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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?
Thanks Suart, this fixed the problem for me too!
My Pro2 screen is born again!
Also, it almost solved the known Wacom precision problem at the upper corners of the screen..
Still there, but so much better.
C'mon Microsoft, officially fix this!
Matteo
I would prefer to get a full fix from Microsoft. Or to at least know they are aware and working on it.
Has Microsoft acknowledged this as a problem? It seems to affect only a small minority of us users from the forum posts I've read. I'm still not convinced it isn't just software, in that if we knew what registry entry to tweak it could be easily fixed.
Installed the intell drivers also myself. Made the blacks disappearing thing much better (i can see almost all the black levels all the way to 1 or 2) but i still see some banding in http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php#gradient-h.png
But in a weird manner, like when i change to the browser the banding is not there, but slowly the screen seems to adjust (although automatic brightness is off) and banding appears and seems to "move" and then settles. Not dramatic but it's there. I don't see the smooth image i should see! Anyone else experiences this?
You're not alone. I've seen the movement in the banding as well. Intel has it's own power management, it may not respect the Window's auto brightness setting and you may have to turn it off from Intel's own control panel.
In the lagom.nl gradient test mine doesn't look right from the start (and in fact isn't entirely gray either and has pinkish tones). Which browser were you using?
Well that's two of us now that haven't seen any improvement from the generic Intel drivers.
Did you happen to get the December firmware update that was pulled? I'm trying to figure out some reason why the 3345 Intel drivers fix the banding for some but not others.
Installed the intell drivers also myself. Made the blacks disappearing thing much better (i can see almost all the black levels all the way to 1 or 2) but i still see some banding in http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php#gradient-h.png
But in a weird manner, like when i change to the browser the banding is not there, but slowly the screen seems to adjust (although automatic brightness is off) and banding appears and seems to "move" and then settles. Not dramatic but it's there. I don't see the smooth image i should see! Anyone else experiences this?
Also, in windows photo viewer (desktop) doesn't seem to be there, but on the metro picture viewer it is. In photoshop I can see it too.
This is a 1300$ device, i wouldn't expect to see this!
