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
    2013-12-27T15:40:47+00:00

    Well, I guess I'm the odd one out. Like the rest of you, I have the banding (side note, I have to believe the majority of us have it after the Dec. update, just that others haven't noticed yet). But, updating to the Intel 15338 driver didn't fix it for me. The banding is still present in all my photo programs, "Metro" apps and even the background on the Desktop. So, basically everywhere.

    I noticed there are lots of options available from the Intel driver. Maybe I have to mess with those?

    If I can't find a solution, I guess I'll try a "refresh" first and then try the update again. Or sadly... take the Surface Pro 2 back to Best Buy while I still have that option. :(

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-27T05:28:16+00:00

    I would prefer to get a full fix from Microsoft.  Or to at least know they are aware and working on it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-27T05:25:40+00:00

    Yes to both of those!

    Especially the jacket.  That is a perfect example of the problem.  That particular image looks completely ripped up and shifting green in the dark areas.  Very blocky and chunky.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-27T05:18:07+00:00

    I have very similar problems. Dark movie scenes with lets say some steam or clouds cause extreme pixilation with a green, gray color and I loose all detail in the image. If you can test a couple of things and see if you are having the same problem as me in a dark room with 50% brightens I would appreciate it

    1. Under display calibration when you get to the brightness part of the settings, is the color of jacket and around the x all black? In my screen its terrible, grainy, green and no detail.

    2.Also check this video out:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95a9pXj03Rs

    Full screen 1080p

    Specially towards the end the quality is ridiculously bad. My screen is all gray and green with huge pixels.

    I tried the same video on my iPad and pc and the quality is 100* better.

    Any help would be much appreciate it.

    Also going to Microsoft store and speaking to the techs is a waste of time. My 8 year old cousin knows more than them

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