NEC 2690 Strange colorations vertical line pattern

[jonstatt]

I have just purchased a European NEC 2690 SV. As already stated in other threads, it does not come with the Eye-One Display 2 (which fortunately I already had). It comes with a guarantee of zero pixel defects and that the monitor is performing within better tolerances than the non-SV model (a 2 page tech printout is provided to prove this). Additionally it comes with the EU hardware calibration software BasICColor. It is supposed to come with a hood, but they are out of stock from the supplier, so you get a voucher instead.

My unit was revision 4B and serial starting 731 which has no high pitched whine/hum noises that have affected a number of consumers. It also has no pixel issues as per the spec.

If I just place a plain grey screen, and check for shading (colouration issues), it looks pretty good overall. It does change slightly towards the edges but overall is quite good.

However, I got a real scare that was severe shading issues when I put up the vertical line test screen in Monitor Test. With this program you can display a pattern of alternating on off pixels in either vertical or horizontal lines (or both). With horizontal lines, everything looks fine...but with vertical lines, parts of the screen look distinctly reddish, and others distinctly greenish. Its very strrange indeed.

You can download this program at http://www.geocities.com/tvdarekz/ although you can also see a vertical line test pattern amongst the patterns with the NEC provided Naviset.

Could anyone else with any incarnation of the 2690 try this on theirs and see what happens?

[jonstatt]

As an aside, I did notice that the screen came with some fingerprints on it and there were some superficial scratches (the sort of mark from a ring on the finger, or a watch strap) on the bezel near the top right where they add a "Spectraview" sticker. There were also some removable marks near the centre of the screen where they had placed their own calibration tools. The fingerprints and marks come off fairly easily, but nevertheless you don't expect to see it.

I suspect that whoever handles the "hand picking" process in Europe with these monitors is not as careful as those in the factory.

I certainly won't return a working monitor for the sake of some superficial scratches but they should be a little more careful!

Also I noticed that grey uniformity does degrade as you calibrate the monitor to lower and lower brightness levels. So for example, at the provided 250cd/m2 the uniformity with colorcomp on is exmplorary. But when calibrating at 100cd/m2 it seems to maintain perfectly horizontally, but not so perfect vertically.

For your information, in Europe, they use an Eye One tool to take readings of white from a fairly considerable number of points (I think its 26) across the screen. Based on the peak delta tolerance and average delta tolerance (as compared to the centre patch reading), the monitor is deemed suitable for spectravew standards. This is all done by hand and is quite a time consuming process I am sure! With colorcomp, I am unsure if this extra manual check is really neccessary but I guess NEC Europe are taking no chances.

Jonathan

[tagor]

I had a European non-SV 2690 (I returned it). It couldn't display some test pictures, e.g. with vertical lines spaced at 1 pixel intervals and would show a huge amount of flickering and bad green shifts in the lower half of the screen.

Color uniformity was poor with the upper half of the screen being significantly warmer than the lower half. Colorcomp on/off didn't make a large difference (it did help with luminance uniformity). This was at 120cd brightness, low brightness mode; lowest brightness in normal brightness mode was 160cd. I didn't check at higher brightness levels, since I wouldn't use it that way.

Oh, it made those buzzing noises as well (two different ones in fact).

The revision was the same as yours, 4B, serial 731......, manufactured 3/2007.

-- Tilo

[pigasus]

Could anyone else with any incarnation of the 2690 try this on theirs and see what happens?
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I noticed this on my SV2960 a couple of months ago.  It shows up when there is white text on a black background or whenever I highlight text.

I spent days on the phone with NEC UK trying to sort the problem.  They sent me a second monotor to test, but it was the same.  I have just accepted this as the nature of the beast, since other than with text, I don't see the problem.

Sigh.


Sally