Surface Pro 2, All Images Being Dithered?

[jnjroach]

The sad part, that photo when viewed on the Surface 2 looks great without any artifacting....but the Pro 2 does have the noise. I'll wait for the updated driver from MS though due to the potential negative impact to battery using the reference driver from Intel.

 

[eelpout]

I'm about ready to give up. Something is obviously wonky with my SP2 and it's not just the display adapter driver. I've installed 3345 so many different ways it has to be something else. Check out this gradient from lagom.nl, it should be smooth gray tones, but it breaks down into roughly 4 blocks with banding. The color is even off and looks like a salmon sat on it. It's almost like the color profile and gamut is screwed too. Selecting other profiles appears to have no effect.

I've now done a full reset and reinstall with the Intel driver on top with no success. Maybe it is a hardware firmware issue.

(ignore the vertical moire patterns the camera introduces)

 

[jnjroach]

Same test with Surface Pro 2 Stock Driver:

 

[eelpout]

Booted mine into Ubuntu today and color banding is still present, so it's a hardware or firmware problem. It's going back.

Now that the SP2 is shipping with a 4300u processor, I guess I'll wait so I can confirm I'll get one of those.

 

[eelpout]

Wanted to close off this thread. Returned mine yesterday for another since I got no love from the Intel driver update. Lucky enough to get a 4300u in return (exceptional BB dude ). Video on this one is fine.

I hope those of you who are holding out for next week's firmware update get a fix.

 

[EthanDavis]

Eelpout, how did you get the 4300 -- as an exchange from Microsoft's online replacement service or...?

 

[eelpout]

Eelpout, how did you get the 4300 -- as an exchange from Microsoft's online replacement service or...?

It was a Best Buy purchase so I simply asked for the exchanged unit to be from lot numbers 1351 or higher. They happily complied.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Eelpout, how did you get the 4300 -- as an exchange from Microsoft's online replacement service or...?

The Eel Pouted, that's how!mg:

 

[eelpout]

For those who have this issue, I'll be curious if the firmware released this week addresses this problem (since I no longer have one with that malady myself).

 

[beq]

Just curious if there are any differences in hardware between the units with and without the dithered displays. For those who have run color calibration or display testing, what is your color gamut? FWIW, Spyder4 says all our SP2's only have around 74% of sRGB (and 55% of Adobe RGB) -- maybe I should post the graphs...

 

[beq]

Hmm, our SP2's using stock drivers seem to lie between these two extremes, more akin to the left screenshot from the Microsoft community thread:

???


EDIT: Please view this post on a desktop monitor, to see the differences in the above pics. For example when viewing on my SP2, the second and third images look almost the same...

 

[beq]

I also noticed that IE11 (both Metro and Desktop), Chrome 32/33, and Firefox 26 on the SP2 all render gradients differently. Overall on the SP2 I would rate Firefox best, then Chrome, then IE (but all pale in comparison to anything on my desktop monitor).

For example on the Lagom black level page, Firefox on SP2 actually shows some grey on swatch #6, whereas IE and Chrome don't until swatch #14.

Similarly on the Lagom gradient banding page, Firefox grey gradients extend the furthest towards the edge. But Chrome seems to have the smoothest gradients.

On the Carldavis SmugMug test image, IE has very noticeable dithering on the brown background (!), whereas Firefox and Chrome are much smoother.