NEC PA241W w/ SVII sRGB question

[JimGilley]

I just replaced my Dell 2408WFPb with the NEC PA241W. Wow, what a change! It is so nice to have a monitor that can produce something other than nuclear Disneyland super-saturated nonsense. However, I'm still not sure I don't have problems of some sort.

The first thing I tried when I took hooked of the NEC to my PC was to select the factory sRGB profile. This looked pretty good, but since my monitor came with the Spectraview software and puck, I decided to see if I could make things even better. Unfortunately, I think I made things worse.

I downloaded and installed the latest SV software (ending in .0.5 as I recall) on Win7-64 and got everything running, and selected the sRGB emulation target. I initially tried a luminance of 140 (cd/m2 is it?), but this was way, way too bright, so I later tried 100, and that is still too bright, which strikes me as odd. On my Dell, 130 was about as low as I could go, and it seemed pretty dark. I'm not sure why 100 is so super bright on the NEC.

One oddity that I noticed is that during the SV calibration process, it never hits its luminance target. It adjusts the white point at a pretty low luminance, then progressively raises the luminance and repeats this process a few times. However, it never reaches the target. It peaks at about 90 percent of the desired target, but then backs down from there by maybe 5 percent or so. Not really sure what that's all about.

I did get to wondering if perhaps my puck isn't the way it's supposed to be. There are no instructions or images of the puck included with the monitor, so I can only assume that the white plastic "thingie" on the bottom of the puck is supposed to be on there, even though it looks vaguely like some sort of removable protective packaging.

As I said at the beginning, the difference between the Dell (which I will never buy from again or recommend to anyone) and the NEC is like night and day, but I'm still not sure that everything is right with my NEC just yet. Any helpful suggestions or questions? Many thanks!

[raysem]

I just replaced my Dell 2408WFPb with the NEC PA241W. Wow, what a change! It is so nice to have a monitor that can produce something other than nuclear Disneyland super-saturated nonsense. However, I'm still not sure I don't have problems of some sort.

The first thing I tried when I took hooked of the NEC to my PC was to select the factory sRGB profile. This looked pretty good, but since my monitor came with the Spectraview software and puck, I decided to see if I could make things even better. Unfortunately, I think I made things worse.

I downloaded and installed the latest SV software (ending in .0.5 as I recall) on Win7-64 and got everything running, and selected the sRGB emulation target. I initially tried a luminance of 140 (cd/m2 is it?), but this was way, way too bright, so I later tried 100, and that is still too bright, which strikes me as odd. On my Dell, 130 was about as low as I could go, and it seemed pretty dark. I'm not sure why 100 is so super bright on the NEC.

One oddity that I noticed is that during the SV calibration process, it never hits its luminance target. It adjusts the white point at a pretty low luminance, then progressively raises the luminance and repeats this process a few times. However, it never reaches the target. It peaks at about 90 percent of the desired target, but then backs down from there by maybe 5 percent or so. Not really sure what that's all about.

I did get to wondering if perhaps my puck isn't the way it's supposed to be. There are no instructions or images of the puck included with the monitor, so I can only assume that the white plastic "thingie" on the bottom of the puck is supposed to be on there, even though it looks vaguely like some sort of removable protective packaging.

As I said at the beginning, the difference between the Dell (which I will never buy from again or recommend to anyone) and the NEC is like night and day, but I'm still not sure that everything is right with my NEC just yet. Any helpful suggestions or questions? Many thanks!

Remove the white plastic cover - it's for storage only.

Once you've done that, re-calibrate and see if things are better.....

[JimGilley]

Remove the white plastic cover - it's for storage only.
Once you've done that, re-calibrate and see if things are better.....

Thanks for that! I did so and guess what, everything worked out just great. I really thought this might be the case, but I couldn't easily remove the white plastic protector, so I thought it must be some new kind of diffuser. Maybe NEC should put a sticker on it that says "remove before flight" or something to that effect.

I must say that I'm very impressed with this monitor and hope it finally ends my many years of agony with color management. Thanks again for your help!

[semillerimages]

The eye-one puck I have has a white plastic diffuser to use to check the ambient light levels in the calibration process, perhaps this is the same with the NEC one?

*steve

Thanks for that! I did so and guess what, everything worked out just great. I really thought this might be the case, but I couldn't easily remove the white plastic protector, so I thought it must be some new kind of diffuser. Maybe NEC should put a sticker on it that says "remove before flight" or something to that effect.

I must say that I'm very impressed with this monitor and hope it finally ends my many years of agony with color management. Thanks again for your help!

[Alan Goldhammer]

I have the NEC P-221 (the baby brother) and one other thing I've noticed is that you also need to pay attention to the lighting in your room.  Ambient light hitting the puck during the calibration process can effect the overall performance of the calibration as it can reflect of the screen leading to inaccurate readings and a high delta-E.  I've found that by simply turning the lights off gives me a very good calibration.  Of course every room is different and you could also solve this by having a hood over the monitor as well.