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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?
Hello YuQiuUA,
Sorry to hear you are having issues when playing videos.
We would like to help, do you have the same problem when playing videos on other applications?
Any issues when playing videos on the browser?
Does this only happen on desktop apps?
Please let us know.
Best regards.
I also noticed the same problem. All the colours changed and it is even difficult to read the texts.
I installed the March update today, then I installed the new VLC app. When I opened the VLC app, I immediately noticed that the background pic has severe banding issue in color gradients. I also played several videos and noticed the same thing. It seems that the same problem in Dec update showed up again. (See http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro2-surfhardware/december-update-screwed-up-my-color/d6b10336-b649-4ec7-b8b4-0f1f936463bc )
Anyone got similar problem?
Greetings,
Please download and install the February Firmware updates. You can also download and install the new Graphics Driver update from here.
I never had the banding problem before until I updated my device today (March Firmware Update). Another major problem is that after recalibrating my screen with the X-Rite i1Display Pro, neutral gray had a heavy magenta cast. Never had this problem before today's update.
I was running the latest driver from Intel website with the control panel before updating.
I discovered a solution to fix the problem while still able to run the latest driver from the March Update.
This will uninstall the current driver.
Before you restart the device, put your SP2 on Airplane Mode.
This will prevent it from automatically downloading a display driver automatically.
After restart, it will automatically install previous display drivers.
Repeat steps 1-6 until the automatically installed display driver is the "Microsoft Basic Display Driver"
7. Turn Airplane Mode "Off." Check for updates.
It should install the March display driver but this time it should not exhibit the banding problem.
Follow each step carefully and try at your own risk. I have successfully fixed the banding and clipping problem on my SP2 and brother's using the steps above.
