This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Hi there,
I've had a Surface 2 Pro for a month or so. Haven't done anything funky with the display that I know of but recently I noticed some really bad things going on in the dark areas of images on the screen. This is a big deal to me as I use this computer for work in visual effects and photography.
There is severe banding in the dark areas of the image and more worryingly, the display does not seem to be showing any pixels with a brightness darker than 14 out of 255 in the sRGB scale. It just comes out black on the screen. That's 5% of the brightness range gone.
The most basic demonstration of this effect is to go to this page:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
For me, all the swatches from 1 to 13, instead of being many shades of grey, are all 100% jet black even with the screen on maximum brightness.
It is certain that the colours are there in the image itself. This can be demonstrated by plugging the signal from the Surface into a separate Dell monitor via HDMI. Presto - you can see all the shades of grey again. But on the screen of the Surface
I've tried fixing the problem by applying different ICC profiles etc. The sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile gives the best image, but the best image is horrible as described above. There is severe banding when displaying this image (http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php)
The most interesting fact is this. My workmate also has a Surface 2 Pro, bought months earlier at a different store. I asked him to check his display using the same web pages and he sees exactly the same errors as me. Lots of banding. All greys darker than 14 are crushed to black. Is this a systemic problem with the display driver? A LUT applied by the bios?
Problem might be the same as mentioned here http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/microsoft-surface-pro-2/7270-recent-update-killed-video-quality.html
I have applied all Microsoft's recommended updates including the most recent one.
Look forward to any tips, hints, fixes, etc. Cheers,
Stuart
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hi again all,
After rebooting my Surface, I noticed that all the banding is gone and my gradients look perfect again.
I believe the problem was that the display driver had crashed and somehow put the display into 16-bit color. Has anyone tried rebooting and checking the gradient again?
Hello CharmanderCommander,
Thank you for posting your question regarding banding on your Surface display while viewing videos. I'll do what I can to help you with this.
We would like you to try the following troubleshooting steps which are known to help with display issues. As you have stated that you have already installed all updates, we would like you to try the following steps. You can disregard solution 6:
This guide has more information about each of these steps. Let us know if any of them work.
Thank you for posting in the Community. Please get back to us about how these work out for you.
Best Wishes,
Zack_T
I just bought a new surface pro 3 (i5 128gb model with 4g of ram) Nov 15 2014 and am having some issue with color banding and posterization. I have completely updated the device with Microsoft updater. Basically when viewing videos with darker colors they appear very distorted and do not display correctly. This appears on some darker pictures as well, especially those that have multiple darker shades. Oddly if I let my computer stay on that image for awhile it gradual gets better in quality. Perhaps videos just don't have the time to do this? Lighter colors don't appear to have this issue at all. Is anyone else having this issue??
Now I have spent half the day working on this, and seeing that I had the system reset once, I did it again.
I managed to get a great calibration, actually almost a 100% perfect colour cast and saturation.
Then I let it update the firmware.
Now my display has banding issues in the black realm, loss of black depth, and overall, I'm once again hugely dissatisfied. Any ideas other than rolling back the firmware update?
Currently mildly miffed, I've been sitting on this for far too long, just saying that it's fine.
The Surface pro 2 has some screen calibration issues, where compared to other units (Older systems, actually) the colours are incredibly washed out and drab. As well, the sharpness is set, by default, very high.
I use the system as a graphics design and photography editing platform, but the colours are very inconsistent with how they're displayed on other systems and monitors even, as I can't seem to even get the gamma to within industry standard. As it is, the System has you locked out of Contrast and Sharpness, with very little control over gamma settings. It also seems to have an adaptive contrast setting, that is most infuriatingly locked on as well.
Is there any solutions to this, or am I just stuck with this issue.
As an Aside, I have the first Gen Pro 2, with the older 4200U CPU and the accompanying Graphics. might this be part of the underlying issue?
