Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: lhodaniel on April 15, 2017, 01:37:28 am
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Ok, I have to rant a bit. It seems that an issue I had been having intermittently with my rMBP sometimes disconnecting USB ports was not Sierra or the Mac hardware. My i1 Display Pro has developed a break or short in the USB cable up near the device. The problem started just after the 2 year warranty was up. I know that Xrite products garner favor here over their Datacolor counterparts, but My old Spyder 3 lasted longer than that. And, I expect more from Xrite.
As a recovering engineer, I have never liked the physical design of the Display Pro. The "footprint" is too narrow, making it less rotationally stable when trying to make it lie flat on the monitor. Far more egregious is the flimsy, spaghetti-sized, soldered-in USB cable. And they put a *counterweight* on it! Really? Given my 2-week calibration period and sometimes going way over that, I would say this DP has been used about 50 times. And, because of my rightful distrust of the durability of the cable, I have really *babied* this thing from the get-go. I am less than happy.
I have an i1Pro1 Spectro (2 actually) that I can use. But, as you might expect, I get higher black points with it. For profiles that i want maximum contrast ratio, My PA241/SpectraviewII goes from over 600:1 down to 412:1 with i1 Pro.
I have an RMA request in to X-rite to see what my out-of-warranty options are and their costs. I will not buy another i1DP at retail. I can get the low or mid-range Spyder 5 for much less, and I wouldn't use their software anyway. (The Spyder 5 hardware is not crippled at the low end like the Colormunki Display is.) If necessary, I can calibrate it with the i1 Pro.
Lloyd
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Believe me, you're not talking to someone who is a big fan of XRite - I think it's a dreadful outfit from a number of perspectives, but the fact remains that once you set aside all the crap, the core technologies are very performing and their hardware/software can make excellent profiles. Choosing between one firm and another my fundamental criteria would remain profiling quality, because the outcome of that matters a lot to where all my time and money is going in digital imaging. Before deciding what to do, perhaps worthwhile exhausting the discussion with them about what they will do for you, then make a decision based on what you glean from reviews of comparative profiling quality.
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Mark,
Well, even though there was one diligent guy in tech at x-rite, they offered *nothing*. I'm just supposed to suck it up and buy a new retail unit. For a lousy under-designed USB cable. Junk the car because it blew a tire. I might tear into the thing to see if I can put a new cable on it.
If I replace the colorimeter at all (I still have i1Pro and Publish), I will probably give a Spyder 5 a try. It's half or less (Express or Pro) than the i1DP. I Use Spectraview II or DisplayCal for displays anyway. I have a friend calibrating a 30" NEC with the Spyder 5 and SVII. He is very happy with it and his monitor looks great.
Lloyd
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I have a friend calibrating a 30" NEC with the Spyder 5 and SVII. He is very happy with it and his monitor looks great.
Lloyd
Likewise, although I have the 27" NEC.
NEC actually conversed with me by email several times over a long weekend to solve a problem I had. Now THAT'S service.
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As fate would have it, B&H just had a Deal Zone on the Spyder: $95 for Pro and $150 for the Elite. I went ahead and sprung for the latter, just to get a look at their software. If X-rite had offered me a replacement i1DP for $150, I would have that coming instead. But they didn't.
SVII supports both. The only software cal I do now is my rMBP screen. If I want to go this far for a laptop, I can create a correction file with the i1Pro for Argyll/DisplaCal for that particular Spyder 5. That should eliminate any unit-to-unit variation the Spyder might have.
I'll report how the Spyder performs when I get it next week.
Lloyd
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Spyder is due this afternoon. In the meantime, I dismantled the i1 Display Pro in about 10 minutes. There is even a youtube video of a guy tearing down one he plans to use (a functional one.) This added insult to injury. The device that X-rite says is "unrepairable" comes apart easily enough. Lo and behold, the USB cable is socketed, not soldered as I expected. It's just a USB 2 to 1.25mm 5-pin Molex. X-rite doesn't WANT to repair it. They want to screw the customer out of another $250 for a new device at retail. If I had the cable, I could do the whole repair in less than a half hour.
Lloyd
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Hi Lloyd - yes, XRite exactly.
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I was thinking of buying an X-rite display pro 1...
Some reviews on the quality of the measurements turned out very positive....
Can you choose the kelvin temp with the software? i want to use it at 5800K and 90cd brighness
I had an Eye-one display 2 before but it stopped being reliable after only 2 years of use.
As i understand from this topic the measurements are good but the built quality is on a low level…
is that correct?
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I might tear into the thing to see if I can put a new cable on it.
Nothing to lose.
Please take photos as you take it apart, if it really is just a duff USB lead/connection it would be useful to post the fix for anyone else suffering the same problem.
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I would think that it'd be pretty easy for someone w/ decent soldering skills or the right connector/pins/crimper.
Is the problem lack of strain relief on the cable?
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I had some similar story with my i1DisplayPro. died after 2.5 year of occasional use with my Eizo CX240, because of no reason. out of warranty time. sent to x-rite service in the Netherlands, after nearly 3 months of being silent, the cost of repair appeared (electronics got broken) = 1.5x the price of a new unit! they must be kidding and treat customers like idiots!
now I do not touch settings of my monitor, and hope that Eizo stability will last at least till the end of this year...
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Rhossydd, too late on the photos. I already had it in pieces. It isn't that hard to figure out and there is a youtube on tearing one down. I'm 99% sure it is a duff cable. I can have it connect and then go nuts upon moving the instrument a bit. Classic symptoms of a cable break. Finding replacement cables is easy if you want to get at least 800 of them from the Chinese. This is where X-rite could come to the rescue if they had any customer service genes. But they don't. I found one US outfit that has the connector on a short dongle to a female USB-A for $15. An a-to-a extension could then be used. The cable goes through a hole in the swinging diffuser and the side that is under it. Those would have to be notched to get an assembled cable through, which might be risky from a stability standpoint. The best course would be to have a bare wire lead to pass through and then a loose connector to crimp in after. The connector is a Molex PN 51021-0500.
I like the Spyder 5 and am keeping it. It reads about 250K warmer than my i1Pro, but I can adjust for that if needed. Black points are at least as good as the i1DP. I did get an Elite to look at their software. I don't know if Datacolor cherry-picks to give Elites the best instruments, but mine is every bit as good as the DP. It works great with SVII, DisplayCal, and the Spyder software. The latter seems fine for my laptop screen and is much faster than Argyll/DisplayCal. If I had a main monitor that had to be software-calibrated, I would use DisplayCal and maybe just get a Spyder Pro or even Express.
The Spyder has the same thin USB cable but its weight (the cap) is lighter. It also looks like it might tear down in a way that cable replacement would be easier, assuming it is socketed. I don't see a reason not to use Datacolor display colorimeters. Their PrintFix thing is inferior to ColorMunki and i1Pro sprectros. I had one years ago and it was not good. But the new one at least will strip read. For $250, I could probably fiddle with it and get good profiles for myself. But, for pro work or doing printer profiles for others, I think we are stuck with X-rite.
Lloyd
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The best course would be to have a bare wire lead to pass through and then a loose connector to crimp in after. The connector is a Molex PN 51021-0500.
Why not just shorten the cable and re-connect the Molex ? (i.e. the break is very likely to be at the instrument.)
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What? And make it simple? ;D