Maybe I'm a bloody idiot, maybe it's Microsoft....

Hi there,

I just noticed something which makes me feel bloody mad and grateful at the same time.

I own an awesome Sony Vaio Z3 that comes with a full-HD IPS panel with 96% Adobe wide-gamut colour representation.

And yesterday, the 1st of June 2013, a day that will live in infamy with me, I realized something about Winblows that I was wholly ignorant of. I realized that setting you display colour depth to 24-bits and the resolution to 1920x1080 doesn't bloody give you the wide-gamut colour. I realized that in order to have a wide-gamut colour reprresentation on Windows you have to change your colour profile from the standard sRGB (35% gamut) to the ProPhoto one (90+% gamut).

Right click on desktop - screen resolution - advanced settings - "colourmanagement" - advanced - change system standards - and there select the ProPhoto (Kodak) icc-profile. Choose absolute colorithmic representation and 'photography' as quality and restart.

The color profile works in Windows desktop, games, yandex webbrowser, etc. but NOT(!) in Winblows photoviewer, so you have to get another program to view photos in. I found Irfanviewer which allows one to select ProPhoto ICC-profile. The colour profile also works in Cyberlink PowerDVD. Haven't bothered looking at Windows Media Player so dunno if it applies there.

So, there you ahve it, after having owned this laptop now for 3/4 of a year, my display just got a PREMIUM 1000-buck upgrade and that without instaling 'Blue'...

 

Thanks. My rather old VPCZ1 only gives me limited choices, but I'll be replacing my display soon (broke it ) so this is interesting. Where did you get that profile from? Was it installed on your system by default or did it come with some software (Adobe Premiere, for instance)?

 

it comes with Winblows but isn't used as standard....

 

You missed one thing, Z1, Z2 and Z3(SVZ) FullHD LCD is not IPS.

 

Well it's not a TN panel eiter... So it's one of those other panel types then if it's not IPS. either way, the panel is better than the most IPS panels on the market....

 

Where is it located by default? I cannot find it in the list.

 

No idea. It's not the same folder as in Win 7. Guess you'll have to search for it then... There's also a Wide-Gamut color profile. Should be in your list...

 

Slightly bad news, mostly all good: your panel is truly a TN, as all the superb Z 900p and 1080p were going back to the Z1 and through your "Z3"/SVZ13. The great news is that they are, indeed, the finest TNs the world has seen and all the color gamut - and accuracy, by the way - is absolutely correct - though I confess I have never heard of the need for a wide gamut color profile to get the color breadth the screen is known for; mine (both) have always seemed superb but I have never altered the stock default color profiles. The screens have fantastic specs, more typical of IPS/PLS/PVA screens in terms of contrast (700-1,000) and insanely deep blacks (0.3-0.4 cd/m black levels), etc. Brightness has waxed and waned if you look at the measurements by notebookcheck.net over the years and models, ranging from a high of 280 nit to a low of just over 200 nit. Never clear whether this was model year variation or just intra-model production variation. The only giveaway that they are TN panels is in the color inversion from vertical viewing angles greater than about 15 degrees. Even the horizontal viewing angles are nearly as stable as IPS. Other than in vertical viewing angles, there is nothing inherently limited in TN technology that makes all TNs worse than all IPS displays. Sony just seemed to make an odd decision to have these legendary screens made as TNs though IPS technology was available and not much more costly, considering the screens in the Z's ran around $600 as it was.

 

Did you feel the difference?

 

Also, is there a performance hit associated with it? I don't much care for photos, but if I can use it to improve video and gaming picture quality on my screen and/or my LED TV, I'm all for it.

You can get the profiles from here: https://sites.google.com/site/chromasoft/icmprofiles

 

I'm still confident the Vaio Z3 Premium Display is not using a TN panel... Maybe it's a MVA panel. I thought it was an IPS, but if you say it isn't then I'll accept that. However, I doubt this is a TN panel, it's just too good for that. With that said though, I've not noticed any performance drop from changing Windows' color profile to the ProPhoto one...

 

Try this Viewing angle - Lagom LCD test

 

Most cheap displays are TN, but that doesn't mean that all TN displays are bad. Twisted Nematic just describes the way the electrodes in the LCD "twist" the liquid crystals to change their alignment. There are very good TN displays and not-so-good IPS displays.

 

Based on this test, the Vaio Z3 Premium Display is definitely not a TN panel... The colors are all consistent across the whole monitor, crisp and clear. Viewing angels are good horizontal, not that good vertical. Still, the so-called 'TN panel' effect is nowhere to be seen...

 

Coming back to the main question... Definitely Microsoft. You need to be an idiot to create Windows 8... and then even bigger idiot to believe that we gonna buy on the Fake Start button trick.

 

Have you actually tried it? I thought people had stopped manually clicking through the Start menu back when Vista was released and the type-to-run search function was added.

 

The proof of TN is exactly that it have so-so vertical viewing angle. People would never buy any screen/TV/monitor if the color is not even uniform .

 

Then I mistook vertical viewing angle for horizontal... Small mistake...

Good vertical viewing angels, not so good horizontal ones...

 

Can you explain how to do this in windows 8? i did this: http://i.imgur.com/bVDK01L.jpg but it didnt make a difference...

 

viewing conditions, choose ICC instead of WCS.
Default rendering, choose absolute colorithmic (or what it's called in English...
Then in all the rest, choose photography.

But you should do these changes also in 'Change system defaults' -the box on the lower left side of the window...