matrox 550 brightness

[Barryb]

I have a new matrox 550 dual head card and a pair of samsung 760 tft flat panel monitors. The color black shows up as dark gray. Even when the brightness is at 0 and a blank screen saver is on the monitors glow a dark gray. The edges of the monitors seem to be illuminated. Also the color option control in the matrox software is only available for monitor 1, not monitor 2.

Help

[SteveC]

TFT screens cannot 'do' blacks. To acheive blackness, they try to block out all light coming from the backlight, but it's never perfect, unlike on a tradition CRT monitor where black is simply no electrons being fired.

Try the screens on another PC and you'll see the same, or try using a laptop and make it display a complete black screen.

[Michel Carleer]

Black is no blacker on a CRT, as you will always have some light reflected from the glass surfaces. Also, the phosphors are not black.
Now, some TFT's are better than others at blacks.
Michka

[Wombat]

Black is definitely blacker on a CRT. The anti-reflection and anti-glare coatings have gotten to be very very good these days. Also, a CRT is generally capable of putting out more light than a TFT, so the brights are brighter, and the blacks darker by comparison.

[Michel Carleer]

My own experience, after switching from CRT to TFT, is that TFT black is blacker. Agreed, I got a high quality (read: very expensive) TFT. Anti-reflection and anti-glare are also very good on TFT's. The problem with CRT's is that the phosphor themselves are light grey and that to get a good black, the manufacturer has to include a black filter in the glass. Which lowers the total amount of light transmitted towards the viewer.
It does not mean that TFT's are better, or to be more precise show better contrast, than a CRT. That is certainly not the case. And to make matter worse, TFT's usually show very low contrast in almost black or almost white greys. Their gamma curve is usually strongly S-shaped, being almost horizontal near full black and full white with a normal 45 deg slope for middle-greys.
Michka

[Chucky Cheese]

BarryB,

i'm running the g550 dual dvi with a pair of samsung 210 ts', with the latest drivers. i have color control on both displays color property sheets. on the primary though i have three choices(16,24 and 32 bit) and on the secondary, i have 2(16 and 32 bit)

did your driver load right? try installing them again.

as far as black goes...it is the back lighting that degades the pureness, or depth or whatever it is called(..washing out??)

cc

[Michel Carleer]

Current TFT's still have a limited contrast ratio.
Manufacturers choose to favour either blackness, or brightness, or transition speed, or viewing angle, ...
They do this by selecting the liquid cristal, the way the pixels are built, the polarizers, the backlighting, ...
My Iiyama 4331 has a contrast ratio of 400:1, which is quite good. As the panel is not meant to be used outdoors in direct sunlight, the black levels are very good because the max brightness does not have to be high.
Indeed, I don't see the difference between a completely black picture and the screen backlighting being off.