Severe banding and dark greys display as black

Anonymous
2013-12-17T00:58:57+00:00

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

  • just black.

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

Surface | Surface Pro | Power and battery

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Anonymous
2014-03-19T19:33:12+00:00

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?

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-12-17T03:10:00+00:00

    Okay so further investigation seems to indicate I've got the same problem as this person...

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro2-surfhardware/december-update-screwed-up-my-color/d6b10336-b649-4ec7-b8b4-0f1f936463bc

    Which means a lot of people have had their colours screwed by the update.

    I grabbed the newest Intel driver from here:

    https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23405&lang=eng&OSVersion=Windows%208.1%2C%2064-bit*&DownloadType=%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09%09Drivers%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09

    And installed it using the instructions from Pierre118 on this page:

    http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/microsoft-surface-pro/5960-intel-releases-updated-generic-drivers-intel-hd4000-graphics-fixes-bugs-6.html

    Bingo!  The banding went away.  Now I have silky smooth grey levels and also the Intel HD Graphics Control panel to fine tune gamma etc.

    Who knows what the effect of the Intel driver will be on battery life, but at least I can see dark grey now!

    So, er, Microsoft when will you fix your drivers so they don't throw away 5% of the brightness levels in a picture?

    Stuart

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-19T22:16:03+00:00

    Hi Stuart,

    Thanks for the heads-up on this, I'll probably install Intel's drivers tomorrow then.

    Best,

    James

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-19T02:55:31+00:00

    Hi Fronkhead,

    Well, in a very un-scientific manner, things seem to be just fine after installing Intel's driver.

    Wacom pen is working as before. No weird crashes.  Not noticing a big change in battery life, but I don't tend to run on battery for too long anyway.  But all seems well.  My workmate did the same fix on his machine and said his games graphics seemed to be faster.

    And as for the display colours - the fix was perfect straight away.

    Stuart

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-19T01:52:36+00:00

    Thanks for making this thread -- I too have had these issues (which have been instantly noticeable since the update) and it's been driving me a bit crazy.

    Hopefully Microsoft notices this is an issue (it seems that the sleep mode problem has been what's causing more of a fuss) and fixes it in the January update.

    Let me know what your battery life is like after installing Intel's own drivers, as I'm very tempted to update my drivers as well.

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