Notebook screen calibration - massive difference & far more enjoyable.

I own an HP Pavilion dv5-1005tx (specs in sig) and stumbled upon some posts as to calibrating your notebook screen. I wasn't too happy with the bland colors and that uncomfortable glare when reading text on a white background and generally text reading when web surfing. Dimming the backlight didn’t make things nicer whatsoever. My panel is an AUO 1280x800.

I saw a post where cpu2k mentioned this website http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ for basic screen calibration so I spent probably over an hour fiddling around with my nvidia control panel setting “adjust desktop color settings” while looking at the pictures (dragged control panel to very small size and out of sight, using arrow keys to adjust sliders) until I optimised the contrast, black level, white saturation (a BIG one) and gamma settings. The standard settings abysmally failed the white saturation test which shows why text was annoying to read. Gamma is the biggy here. 50% is far far to high for this screen. I have traded off not meeting the gamma test perfectly to optimise the white saturation test, where #254 is just very barely visible if you look hard.

The black level test was also a good one – to make sure all the squares are visible without increasing the shade of the black background – so absolute maximum black on the background while still seeing shade #1. Anyway after excessive tweaking I have come up with these results

Brightness = 50% (was right on the line of perfection already)

Digital Vibrance = whatever is your personal taste, it doesn’t feature in the tests. Mine’s at 7%

Contrast = 42% (as black as the monitor is physically able + showing complete selection of dark shades)

Gamma = 14% (is lowish on the gamma test but that’s a tradeoff for tweaking the other tests to the optimum, specifically white saturation, the result is far far better colors, darker darks and yet still showing all the dark shades.)

Showing a page of text in MS Word or any internet page showing text and selecting “restore defaults” in Nvidia control panel while viewing said page immediately shows the massive benefit of adjusting this panel as the standard settings are rubbish. To optimise for photos simply change the gamma to 30%, it’s a tradeoff though between that and white saturation performance. Regardless 14% is far closer to reality in photos than the standard 50%! Honestly, it makes an incredible difference in my enjoyment of this laptop and I hate thinking of missing the info on calibration and poking along with the standard settings. Naturally different resolution and brand screens will require different settings.

 

What you should do it per channel gamma adjustment.
I'm using this gamma for my HDX16t:
Red: 35%
Green: 30%
Blue: 15%
DV: 9%

You don't have to adjust Brightness and Contrast.

Also when you adjusting gamma with your eyes, make sure you are in a dark room and turn off all lights to achieve better result.
Due to poor LCD view angle, make sure your eye is perpendicular to the LCD.


Of course, using a color sensor hardware such as Spyder and Huey is more accurate. If you follow my above suggestions you'll get pretty close result.

 

Ideally individual red-green-blue gamma adjustment would definitely be best. The gamma test shows my color gammas are uneven.

>I thought I couldn't adjust the individual gamma but just as I type this I checked, and yes, I can adjust the individual gammas! Don’t know how I missed it. Thanks for that. I'm going to fine tune. Your settings look like what I would expect.

 

Yup... individual colour gamma adjustment is best... it'll be more accurate...

I also spent an hour or two getting it to display the colour properly... I had a colour calibrated CRT beside the notebook to make comparisons so I could get it as close to the CRT as possible... the LCD is still a little a bit cool for my liking... but it's A LOT bearable now than before...

I was disappointed at display when I first got my DV7... everything looks washed out... but after finding that website and fiddling around with the colours setting, it made a real big difference... made a poor looking display at least half decent now...

 

I'm testing out some of your settings, with gamma set to 14% here it looks too "whited-out". So I tried these settings:
Brightness: 44% (so the two black bars are black)
DV: 7%
Contrast: 50%
Gamma: 7%

 

every panel will be different, it's just like calibrating an LCD TV.

 

After a good deal of messing about I've found that pretty much all the adjustment influence each other slightly. Such as gamma position x means contrast can be shifted further to position y and so on. After evening out my individual color gamma in the nvidia control panel I have

red = 18
green = 14
blue = 8

contrast 42

I've found contrast does change things a bit and I've set it to 42. The difference between 42 and 47 on black screens seems to introduce a barely perceptible red influence and some of the dark shades of the black level test tend to have pinkish tints. However the setting of 42 improves slightly the white saturation test. Tilting the screen even marginally will influence gamma quite a bit. Anyway I'm fairly happy with the results and I could probably keep going for hours without getting anywhere much further.

And yeah different panels will need different adjustments. Just cranking down gamma is about 95% of the benefit really. Definitely I will adjust my lcd screens from now on as I’ve found that it definitely improves things. Restoring defaults makes you realise that, man, the original settings were hideous.

 

Very true. I have 3 DV9500T's that are exactly similar, yet they are very different in this respect (and a few others too, for example, one's network card is much faster). When I say exactly similar, I mean it, right down to the disk images.

It's worth noting that just like each panel is different, each calibration unit is different as well, and will produce different results.

Joe

 

Would the above configuration work for all notebook screens? I have an HDX18t, and the black level while watching blu-ray looks quite gray. Especially when the Windows cursor is moved and the black Media Smart toolbar comes onto the screen. It has the GeForce 9600M GT card in it.

 

I've just found out the Nvidia driver version has a big impact on calibration settings. When I first calibrated my screen I was using the factory bundled 175.86 drivers. After I updated to 180.43 and set my contrast and color gammas to the above settings that worked so well under 175.86 I found it was too dark and looked awful. So a lesson learned, changing driver version means that your callibration settings may not look good under the new driver. Changing the driver probably means you will need to re-callibrate again.

I should imagine that for an identical model laptop having a screen produced by the same manufacturer with the same resolution, differences should be minor. The graphics driver is what I think would cause the most significant difference between screens of the same model and manufacture. I reverted back to my 175.86 driver after discovering the 180.43 gave me a 3dmark05 score about 200 points slower.

 

It's better if you actually go through with the calibration yourself... every panel is different, so the posted settings that will work for that person might not be right for your panel...

 

I got my HP DV7t about 4 weeks ago and was abit dissappointet in the LCD screen. It was definately not as bright as my HP dv9548. Does anyone have some good color settings for the DV7. Thanks!

 

As cpu2k said, it's best if you go through the calibration yourself.

 

"bright" meaning the brightness of the panel? or you mean the colours are not as bright?

Can't really help you on the phyiscal brightness of the screen... the backlight can only output so much light... so the brightest setting is the max it can put out...

If your colours are not as vibrant or "bright".... you can adjust that inside the NV control panel... I have the Digital Vibrance slider at 22%... gives the colours a little more intensity...

I recommend you adjust your gamma, contrast and brightness first... I find the out-of-the-box settings for the DV7 to be washed out... fixing the gamma alone makes a lot of difference... then add some digital vibrance...

 

Thanks for your response. By being bright I guess i meant that i too found the display to be washed out. I came across this thread yesterday and started to play with the settings and wow, much better. I tried to do the calibrations but i swear my eyes were going cross! I just thought that if one of you had a dv7 1680 x 1050 non infinity display you could provide what setting you found to be best. Thanks. I'm new at posting and tweaking

 

No problem it takes a bit of time and effort to get it right... but once you hit the right settings... the screen is actually quite enjoyable to use...

 

Hey, sorry for bringing up such an old thread. The link for gamma calibration helped me A LOT and should be brought to the attention of every dv5 owner. When I switched on my laptop I was like arghhh/holy shi---/whoa, what?! Then I found this thread and tried the gamma calibration while comparing it with my 20" monitor. When I realized I was comparing a laptop screen with a monitor one with 3000:1 contrast and a 1680x1050 res I decided the current settings would satisfy my needs. I mean they were almost perfect on the test. If there are still people out there, who are searching for settings they may want to consider trying mine too:
Brightness: 50% (duh)
Digital Vibrance: 9%
Contrast: 50%
Gamma red: 38%
Gamma green: 34%
Gamma blue: 25%

I was curious about one more thing: can someone tell me the exact technical specs of the dv5 screen - reaction time, contrast, stuff like that?

 

Yes calibration is an absolute must with the dv5 and probably many other laptops. Correcting the gamma makes a big difference.