I received the NEC Spectraview 27"" monitor and separately purchased Spectraview II calibration package today from B&H Photo via UPS ground. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had purchased the calibration package separately to ensure I was getting the latest sensor. What I received today is exactly what was expected, ie., latest sensor design with Spectraview II software, plus NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK 27"" monitor.
First task, start up the new monitor... First surprise, it had the same odd side-to-side uniformity issues I was experiencing with the Apple 20"" Cinema display I was replacing. My 20 inch Cinema display has thousands of hours of run time on it, and I was experiencing a subtle but annoying "darker and more greenish gray" on the left side and a "slightly lighter and more magenta gray" color on the right side of the display. Now, in terms of delta E, we might be talking about 3-4 delta E from left to right on my old monitor. I was able to successfully "ignore" the problem when softproofing, but it sure was annoying. I plugged in the the new NEC MultiSync PA271W-BK 24 monitor, fired it up, and much to my dismay it showed more or less the same non uniformity problem. It was eery how little improvement I was getting with this new high-end expensive monitor. Next, I installed the Spectraview II software on my computer and plugged in the latest sensor that NEC supplied with this package. I ran the calibration routine...what a straightforward joy to use! And to my delight, the non uniformity issue was gone!!!. Moral of this story: I was blaming my Apple Cinema Display non-uniformity issues on the monitor, but the culprit is my video card in my Macbook Pro computer that is used to drive the display. With a better video card, I might not have elected to replace the Cinema Display, but that's not really an option with a MacbookPro.
Once the NEC software was installed and put into play, the monitor calibration was then handed off to the higher-bit depth internal LUT on board the NEC Spectraview monitor itself, effectively bypassing the video card in my Macbook Pro. This is really what one is paying for with the NEC combined monitor/calibration bundle. The result: an impressively uniform display side-to-side with the best reproduction of this target (
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4448ZGxkLzBeMTAwMDAwMDAwMTIzNDU2Nzg5LyoxMDM=) that I have ever achieved. The NEC Spectraview monitor with calibration package really rocks, and I learn something new every day
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com