Widescreen Gaming Forum

How many people here are clued into this and what are your thoughts on wide color gamut monitors?

I've bought a U2410, which is wide gamut. I've been reading tons of info on the issue and it's enough to make your head spin.

Basically, all wide color gamut monitors (10 bit+) will display most colors inaccurately. From IE to desktop to movies and games, the colors will likely be saturated.

So calibration becomes and issue and you can always use vid card drivers to compensate. I did this using the Ati CCC and dialing down the saturation. Makes colors a tad more 'realistic'.

Basically with wide gamut, the colors will be more saturated than 'normal' as everything - OS, Internet, etc. - is based on 8-bit sRGB color profiles. Wide gamut monitors have 10+bit color profiles and hence they have to try and compensate for the lower color scheme. The result is colors are often far too saturated. The brightest red in sRGB is no where near as bright as the brightest red in 10 bit color.

Firefox 3.5+ now has color management built in, which is cool and I am of the opinion that wide gamut is the future. Windows 7 apparently has color management for their Picture Viewer and Gallery, but not for the desktop manager yet. Mac OS/X has full color management.

I wonder how many games are color managed? I think HL-2 is, which wouldn't surprise me as that game was such a technical marvel.

I'm off to read more about it...

I wonder if this forum could benefit from having a color managed tag/option for game reviews? Most high-end and big LCDs are going to be wide gamut now...could be useful?

Seeing as how I just ordered a 2410 myself, I would be quite interested in this topic. Let me know if you find anything useful for this problem...

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Basically, I think it's a huge kinda messed up issue that will require time to sort out. Things will move to wide gamut, that is certain. Windows 7 started, but it will likely be the next iteration of Windows that will do it fully. Or maybe a Service Pack for 7. So...the good news is that the U2410 is future-proof to some degree, if you plan on keeping the monitor for 5+ years or so.

Bad news is that some stuff is going to look a little messed up until all the software out there gets properly color managed.

It's not a huge deal, like I said, you can use the driver software to tone down the saturation a bit if you find it too bold. Some actually prefer the look, as colors 'pop' more. Most of those bitching about it are the hardcore photography and editor types, who likely use it professionally and hence accurate colors are essential.

For now don't bother with Wide-Gamut unless you are using a workflow that is fully color-managed in a professional sense. Give it a pass if you are using it for everyday desktop use and games.

Valve's games are NOT color-managed! The color correction feature you may be thinking of is something else.

If you have a wide-gamut display, proper calibration and profiling is necessary. I believe newer Nvidia drivers have an option to compensate for wide-gamut displays in the Nvidia control panel.

If you get a calibrated ICC profile for your display, that should sort it, right?

Lots of fairly chap solutions to build an ICC profile.

Games are not color managed. They don't have a CMM module in them.

Making an ICC profile and load it into the GFX lut won't help with the gamut.

Wide gamut to sRGB require a color transformation. There are two ways of doing this currently:

By hardware where there is a working sRGB preset that do the color transformation on the fly in the screen itself, or by software in the cases where there is a CMM module that do the same for you.

Newer ATI cards (4000 series and up) are supposed to have it over HDMI to TV, but I haven't tested it yet.

Lowering saturation and similar doesn't do anything for the gamut unfortunately and you cannot calibrate gamut through .ICC profiles. The sRGB setting you see in calibration programs refer to the gamma curve, not the gamut.

the sRGB setting on the monitor internally reduces the gamut with some kind of dithering process. Thats the one I use on all 3 monitors.

Its not as fast as game mode with no processing but I can not detect any input lag with it on.

Other than for working on something that requires accurate colors if you like how the standard or game mode looks just leave it there. For me since it was so hard to get all 3 of my monitors color matched on just sRGB mode I am not going to mess with the other modes and also sRGB mode was more than good enough for gaming for me. (and its annoying to change all 3 monitors modes, the left monitor tucked behind the center monitor does not react to button presses very well)

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that's the main reason why I bought the NEC 2490WUXi monitor...it's one of the best LCD's out and one of the last of the standard gamut ones...for reasons unknown to me all LCD's are moving to wide gamut even though it does not make things better at all

I'm not so certain that wide gamut is even future proof as that would mean that all games, software and OS features will have to be color managed and I don't see that happening...maybe I'm wrong and someone can enlighten me but is wide gamut going to take off anytime soon (even within 5 years)?

plus it's not like your standard gamut LCD will stop working properly even if more applications become color managed...so to me it's a no brainer to choose standard gamut

its one of those chicken and the egg things.

i dont think the PC industry thinks they need to improve to 10 bit, as it probibly means a lot of work for a game designer, OS designer etc.

however, screen manufacturers find it easy to include the feature, so if one screen is not WCG, and the other is, consumers go by the more stickers better syndrome and get the WCG one anyway.

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that's the main reason why I bought the NEC 2490WUXi monitor...it's one of the best LCD's out and one of the last of the standard gamut ones...for reasons unknown to me all LCD's are moving to wide gamut even though it does not make things better at all

I'm not so certain that wide gamut is even future proof as that would mean that all games, software and OS features will have to be color managed and I don't see that happening...maybe I'm wrong and someone can enlighten me but is wide gamut going to take off anytime soon (even within 5 years)?

plus it's not like your standard gamut LCD will stop working properly even if more applications become color managed...so to me it's a no brainer to choose standard gamut

Displayport hints towards wide gamut (16bit).

Apple just released snow leopard OSX and they've moved the gamma curve from 1.8 to 2.2.

Firefox (3.5+) is color managed.

Windows 7 contains the architecture for color management, though it is currently implemented in the Windows Gallery and Portrait features only at this point.

It seems inevitable that Windows and OSX will become fully color managed. It make take a service pack or two, or perhaps the successor to Windows 7, but it will come IMO.