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    M17x R3 LCD Brightness Fluctuating when watching videos

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by prank1, Oct 15, 2011.

  1. prank1

    prank1 Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi

    As the title says, the LCD brightness very slightly fluctuates every now and then when watching videos; I've noticed this on BBC iPlayer and VLC Media player.

    Randomly it just goes either up or down, however its very faint and it can go easily unnoticed; when I first noticed it I thought it may have been due to the actual video, or that my eyes were playing tricks on me.
    I think its the LCD brightness thats fluctuating, but im not sure; it could be the saturation thats going up/down randomly. I can't really pinpoint when this first started happening, because at first I used to just think it was the video I was watching, but I would say we are talking maybe 2-3 weeks ago.

    This occurs ONLY when watching videos at fullscreen. Gaming, internet browsing, etc is all fine.

    I've noticed this happening on the Intel Powersaving GPU, the drivers make no difference I've noticed it on the Dell drivers, 11.10 and 11.10 preview 2. I've even formatted my Alienware (not for this purpose) and reinstalled all the drivers and its still there.

    I don't know if it occurs on the 6990M GPU, I tend to always switch to the Intel GPU when watching videos as it is less intensive, but I will be investigating whether or not it occurs with the 6990M too.

    Anyone else having this issue? To be honest I was a little hesitant to post this, I was afraid everyone was going to say RETURN IT.. first the power brick issue, then the missing alienhead pcb board, and now this :mad: :mad: :mad:
     
    prank1, Oct 15, 2011
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  2. jwolf7722

    jwolf7722 Notebook Deity

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    I find this happens on all my computers when watching movies via Amazon Instant service. When playing blu-ray its clear every time with no brightness fluctuation. Not sure if that helps that much or not. I will check other online video forms tomorrow.
     
    jwolf7722, Oct 15, 2011
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  3. prank1

    prank1 Notebook Evangelist

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    I found a thread on another forum which says that the drivers for the Intel gpu have an option which dynamically adjusts the brightness to save power. I turned off this option, and so far it seems to have worked :) you probably didn't notice anything happening on the bluray videos because you were running it off the discrete gpu which doesn't have this dynamic lcd brightness changing feature.

    EDIT
    This website explains what was happening to me: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090723/lesson-intel-graphics-power-saving-feature/

    If anybody else is noticing that their LCD display brightness/contrast is dynamically changing, take a look at the above link which will also tell you how to disable this feature.
     
    prank1, Oct 16, 2011
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