A new NEC professional IPS? PA series

The U2410 and a high-end NEC are not in the same league, the two shouldn't really be compared. To be frank, the Dell is a 'toy' monitor compared to this.
If you were thinking about buying the PA241 without a hardware colorimeter, then please don't. It would be a massive waste to buy a monitor with a 14 bit 3D LUT and not calibrate it (the Dell doesn't have an internal hardware LUT).

I am concerned about the white glow on the u2410 with some people even reporting getting headaches from reading black text on a white backround. But I suppose both panels probably suffer from the same issue since it seems more related to the general use of ips panels:
Never even heard of this issue before untill now, but nothing from Dell would suprise me anymore. Buying the U2410 is a bit like playing 'Russian roulette', been there done that.. never again.

Anyone see any other reasons to go for the pa241w instead of the dell u2410?
Every reason, except price.
 
I understand that a 14bit 3d lut, a 10bit panel, panel uniformity correction and, at least for the american version, hardware calibration give the pa241w features that put it more next to eizo screens then dells.

But what I question is what difference any of these features will actually give you in real life when both the pa241w and the u2410 display very accurate colors after calibration. (I base myself on the reviews of both monitors at tft central.)

Then explain to me where I will see the difference to such an extend that it will justify 500 euro extra in payment that I could otherwise spend on other photographic equipment?
 
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I'm doubting between the pa241w and the dell u2410.


Anyone see any other reasons to go for the pa241w instead of the dell u2410?

The U2410 isn't a pro-grade display, the PA is. There's more to a display than just the panel (I think I've typed this dozens of times in just this forum alone). Hardware LUTs, perfect calibration/profiling, active uniformity compensation are worth 500 right there.
 
I understand that a 14bit 3d lut, a 10bit panel, panel uniformity correction and, at least for the american version, hardware calibration give the pa241w features that put it more next to eizo screens then dells.

But what I question is what difference any of these features will actually give you in real life when both the pa241w and the u2410 display very accurate colors after calibration. (I base myself on the reviews of both monitors at tft central.)

Then explain to me where I will see the difference to such an extend that it will justify 500 euro extra in payment that I could otherwise spend on other photographic equipment?

After using the PA series predecessor (a 2690 WUXi) and having compared it first hand with inferior IPS monitors, I can say hand on heart that even if the price premium was more than €500 it would still be totally worth it.

Calibration results don't tell you everything you need to know about a monitor either. Nearly any display can be calibrated to give very 'accurate colour'... what does this look like to you:
http://www.prad.de/images/monitore/samsung_p2450h/p2450h-deltae2.jpg
?
These are the calibration results from a €199 Samsung TN panel that gives an average Delta-E of less than < 1 which is less of a difference in colour that the human eye can percieve. Have we found the holy grail of budget graphics monitors?
No, because in reality this screen would be woefully inadequate, useless almost, for photo editing / colour correction for a whole plethora of reasons.

One can see with their own eyes how an EIZO ColorEdge, NEC 90/PA series monitor gives better image quality than a consumer grade unit. No magic involved, just inherently superior by design.
ColorComp isn't a marketing gimmick, it really does give the screen remarkable uniformity in not only luminance but also color temperature. Then there's the high bit depth colour processing which gives smoother gradients and better greyscale than you've ever seen before.

justify 500 euro extra in payment that I could otherwise spend on other photographic equipment?
You should be thinking: 'do I have a good enough display unit to justify spending more money on photographic equipment?'
Priorities.

Anyone else in this thread who has owned a proper high-end monitor will agree with me in saying that, if you were to buy one you wouldn't want to return it... you get what you pay for.
 
These are the calibration results from a €199 Samsung TN panel that gives an average Delta-E of less than < 1 which is less of a difference in colour that the human eye can percieve.
One can see with their own eyes how an EIZO ColorEdge, NEC 90/PA series monitor gives better image quality than a consumer grade unit. No magic involved, just inherently superior by design.
ColorComp isn't a marketing gimmick, it really does give the screen remarkable uniformity in not only luminance but also color temperature. Then there's the high bit depth colour processing which gives smoother gradients and better greyscale than you've ever seen before.


You should be thinking: 'do I have a good enough display unit to justify spending more money on photographic equipment?'
Priorities.

Anyone else in this thread who has owned a proper high-end monitor will agree with me in saying that, if you were to buy one you wouldn't want to return it... you get what you pay for.

+1 for pretty much everything here.

It's true that other monitors can be calibrated, but without a hardware LUT system you're using the 8-bit video card LUT. These results are NEVER as good as a display with a built in LUT, and you're losing tones and often creating banding when using video card LUT techniques. It's better than nothing, usually, but not the "right" way to do things.

With my 2490, even using factory calibration before using SVII, I can head to every display test at lagom.nl and nail every one of them. The gamma lines are at 2.2, I can see every shade including 001 against black and 254 against white, sharpness is bang on etc...etc... right out of the box.

Colorcomp/uniformity is fantastic, at least on my 2490. Beautiful, perfect uniformity. That's nearly worth the price of admission alone.

There are only so many panel manufacturers. When these folks come out with new panels display manufacturers will incorporate them into a product. Multiple displays will usually use the same panel, but as I've said there's more to a display than just the panel. It's great that so many here are educated and shop for displays based on which panel they contain but the pro tier costs more with good reason.

Does this mean that every single pro unit will be perfect? No. Might a given pro screen have more bleed than a consumer one? Sure. Could someone's U2410 be more uniform than someone's PA series - Sure, but very unlikely with the PA's Colorcomp/uniformity compensation on. Stuck pixels? Just as likely in consumer or pro unless the pro manufacturer uses binning to get premium parts.
 
Calibration results don't tell you everything you need to know about a monitor either. Nearly any display can be calibrated to give very 'accurate colour'... what does this look like to you:
We should add that the picture shows only the profile validation. The expressiveness is very often fundamentally misinterpreted.

Best regards

Denis
 
It's true that other monitors can be calibrated, but without a hardware LUT system you're using the 8-bit video card LUT. These results are NEVER as good as a display with a built in LUT, and you're losing tones and often creating banding when using video card LUT techniques. It's better than nothing, usually, but not the "right" way to do things.

But how does this work with a european non-spectraview version of this screen? When you would calibrate that with for example an eye one display 2 and the software that comes with that package. Doesn't this make changes on the graphic card lut or does the internal lut compensate for that anyway?
 
But how does this work with a european non-spectraview version of this screen? When you would calibrate that with for example an eye one display 2 and the software that comes with that package. Doesn't this make changes on the graphic card lut or does the internal lut compensate for that anyway?

1/ I've observed that as long as Colorcomp is on, a 2490 out of the box is very, VERY close to fully calibrated. It appears that the factory includes D65 whitepoint and some other factors into the uniformity correction. This is good news for those who do not/can not go the full SVII route or for those who don't need a high degree of accuracy (ie. an enthusiast gamer who doesn't do photography).

2/ I realize that NEC did a lot of things different for the Euro market and I don't understand all of the differences in the product line. I was always under the impression that the Euro 2490s still have the same hardware LUTs, but the SV package is actually different software white-labelled from another company. I still believe it updates the hardware LUTs in the end, but I cannot be 100% positive about this. Hopefully a euro market expert can comment.

I don't know whether the PA line has so many weirdo differences for the Euro market, but I hope not.
 
Will this display be fast enough for gaming?
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but the first though that crossed my mind was - who cares?

In any case, I suspect it is as good for gaming as most other IPS screens - 16ms without overdrive and 8ms wirh. 8ms is usually good enough for gamers, but if it only does 8ms using overdrive I would expect there to be some colour trailing that would ruin the experience.

It should have about average IPS (or maybe a little above average) input lag too.
 
I'm not a hardcore gamer but my wife and I have no issues with the 2490, and we came from a CRT (GDM-F520) immediately before. No overdrive, no smearing, no noticeable lag at our skill level.

I don't see why gamers get hung up on the grey-to-grey ms count. That's a "persistence" figure for smearing and bleeding which has nothing to do with lag. Lag is going to be an integer number of frames, probably one. One frame is 16ms, shopping based on 5 or 8 or 10 ms grey-to-grey seems kind of pointless to me.

I'll echo the comment "who cares" to some extent. Gamers aren't the target market of these displays and probably represent next to nothing of the revenue generated by the product line but it is nice that typically NEC and other manage to keep lag low enough for gaming.

I would, personally, not put lag higher in priority than all of the other great things going on with these display systems.
 
I understand gamers are not the target audience but I want a really good quality 24" 1920x1200 that can game too. I was debating a 2490 for many months and the PA came to be so this will likely be the route I go. TN is getting old with the banding and angle issues, especially on these larger screens. If it doesn't work out I'll sell it here maybe.

Would display port be the connection to use?
 
I understand gamers are not the target audience but I want a really good quality 24" 1920x1200 that can game too. I was debating a 2490 for many months and the PA came to be so this will likely be the route I go. TN is getting old with the banding and angle issues, especially on these larger screens. If it doesn't work out I'll sell it here maybe.

Would display port be the connection to use?
Yes.

Well, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you think the quality is worth the price premium, by all means, buy one. If quality isn't vital, you can always go with the cheaper HP ZR24w (which people around here claim is pretty decent) at under half the price. Standard gamut, which is important for most games, and still IPS. You won't get all the nice features of the NEC, but you can't really expect those at such a low price point.
 
Anyone know when SpectraView II will be updated???

SpectraView II (ver. 1.1.04) and MultiProfiler (ver. 0.3.04) were already updated for the PA241W on April 5th, but only in Japanese.

Your guess is as good as mine to why they are holding back the updated builds from the rest of the world.
 
Why are these sites using DVI for their review? It pretty much defeats the point of having 10-bit color depth. I guess I expected these review sites to have the proper hardware and software for testing a monitor like this while running comparisons to 8 bit, but it seems to be asking for too much.

The only other reviewer that I know that does in depth reviews is prad. I guess we'll see if they give us a decent review or if we will have to wait for a user to do a proper review with side by side comparisons to the 2490wuxi and others like it, not to mention actually taking advantage of the features this beast comes with.
 
The new MultiProfiler software is now available...

I have a question about MultiProfiler and the PA series.

bt709.png


I was looking through the Users Guide and it shows that the BT.709 setting was using a 2.2 gamma power curve, instead of the BT.709 gamma curve.

Is that just a typo, or does the PA series not have any presets for the BT.709 gamma curve?
If not a typo, you should fix that in a future firmware, and teach the PA series how to do a proper BT.709 gamma curve if desired.

gammaplot2.gif

Red Line = BT.709 gamma curve
Green Line = 2.2 gamma power curve
Blue Line = 1.8 gamma power curve

On that note, it would also be nice to see a preset for the SMPTE-C gamut:
Red Primary: x0.630, y0.340, z0.030
Green Primary: x0.310, y0.595, z0.095
Blue Primary: x0.155, y0.070, z0.775

The Windows link for MultiProfiler is downloading the Mac version... (FIXED)
 
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On that note, it would also be nice to see a preset for the SMPTE-C gamut:
Red Primary: x0.630, y0.340, z0.030
Green Primary: x0.310, y0.595, z0.095
Blue Primary: x0.155, y0.070, z0.775

The Windows link for MultiProfiler is downloading the Mac version...

Thanks for pointing out the broken link - it should be fixed now.

The SMPTE-C primaries are available as a preset in MultiProfiler.
 
Why are these sites using DVI for their review? It pretty much defeats the point of having 10-bit color depth. I guess I expected these review sites to have the proper hardware and software for testing a monitor like this while running comparisons to 8 bit, but it seems to be asking for too much.

As Windows and no other software that I am aware of at the moment outputs in more than 8 bits per colour channel there wouldn't be any difference.
 
The SMPTE-C primaries are available as a preset in MultiProfiler.

MultiProfiler Users Guide said:
The monitor has several preset modes which can be used directly, or modified as necessary. These presets are:
sRGB
AdobeRGB
DCI
REC-BT709
DICOM
High Brightness
Full
So it is available as MultiProfiler Preset but not a Monitor Preset? Any particular reason why SMPTE-C (REC-BT601) was left out as a Monitor Preset? If possible, I would like to see that changed in a future firmware.

Will, could you also comment on why the PA series lacks the BT.709 gamma curve? Could that also be fixed in a future firmware? That seems like a major oversight if it was somehow left out.

It would also be nice if you could add the capability to input an arbitrary custom (non-powercurve) gamma and have it applied via the hardware LUT on the PA series.

Some example gamma transfer functions of various color spaces:

The BT.709 (SMPTE 170M) gamma curve is:
lv 4.5
av 0.099
pv 1.0/(1.0/0.45)
thresh1 0.018
thresh2 0.081

The sRGB gamma curve is:
lv 12.92
av 0.055
pv 1.0/2.4
thresh1 0.0031308
thresh2 0.04045

The SMTPE 240M gamma curve is:
lv 4.0
av 0.1115
pv 1.0/(1.0/0.45)
thresh1 0.0228
thresh2 0.0912

The 2.2 gamma power curve (AdobeRGB1998 / BT.470-2 System M) is:
lv 1.0
av 0.0
pv 1.0/2.2
thresh1 0.0
thresh2 0.0
 
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So it is available as MultiProfiler Preset but not a Monitor Preset? Any particular reason why SMPTE-C (REC-BT601) was left out as a Monitor Preset? If possible, I would like to see that changed in a future firmware.

Will, could you also comment on why the PA series lacks the BT.709 gamma curve? Could that also be fixed in a future firmware? That seems like a major oversight if it was somehow left out.

It would also be nice if you could add the capability to input an arbitrary custom (non-powercurve) gamma and have it applied via the hardware LUT on the PA series.

I'll look into the BT709 question.

If you need to have a gamma response outside the default ones on the OSD or in MultiProfiler, then MultiProfiler allows you to create an arbitrary custom curve by using the "Display Emulation" function and selecting the ICC profile of whatever colorspace you want. If that ICC profile has a non-powercurve (i.e. a LUT) it will read the LUT to create the correct gamma response.
 
I'll look into the BT709 question.
Thanks.

If you need to have a gamma response outside the default ones on the OSD or in MultiProfiler, then MultiProfiler allows you to create an arbitrary custom curve by using the "Display Emulation" function and selecting the ICC profile of whatever colorspace you want. If that ICC profile has a non-powercurve (i.e. a LUT) it will read the LUT to create the correct gamma response.
So instead of using the BT.709 mode on the Monitor/MultiProfiler, I could instead open a BT.709 colorspace ICC profile with "Display Emulation" and the monitor would apply both the BT.709 gamut and custom gamma with the hardware LUT. I guess that sort of works around any custom gamma issues. Though it would still be nice to have a BT.709 gamma preset for use with the BT.709 mode on the monitor.
 
Im looking at getting two of these, I currently have the original 2490WUxi 1 with T-W polariser, then bought two of the new 2490wuxi 2 last year and returned them due to the angle glow issue.

Does this new PA241w have the angle white glow affect like the 2490WUXi 2 has ?
 
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Thats not a real good example, this is what the wuxi2 looked like.

Maybe a side by side comparison with the 2490Wuxi1 and the PA241w would be better.

Or maybe even a comparison with the WUXi2 and PA241w.
 
I have the new NEC and i don't think the PA241W is better than the 2490WUXI2. As said, no A-TW polarizer. Same as Eizo SX2462W too.

But you know what, one can get used to it. The benefits of IPS by far outweight the small freaky side effects.
 
Hi:

Do you have to use the SpectraView II software solution to properly calibrate this monitor, or would my Spyder 3 Elite package do the job?

I just purchased the PA241 to replace a 19" LaCie CRT monitor (though I've yet to hook it up.) The LaCie still works fine, but I really needed more real estate for my motion graphics and 3D work (Mac Pro running OS 10.5.8.) I've been reserching and lurking on this and other boards for over a year and finally pulled the trigger on this IPS panel since it looks like you can successfully override the wide gamut nature of the monitor, which was a concern of mine. Although color managed software like After Effects and Photoshop will display colors correctly on a wide gamut monitor, I wasn't too excited about the prospect of the OS and other non-color managed apps looking neon red, like my wife's HP 2475 display. And my current 3D app (Lightwave 3D) isn't color managed, so my renders would have looked wrong.

I'm still a little fuzzy about color calibration, though. What is at about the SpectraView II software that required it to be updated to work with the PA241? Does all color calibration software depend on having specific monitor presets to work?

If there is a significant advantage to the SpectraView II software I could buy it and use it with our Datacolor Spyder 3 color sensor.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics
Portland, Oregon
 
Hi:

Do you have to use the SpectraView II software solution to properly calibrate this monitor, or would my Spyder 3 Elite package do the job?

Use the Spectraview software. You should be able to use the Spyder sensor with it. With the calibration software you get with kit like the Spyder3 or i1 Display 2 you can only adjust the LUTs in the graphics card when calibrating. The Spectraview software talks to the monitor and adjust the high bit LUTs in the monitor which gives better results. You buy these type of monitors fo their hardware calibration facilities so it would be silly no to take advantage of them.
 
As Windows and no other software that I am aware of at the moment outputs in more than 8 bits per colour channel there wouldn't be any difference.

I am new to this forum and I just mostly lurk instead of getting into some of the heated arguments however, I saw this and I thought I would interject some info.

Chris Cox from Adobe has stated that they will be releasing information about CS5 and 10-bit support and the supported/tested hardware/software that will be required but that they have been testing it and will have something to share mid-may.

There are several threads about this in various Adobe forums but this is the one I have a link to:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2730447

From this and other discussions, you need to pair up something like a NEC PA124W Monitor, Quadro FX 3800 and Windows 7 (which does support 30-bit color and 16-bit printer drivers which Epson is promissing BTW).

Details are said to follow, just thought I would let those interested know.

While the best way to proof is simply to print, this may get those of us interested to closer soft proof than what is available right now. I am sure it will also come with its own hurdles and problems too, but it seems like it will be closer to reality before the end of this year. Also, it will not be cheap!

Anyway, thought I would post...
 
Use the Spectraview software. You should be able to use the Spyder sensor with it. With the calibration software you get with kit like the Spyder3 or i1 Display 2 you can only adjust the LUTs in the graphics card when calibrating. The Spectraview software talks to the monitor and adjust the high bit LUTs in the monitor which gives better results. You buy these type of monitors fo their hardware calibration facilities so it would be silly no to take advantage of them.

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into getting the SpectraView software.

Shawn
 
Could someone explain to me in what circumstances you would use the adobe rgb preset mode opposed to using one of the full gamut modes?

I guess colormanaged applications like photoshop and firefox 3 will anyway translate your adobe rgb images towards the wider gamut when using a full gamut mode. Could the purpose be that non-colormanaged applications would then also be able to show adobe rgb images correctly or do they anyway read them out as srgb?
 
I finally calibrated my display and I do notice a slight glow to the colors compared to my old standard gamut 2490. I was hoping the 3D LUT SRGB emulation would eliminate this. Also, I do not have the wide gamut version of the NEC branded Spectraview II USB calibration puck, so not sure if this is part of the problem. I was able to get Delta E below 1 though, so that makes me happy.

Any suggestions on how to minimize the wide gamut neon colors issue? =/
 
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