Displays [update: Good news, everyone!] - New Dell U series coming Q3. A downgrade big time

It's all wrong what you said, but I know what you mean.
Yes.

The U2410 has a 8-bit panel. But thanks to it's 10-bit Look Up Table, and 12-bit color processor, it supports 10-bit colors, which it can display.

Basically 12-bit processor is "2-bit too big"... probably this is what Dell was able to get at a good price, or provide a good performance.

So basically what happens, is, well we know how those TN panel which are all 6-bit panels do to output 16.7 million colors (8-bit colors). They take 2 colors it can produce and switch between them to emulate the color it can't produce. This is called Frame Rate Control.
Well the U2410 does the same thing.. but for extra color that the panel can't produce. So the 8-bit colors are produces normally, no Frame Rate Control on that... and for all colors part of the 10-bit and NOT in 8-bit colors pallet, it uses Frame Rate Control.

It is to be noted, that to enjoy 10-bit colors, you need 10-bit color compatible GPU (which you have), but also the software. PhotoShop for example, does support 10-bit colors. But your Windows background and games... not so much. Oh and you need to be using DVI or Display Port.

 

i don't think consumer cards (nvidia or amd) supports 10 bit colours....... pretty sure you need a professional card to do it.

 

Oh yes it does, since the Geforce GTX 200:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/55506/GeForce_GTX_200_GPU_Technical_Brief.pdf
(see page 7, under the picture)

I know, I was just surprised as you.

 

wow. how do i enable it?

but from what i've read, it requires a displayport, which nvidia were stupid to ignore, and put a dumb HDMI port on it.

 

So.. what drivers, and what apps support this? I can find nothing.

 

Photoshop?

 

Photoshop CS5 is an example of software that support 10-bit colors. I need to state a correction on a error of my part. DVI only supports 8-bit color max. Display Port support 10-bit colors.

Windows 7 supports up to 48-bit colors total (16-bit color per channel).
Direct 3D of Win7 also supports 10-bit colors. So technically speaking, games, if they wanted (but they don't) support up to 16-bit colors.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-7-High-Color-Support-98741.shtml

Here are examples of Geforce card with Display Port:
http://www.tcmagazine.com/tcm/news/hardware/34821/evga-designs-displayport-equipped-geforce-gtx-570

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500197

You also need supported drivers.
From what I can see, for all Geforce card since the 200 series, it's early drivers don't support 10-bit colors, but later do. So you have to be at the look out for that.

 

Unless I'm mistaken, you can't just "enable it" in the sense of making all your apps and Windows display in 10-bit colour. 10-bit support, as far as I understand, is still a professional tool rather than something you can use for all apps (ie most things you use on a computer will be using 16.7 million colours with the regular 8-bit path, and not the 1.07 billion colours that are possible from a 10-bit path, which only some GPUs, monitors and apps can support, and even then its only in specific cases where you would use it).

Its basically something professionals would use for colour-critical work, ie for getting their monitor to display a better representation of the pictures they print, because "wide-gamut monitors have a gamut that encompasses more of the color space of most inkjet printers". There's a thread over on the adobe forums which addresses it fairly well and what you would need to enable it for Photoshop and so forth. You'd basically need to have a 30bit monitor, connected with displayport from a graphics adapter which supports 10bit color, and driver support for the enhanced color pallete. And even then the 10-bit colour would be limited to that specific app, ie if you had Photoshop open with 10-bit support enabled, the other windows and apps on your computer would still be displaying in 8-bit colour. As a guy from the abode thread says:

 

How many 'bits' would the human eye work in (if converted to this scale)?

Can human beings actually distinguish between over 1 billion colours?

 

Paper's says that we can see about 10 million colors. But this, and including that we can't see any flickering over 60Hz, that we don't see any "choppiness" over 30fps of a video or game, and that the ear can only hear 20 Hz - 20 kHz is all the biggest B.S ever.

1- If we could not see more than 10 million colors, then why we see a large difference between a TN, even if it's color calibrated with an amazing color calibrator, and a 8-bit IPS panel? Why do companies invest millions and millions of dollars in working in a Look Up Table on the ~6.7million colors, that we apparently can't see, as we can see 10 million of them.

2- If we can't see flickering more than 60Hz, why do people have headaches, and why we saw flickering on all of our CRT screen if it's was under 85Hz, and even then.

3- Why do we see games choppy at 30fps, and 60fps is starting to be smooth.

4- If we could only hear 20-20 KHz, then any cheapo speaker system will do, and all this super fancy sound equipment is all a placebo effect. Sure there is the accuracy of the sound being produced, but that's not the point, we hear missing frequencies out for our headphones and speakers system (not to mention that vibrations perceived is part of sound we hear)

I think we can see more than a billion color, and the more than the points above, if we just take our time and appreciate life a bit more.

Of course, if you ask someone that buys and use 50$ monitor for years, and even life, and ask him if there is a difference between the 2 blues in front of him.. he will say "no", even if there is. It's something, that I think, we (our brain) develop over time, and able to see the difference, especially side by side.

Look outside your window... right there, you have over 10 million colors, not to mention the super smooth, and correct (something we can't do in computers accurately) shadows of each leaf on a tree shadowing on each other, which provide a huge variety of green, and extended further with the position of the sun and surrounding building adding shadows to it.... now that's the tree leaves.. you have the rest. And I think, that part of us in presenting the ability to disguise a picture to real life, is lack of colors missing on a picture, even if it's done on the most fancy 2D/3D camera in the world, and printed on the more sophisticated printers.

 

That's a very interesting question.

It is fairly certain that the human eye cannot distinguish over 1 billion colors. However it is rather unknown exactly how many colors we can see. If you google this subject you will see a wide variety of results but the highest number I have seen was that women can see 100 million different colors, and I think that was prefaced by "Scientists think women can . . . ".

 

LOL. I'd like to see you/anyone distinguish between 2 blues that only differ by a factor of 1/1,000,000,000, let alone 1 / several-billion. I like IPS panels as much as the next guy, but I think the scientists have the upper hand on you with this one and we are very far from seeing a billion colors. After all, they did do research. But the numbers are constantly changing, increasing and decreasing, and it's well known that color perception changes among different people. I wonder if, to a certain extent, trying to classify how many colors a person can see is like trying to classify how tall human beings can grow, it varies significantly.

 

FWIW, it's very, very difficult for a speaker system to go down to 20Hz, especially a 'cheapo' one. Are they putting out sound at 20Hz? Yeah, but not any discernable volume. You tend to measure audio equipment's response to it's +/-3dB from average, and trust me, if you have standard pc speakers, you're not hearing anything below 50Hz right now by that measure. That's more than an octave missing.

Of course, you don't notice for a few interesting psychoacousitcal reasons, but hey.


Jack (who is a semi-professional bassist and is listening to cheap Logitechs just fine )

 

It's not supposed to change.. as they take a sample population segment in their research.
It comes down to: do they get more professionals in the field, or the the average job who buys 50$ monitors, and calls it lovely.

And to answer your question about blue colors on 1/1 000 000 000. You forgot one thing.. that is assuming we can see only blue color. Now I did say "several billion colors", my mistake, I should had said, as this is what I wanted to say "more than a billion colors".

 

Therefore you can start suing for false advertisement, about every speaker manufacture that about all says that their cheapo speakers can output 20Hz to 20kHz.

 

Yes, research is supposed to change, it's called progress. I think we've talked about 'progress' in this thread before. They probably wouldn't have studied this subject further if they hadn't thought they could improve upon the initial results with better techniques.

No, that is not assuming that we can only see one blue color. I do not think you/anyone could even distinguish from one color that is only 1 billionth different from another color (even if you didn't mean to say several billion). Of course we can see more than one shade of a bluish color.

 

GoodBytes, you fail to understand some of the finer points of the English language. He said that the cheapo speakers can output 20hz but at a volume that is practically inaudible. He's just trying to educate you a little on what speaker spec's actually mean. You would need more than an afternoon plus some hands on time with different speakers to really appreciate what he is saying.

 

Thanks, I get it now.
Yes, speakers is not my forte, yet.

Anyway this is off topic...
Let's say, and I strongly think, that we can see 1.07 billion colors or very close to it. Might be hard! But I think, we can. But then again, why video card AND Microsoft, invested several million of dollars to support 16-bit monitors? (example: Windows 7 and ATI FireGL V8650)

 

Theres a lot of misconceptions about wide-gamut displays (which can theoretically produce more than 1 billion colours). But just because the monitor can potentially display the extended gamut, it doesn't mean you will see it for everything you look at, because essentially all consumer content is 24-bit color. Thus, the source images have only 16.8 million colors, and the display can’t “invent” intensities and color combinations that don’t exist in the original. See here.

If an IPS display looks better than a TN panel, it wont be because its an extended gamut display, because you wont be displaying content that is made in 10-bit colour (I'm talking about most consumers). The reason will lie somewhere else. In my opinion, the benefits for consumers of using IPS/PVA etc display's are for their much better viewing angles, so that you dont have to put up with the crappy colour shift when you move off-axis on a TN display (which is very annoying).

 

Agreed. In my previous line of work as electronic pre-press we always stocked high-end, well-calibrated IPS monitors. The main reason? So three to five people could gather around the computer from different angles and see the image as it would print. We also found the higher-end displays to be less headache-inducing when sitting in front of them for 12 hours at a time.

As far as color accuracy, the TN panels that we had on our non-essential machines calibrated nicely but they were never used for group viewing. But when comparing Pantone presets and actual printed docs to on-screen, there was hardly a noticeable difference. But even our TN panels were pretty high end.