no problem at all..... as a matter of fact "monitor guy"/will from NEC gave a lengthy explanation about wide gamut and it's expectations for owners on dpr a while back and it was a thread i strongly recommend many read.

that said and using firefox 3 for most browsing i have no complaints about it. i print 75% of my keepers anyhow so again it plays in to my use, and no matter what monitor one uses it should be calibrated with a good tool.... not our eyes on a web page based color checker.

to each his own.
 
chevysales said:
why not... windows 7 will have worked that into the os and browser... only 2 years late thats all.
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Games, movies, dozens of apps utilities that aren't color aware. Seeing color change depending on which app you use and it's color awareness. Multi-OS usage....

In short if you have a very narrow usage pattern wide gamut can work for you.

sRGB will work everywhere without any hassles. My Dell 3007-HC was a major pain with wide gamut. The 2490 is bliss with sRGB.
 
Other than requiring super low input lag, interlaced resolution support, or a component input, the LCD2490WUXI is a better screen than the 24WMGX3 IMHO. And even then, the lag is tolerable for me on my LCD2690WUXI.

I am speaking from ignorance concerning the visual quality of the 24WMGX3, but I have had an AUO A-MVA panel monitor in the past, and can say that the panel on this does not hold a candle to the H-IPS A-TW panel in the LCD2490WUXI in terms of black levels, viewing angles, and text sharpness.

In terms of pixel response A-MVA is good for everything except dark to dark transitions, where it will smear a fair bit unless the black frame insertion is used, and that causes flickering on light colors.

Your issue is that you have said elsewhere you are in Europe, and it's unlikely you can easily find the LCD2490 unless you import it from across the pond, methinks.

gjergji said:
would you recommend LCD2490WUXi over NEC 24wmgx3?
Click to expand...

Chevysales I would hope that Windows 7 will have some sort of proper gamut transformation/color management built in to it that WORKS for everything, or it would still be a mess IMHO. If not, I'll be going the opposite route (2690 to 2490). For A RGB photo editing WCG is bliss, but for 90+% of the rest of most uses, it is not for now.. Let's hope :)
 
10e
Thank you for your insight. Constructive.
May I ask what AUO A-MVA monitor did you have in the past?
 
Surly73 said:
1. What EXACTLY is overdrive? What I've read of it indicates that it's something to do with driving the pixels with higher voltage for more rapid response, but I see people erroneously (in my opinion) thinking that it has some effect on how many frames of lag the monitor will exhibit. Smearing, tearing and ghosting aren't the same as lag and I assume overdrive corrects the former. What's the down side of having it on? If there wasn't a downside it wouldn't be switchable (IMO).
Click to expand...

You've got the idea about overdrive right. My understanding was that in order to make overdrive work good you have to collect one or two frames to calculate the desired voltage. That perhaps doesn't make that much sense and when searching for a confirmation about this I didn't come up with anything. I know that it was 'common knowledge' that that was the case before, but that really doesn't say much. At the time *VA was the ones that most often had overdrive (I think, at least they were more aggressive) and their generally bad input lag was blamed on overdrive (although at the time measurements of this barely existed :p (I don't think I ever saw any)).

But I'm not sure if thats the case and if there are different approaches that has different input-lag effects.

How overdrive work and why you may not want it (it doesn't mention anything about lag though):
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/advancedcontent.htm#overdrive
And I'm sure that different implementations have different side effects, but it describes the general gist of it.

As I'm quite ghosting tolerant I've always avoided overdrive and I really don't see the point of it. The side effects scares me sooo much more than the benefits. But thats me.
 
When testing over-drive on the 2490 I noticed no visual benefit having it on, and there seemed to be a slight increase in a lag (but my testing wasn't 100% scientific). So I leave it off.

Subjectively I don't see any more smearing on my 2490 (with overdrive off) than I see on my TN panel. Both are worlds better than the Hideous Dell 2405 I owned for a short period of time that would turn any motion into mush.
 
Those are great articles Brumwald. Thanks for that.

It seems from the TFTCentral article that there is some sort of LUT (lookup table) or algorithm that calculates the amount and duration of extra voltage to enable RTC (response time compensation). I guess the chip/DSP in S-PVA panels by Samsung must be very slow in comparison to TN and IPS panels, because they seem to always be at the top of the lag charts, and they pretty much all have RTC enabled.

On my LCD2690WUXI I do notice a tiny bit of inverse ghosting when overdrive is set to ON in the Advanced OSD, so I keep it off. It is extremely slight and not visible in games, just dragging around text windows or behind a fast moving mouse cursor.

On or off it is still less laggy than the S-PVA 27" in my Dell 2709W which does not have a toggle on it for RTC/overdrive that I have found.

brumwald said:
You've got the idea about overdrive right. My understanding was that in order to make overdrive work good you have to collect one or two frames to calculate the desired voltage. That perhaps doesn't make that much sense and when searching for a confirmation about this I didn't come up with anything. I know that it was 'common knowledge' that that was the case before, but that really doesn't say much. At the time *VA was the ones that most often had overdrive (I think, at least they were more aggressive) and their generally bad input lag was blamed on overdrive (although at the time measurements of this barely existed :p (I don't think I ever saw any)).

But I'm not sure if thats the case and if there are different approaches that has different input-lag effects.

How overdrive work and why you may not want it (it doesn't mention anything about lag though):
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/advancedcontent.htm#overdrive
And I'm sure that different implementations have different side effects, but it describes the general gist of it.

As I'm quite ghosting tolerant I've always avoided overdrive and I really don't see the point of it. The side effects scares me sooo much more than the benefits. But thats me.
Click to expand...
 
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