M17x lcd

Well, witcher.

I am waiting on your trials and tribulations of taking the E2E panel off of your LCD.

Please keep us updated....

 

I know it will work or in theory of course it will but the real question remaining is the Glass and how it comes off and someone will eventually hopefully answer that IE you .


If you had another screen there right now you could even test it without having to rip off the glass since the power cable and the display cable are both right there based on your pictures .

 

What LG screen did you get? My old notebook had a 1680x1050 LG and it was too dim with washed out colors. It had to be under 200 nits for sure though.

 

Ill have to dig up the exact part number but TL A2 are the last 4 digits. This is thing is so bright and wonderful i could seriously not be happier about it and best of all was the deal i got buying it . best money spent ever .

 

the screen i sent you quad was the lp171wu1 tl a2 AWESOME screen!!!!

the main lvds is standard so any screen will technically work. you could plug a 12" screen in there and turn it on..

the glass is held on with a double sided tape as confirmed by someone i know at dell today the same way the boe hydis screens have the touch glass on the front for the digitizers. i removed a digitizer from a hydis screen today that was on with double sided tape and let me say if that is how its mounted you have to be VERY careful with the razor blade that you dont go to deep and scrape up the front of the screen or break the lcd's glass while removing it.. or break the e2e part of it. a little heat went a long way... again cant be 100% sure but the person i know is one of the highest people in the tech dept at dell

and yes you can use a single bulb screen just use the inverter plug for the bottom bulb because from what the tech specs i got today show the top bulb is not as bright as the bottom one so there could be a voltage difference to the top bulb without getting it in my hands to measure i cant be 100% sure though..

i may be able to get my hands on a few more of those after talking with my supplier today. ill see how much first though..

told you that thing was amazing quad.. no other 17" quite like it out there imo

 

Yep its a beauty . If i get another M17x thats whats going in it . Sounds like a bit of work to get at the panel but im sure is manageable if you wanted to do it .

 

yeah its not that bad. i use a exact knife blade by itself. wrap my middle finger in some electric tape to press on the blade and go a little at a time making several passes till i get through just enough to see the very tip of the blade. but if it is double sided.. the issue will be re taping it.. that is def going to be harder than removing it, finding a good tape to hold and that is very thin

 

What are the specs on this panel? Why is this single bulb panel so special?

 

Because its bright and beautiful .

 

Well I know that but I think only this particular LP171WU1 with the "TL A2" extension is like this. The other LP171WU1 are not. I think that is what z told me a while ago. Why is this particular revision so special that it is of the highest quality?

 

these were sourced from somewhere and were special made for a company. they are not the lg phillips most people know. they are only lg panels and specifically say lg display on them and had nothing to do with phillips on these. not all the tl a2's will be like these were. they are rated at 300nits, have almost the full color gamut and no banding at all they are stunning display's my regret was originally not buying more of them. i had 2 dozen and only 2 left in my possesion 1 of which i have to find in my storage unit still boxed up lol.. these things are so bright at full brightness after a while its like being in the sun lol.. and colors are VERY accurate on them also

but even the standard tl a2 id a VERY nice display it just is a bit less bright overall rated at 280nits and has a bit less color gamut but still one of the nicest panels you will find. if you look for anything in a single bulb 17" panel the lp171wu1 tla2 is THE ONLY panel to even consider if you can find them..

be aware of ebay sellers selling compatible panels. the tl a2 id very hard to get and they usually send out something else

 

So I could have just bought one of these from you when I had my gateway and not have to waste time and money anymore? So I'm guessing they don't manufacture them anymore? How much were you selling them for?

 

i didnt even know i had them until quad had asked me about them. i forgot they were there i had them for over a year (i have afew dozen panels almost all the time lol.. i look like a panel warehouse along with all the other stuff i stock remember i own a custom shop / repair company here). they do not make them anymore but they can still be found. i may be able to get a couple dozen more im working on it this week. they are hard to get though. they also need modification to work in the gateway or the m17/m17x to the metal frame the upper and lower brackets need to be removed to properly fit. they are tack welded to the frame

 

Well I already sold the gateway and I have the g51vx-a1 with the LED screen coming in friday. I just hope that LED screen has high color gamut.

 

Quad what did you do with your M17x? Were you not satisfied with the screen and what notebook did you put that LG panel in?

 

i looked at one today (g51 i mean) i was installing shadow protect on. it was not to bad but not nearly as nice as that lg is. it was nice and bright but i have to say the colors were over saturated. blue's and reds were to blue and to red imo. playing with the colors controls didnt help much and maybe made it worse. the guy let me throw the display 2 from eye one on it. after calibration it was better and much more accurate but most people do not understand or realize how "more accurate" is supposed to look and he made me put it back.

panel manufactures purposely add in lots of blue to make the screens "appealing" to the eye. this is a sales thing more than anything and the same goes for most lcd tv's as well. after a good calibration pulls out a lot of that blue some people say "thats aweful" because they now see the red hues and a lot of things that were "over blue" before now are more on the grey side and not nearly as overpowering..

i personally like a calibrated screen but a lot of people do not because a lot of that eye appeal is gone...

but overall it was a pretty nice screen. i would not say spectacular but FAR better than many 15" i have seen and def not a bad panel. the one biggest complaint i had was the bleed. with a led panel they dont "bleed" like a ccfl does where you see the small bar of light at the bottom. when led panels bleed it looks like light beacons going almost all the way to the top. they were subtle but they were def there. he didnt even realize it till he asked me to show him what i mean and i laughed and said are you sure.. once you know it will bother you forever and he still wanted to see. so we turned out the lights and thats when it was most visable. again not bad but you could see the individual leds running up the screen

 

This was an A1, not the bestbuy model?

 

I got the fully loaded M17 in my sig like a week after i bought the m17x and i couldnt pass up on the m17 because the price i paid for it was just stupid cheap. So in the end i decided to keep the m17 for now and get rid of the M17x since i didnt need 2 machines. Originally intended to just take everything from the M17 and move it over to the other machine but a friend of mine really wanted the M17x so i let it go to him basically for what i paid. In that time i could have returned it to Dell since i had a couple issues and was well within my rights but decided to hook up said person instead. Hes making payments to me now and when its paid of its his . Hes a member of these forums as well .

I love the M17x for the record except one massive issue to ME and thats the auto contrast , other then that i think its an amazing machine . The screen i have in it is crystal clear like i told you but i dont like how it dims massively on a dark background since tons of games i play take place in dark settings . That made me seriously crazy . Others it does not seem to bother or quite frankly they just dont have a choice so they get used to it.

The LG is in the M17 . It came with a WXGA screen and i need WUXGA . If i sell the M17 ever the old screen is going back in .

 

I don't know if this has been brought up before, but does anyone think that the auto-dim stuff could be a feature of the Nvidia graphic cards? Next time someone changes drivers, when you reboot without the video cards installed, check and see if it still exists.

 

It does, chaz.

It seems to be a feature of the actual panel and is not software related.

 

That's a shame then . . . it indeed must be these Samsung panels.

I am going to mention the uneven brightness issues in my review since that is really what the auto-dim translates to, hopefully Alienware will notice.

 

That's great chaz!

It's good to have that out there by a reputable website such as this one. Maybe AW will choose a different supplier for panels next time...

 

No, it's feature of many LCD HDTVs as well, and is quite hated in general since it's usually very poorly implemented and can't be completely disabled in most of the cases. The manufacturers usually release firmware updates to solve the problem or give people more options to control it, but that's about TVs... Sony, Samsung, Sharp... Google it.

Anyway, I can't imagine why anyone would want this on a notebook... and people have to try to force Dell to do something about that issue as I said earlier, but it seems that they aren't really interested to do anything at this point.

The uneven illumination and the auto-dimming feature are two different things, the latter doesn't cause the former, but this display suffers from both, which actually makes the situation even worse.

 

Yeah hopefully they get it sorted out and also take notice of Chaz's review . I would like to buy again when the new ATIs hit but i think i might wait and see if they also get another panel manufacture or just address the problem period.

I wouldnt mind putting my own screen in the machine but its going to be a decent effort to do so and i would prefer not to at all obviously.

 

So did you ever separate the lcd from the glass?

 

Witcher did and then ordered a TL A2 panel only to find out it is not pin compatible, so no go with any after market screens.

 

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

which part is not compatible?

 

I have to say, after owning both screens for the M17x, the WUXGA is great.

I though I wouldn't like it based on how the WXGA panel was, but I love it

 

Welcome to the light haha

 

You may not mind, but you shouldn't have to. Think about it, would you want to buy a new luxury car only to have to change the engine because it is inadequate? Relatively speaking, a computer's screen is just as important.

AW tauts the M17x as being a premium product among notebooks, and therefore, should not have it configured with components that are in any way inferior. In addition, the screen is the final level of interaction between the machine and it's user, so anything other than a steller operation, would only diminish that overall experience.

Unlike a desktop, a laptop's screen is an integrated component and just isn't something that you'd expect to start off needing to change--especially when it's new. This is something that manufactures needs to get right from the start, and before they put these machines on the market. Anything short of that, is unacceptable.

 

has anyone with complete care needed their screen replaced for having dead pixels or whatever? does alienware/dell send out a tech who replaces the screen with a fully-assembled lid+screeen+glass or do they pry apart the glass from the back and simply replace the screen?

If the glass can be removed, then surely we can put our own, non-gay-azz-dimming screens in this otherwise beautiful machine...?

PS: my palmrest came totally mauled (along with one of the three screw holes below the battery being stripped)... along with a few dead pixels on my screen (and the fact that i can't get stable overclocking beyond 2.8GHz and they screwed up my name plate as if a mentally retarded person was spelling my name), they're shipping me out another m17x with the same specs.

 

Currently there is no panel that will work in there except the one they provide. Someone already pulled apart the glass bought a new screen and then found out it was not compatible.

 

not compatible physically in the chassis or wouldn't display anything when connected to the mobo?

 

There is a ribbon cable that leads from the motherboard to the back to the LCD panel . That cable is not compatible with any LCD out there except the one in it . Dell/Alienware decided to do something special i guess and thats probably why to date only samsung makes there screens. In the past Dell would use LG Samsung and a couple other companys to supply there panels but not for this machine. Trust me when i say i wanted this to work because its the one thing i dont like about the M17x i have .

 

now that you mention it, I did notice the cable's connector was strange. the cable for what I presume is the 9400m is even weirder (almost square)

 

Listen to the man.

We have been thru this already and apparently the 30-pin(right?) cable isn't compatible.

I wanted this to work as much as quad, but sadly it didn't....

 

hi quad and sleey0 do you guys think the plug on the motherboard side is the same as the one on the m17 because getting a m17 lcd cable for the m17x with the tla2 may work

 

I have not looked at the LCD cable for the M17 so im not to sure but something tells me that cable is specific to the M17x. When i swapped Panels on my M17 i didnt have to look at that end and im assuming its under the keyboard somewhere .

 

you may be right but they maybe the same on the motherboard who knows?

 

definitely different motherboards in different laptops dude......

 

Don't think he was asking if the mobo was the same. Just the connector.

 

Just checking. Connector for the monitor is usually standardized right?

 

Most laptops all use the same connector.

I guess it is different in the M17x as witcher took it apart.

I haven't checked personally, so I am going by what witcher observed.

 

The part that connects to the LCD itself changed ever so slightly but what witcher is looking for is if you could just take the cable from the M17 and slap it into the M17x if the connectors are the same to the motherboard . then it could very well be possible.

 

All this makes me even gladder I am happy with my screen haha

 

When it comes to a good screen im a little harder to satisfy then most people . Some are far worse then me though so im sorta inbetween.

 

you got it! sorry i don't know to much english some people don't understand. do you think the connector is the same on m17-m17x on the motherboard side?

 

Im honestly not sure and it would require some digging to find out i imagine. Havent been in the mood to rip this M17 apart since everything i needed access to was right there in the panel on the bottom .

 

what is wierd is according to samsung specs the panel used has a normal lvds2 plug on it so im not sure why it would not work.. i wish i could have got a few pics of the plug itself..

 

He posted them in another thread Z . Witcher could probably dig up the thread.

I was pretty certain it would work as well even though the plugs looked a tad bit different but he confirmed it not fitting .


Never mind i found the thread . http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=414368

Post #34 is the pics you need.