Dell U3011 custom color calibration

[saiyan]

So I have been using my new U3011 for almost a week. So far I am able to select a good color preset and set contrast and bright to my preference when using the monitor for my PC. Basically I picked the standard color and enabled EDID option in my Radeon HD's Catalyst Control Center. This gives me a good color balance: a little bit more vibrant than U3011's own sRGB preset but not too vibrant like the standard color preset.

As for using the monitor for watching TV and movies provided by Dish Network DVR and a stand-alone Blu-Ray player, U3011's sRGB preset is almost perfect except color red is just a little bit too vibrant. I would like to tune down color red just a little in the sRGB preset but only the custom color preset allows manual color adjustments.

Has anyone attempted to calibrate the custom color preset to achieve a better sRGB color profile?

Thanks.

 

[doggghouse]

I'm not an expert so take this response with a grain of salt I have been reading up on wide gamut displays since I got my U3011 a month ago, so here's what I've pieced together...

Setting the separate R, G, and B channels in custom color mode will allow you to reduce the brightness of each channel individually, which means you can make the reds less blinding... but it's really designed to let you adjust the color balance for white (ex. achieve 6500k color temp). So if you're trying to force the wide gamut reds and greens to be duller, you'll probably end up with a really funky tinge to everything.

Another factor is that compared to sRGB, the greens on the U3011 are much purer... they look yellowish on a standard sRGB display. That's something you wouldn't be able to compensate for by simply dimming the green channel. In fact, when you change the U3011 to sRGB mode, it emulates sRGB's yellow-green color by lighting both the green and red subpixels on a pure green image. (I stumbled upon this discovery while messing with the plastic RGB color filters that came with my DVE bluray disc). The Radeon is doing the same thing, just in software instead of hardware.

So, bottom line is... your best bet for non-PC sources is to set the display in sRGB mode, and just settle with the slightly bright red.

 

[saiyan]

So, bottom line is... your best bet for non-PC sources is to set the display in sRGB mode, and just settle with the slightly bright red.

Yeah. After playing with custom color adjustments for an hour yesterday and I got no where near sRGB color level, I agree that I should simply use the sRGB preset and be done with it.

Thanks.