Notebook: Ultra BrightView gamut is not accurate??

[lllusion]

I've read that while the 17.0" WXGA+ Ultra BrightView Widescreen offers a wider gamut the colors aren't acctually accurate. Is this true? If so how/why?

As a digital photographer who uses Colorvision's Spyder2 for monitor calibration, color accuracy is very important (as is a wide gamut).

I'm not sure which screen to get for my HP dv9000t: 17.0" WXGA+ Ultra BrightView Widescreen (1440x900) or the 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Widescreen (1680x1050). I like the idea of the former because the dual lamps give "improved color gamut by 72%", but the latter would give a lot more realestate to work with. But if the WXGA+ U.BV doesn't acctually give better colors then realestate is better.

Thoughts?

 

[Hose]

I've read that while the 17.0" WXGA+ Ultra BrightView Widescreen offers a wider gamut the colors aren't acctually accurate. Is this true? If so how/why?

As a digital photographer who uses Colorvision's Spyder2 for monitor calibration, color accuracy is very important (as is a wide gamut).

I'm not sure which screen to get for my HP dv9000t: 17.0" WXGA+ Ultra BrightView Widescreen (1440x900) or the 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Widescreen (1680x1050). I like the idea of the former because the dual lamps give "improved color gamut by 72%", but the latter would give a lot more realestate to work with. But if the WXGA+ U.BV doesn't acctually give better colors then realestate is better.

Thoughts?

You must presume that ALL notebook screens will have TN panels and therefore have less color fidelity than higher-end desktop monitors. The terms "color accuracy" and "notebook computer" should probably not be used in the same sentence.

 

[lllusion]

Hmm, I wasn't so clear. Let me try again.

I've read that the colors on the the WXGA+ Ultra BrightView aren't as accurate as on the WSXGA+ BrightView. (HP dv9000t)

The former has a 72% wider gamut but I'm wondering if this is brightness gamut or actual color gamut. In any case, why would the colors on the WXGA+ Ultra BV be less accurate than the colors on the WSXGA+ BV?

 

[Hose]

It would be hard to tell and difficult to get that info. The Brite screen on both of them would be identical, but the chip which drives them could cause a difference.

 

[lllusion]

If they have different light sources, then it might offer a wider color gamut....

Double lamps give it greater brightness.

However, I have yet to grasp what this concept is all about -- as in how can a monitor go beyond the full black to full white greyscale range (realizing that it is actually a combination of red, green, and blue)? And how does the lamp factor into this (special CCFL tubes vs LED vs standard tubes)?

Explanation:
For the sake of simplicity in I’ll stick to the HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) and LAB color spaces as it applies to the BrightView issue (with a quick digression into RGB for comparison sake).

HSB is what most of think of, although we don’t know it.
Hue describes what we normally think of as color when differentiating red, yellow, green, blue, violet.
Saturation is the intensity of the color: i.e. just plain red or hot red.
Brightness is the degree of brightness intensity: i.e. faded yellow or deep yellow.

LAB (pronounced ‘L’ ‘A’ ‘B’ --not ‘lab’) separates all contrast into one channel and color into two channels. This is by far the most powerful color space. The gamut is so wide that it contains imaginary colors. (If you want to know more I recommend reading the first 2 chapters of Dan Margulis’ Photoshop LAB Color book.) LAB is the color space that is most similar to how the human eye works.
L contains all the contrast from white to black with no color
A contains no contrast and only describes the color range from magenta (roughly) to teal-green (roughly)
B contains no contrast and only describes the color range from yellow to blue.

RGB is Red, Green, Blue.
Color and contrast are mixed in this color space. Each channel, when viewed on its own, is a black and white image but when mixed with another channel color is revealed. There are various flavours of RGB with varying gamut widths (the range of color variation). In order of increasing gamut; sRGB is the default for web use. AdobeRGB is common among photographers, ProPhotoRGB is increasing in popularity as hardware gets upgraded to handle the increased demands of this color space.

Current monitors can’t display truly wide gamut--laptop monitors being more prone to this. This is why I’ve been so interested in the Ultra BrightView since maybe there was some breakthrough. However, my guess after a lot of searching is that it’s only the brightness gamut, and perhaps a small amount of saturation that is being increased, while the hue gamut remains the same. This means that for photographers the Ultra BrightView isn’t actually useful. Instead the increased resolution of the WSXGA+ will be more helpful since more image can be seen while in Photoshop.

 

[lllusion]

Here's a comparison between HSB and RGB.
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=color+space&i=40002,00.asp

 

[Traveller]

The former has a 72% wider gamut but I'm wondering if this is brightness gamut or actual color gamut.

Usually tech articles quote such values as a percentage of the *NTSC Color Gamut. 72% is the [current] norm** and I very much doubt you'll find anything with a greater percentage (such as "Wide Gamut CCFL" @92% or LED backlighting @114%) on a Notebook... .

*ipctechnology.com
**nec-lcd.com or this Wikipidea entry should do the trick

Thus, if one model is less "accurate" than the other, the article in question may be referring to the panel's state prior to the user calibrating it. Some users don't own HW calibration tool(s) and thus a panel's default accuracy is important. This is something that should be of less interest to you as you clearly have access to a HW calibration tool... .

Last but not least, it's always helpful when a poster provides a forum with a reference to the article he/she is quoting from. Yes, even if it is in written form (from a journal or magazine)... :!:

 

[lllusion]

Thanks for the links.
The 72% gamut I was referring to was quoted from HP's site.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/popups/moreInfo.jsp?modelBase=EZ345AV&category=DISPLAY

I ended up going with the WSXGA+ to get the greater resolution. I was afraid that the Ultra Brightview was getting more saturation via channel mixing.