Are we doomed to a future of all wide-gamut displays?

Seems like all the new high-end displays are wide gamut. Have the panel makers given up on sRGB? This really sucks considering Windows and games are not color aware. Guess its not a big deal if all you do is surf the web using Firefox and the color aware plugin for it...or if you could care less about glowing colors on the screen.

I dont want to settle for lower quality or using old tech. So what is the outlook???

Your attitude that "it's the panel/monitor manufacturers' fault" is the reason why we are having trouble with wide-gamut monitors. It's not a monitor problem; it is a software problem. If you want to help the situation, campaign to make the software you use become color managed.

Do you care about color accuracy? If the answer is no, you are fine with wide-gamut monitors. If the answer is yes, you need color managed applications even if you have a standard gamut monitor. It is that simple.

Note: some people have a different view on this topic. See the discussion at the end of the "Can you tell TN from IPS" thread.

mike_j_johnson said:

Seems like all the new high-end displays are wide gamut. Have the panel makers given up on sRGB? This really sucks considering Windows and games are not color aware. Guess its not a big deal if all you do is surf the web using Firefox and the color aware plugin for it...or if you could care less about glowing colors on the screen.

I dont want to settle for lower quality or using old tech. So what is the outlook???

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Its a backwards step to remain with low gamut.
Embrace the future, after all you want your PC to generate images that look like real life .
Windows 7 is wide gamut aware btw, so you dont have to wait too long before you dont need to understand it again

Oh, great! So the way is to create hardware which can't work with software?
What about a super-duper enhanced powerful CPU, whose only flaw would be complete incompatibility with all motherboards?

Furthermore wide-gamut is intensively penetrating also the low-end products.

Before releasing such products, especially when the most such monitors do not have suitable sRGB emulation, they should put pressure on Microsoft and/or gfx card manufacturers to implement a full system colour management.

In defence of the op and Biges, I agree that there needs to better colour profile support.
Its still early days for wider gamut in the mainstream though so currently we are stuck with previous methods that only professionals needed to use for their application(s).
Change is slow but it is coming.
Windows 7's ability to address higher than 24bit colour, and hence extended colourspaces for wider gamuts is a major step forward.

Nenu, do you know if Windows 7 (will) support the full colour management?

This is a very good read on the topic, pre-windows 7.
It doesnt cover what windows 7 can achieve with current hardware/profiling methods but does highlight the issue.
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=723315

of note is the following:
"There are still quite a few problems which have no current solution. Windows as a whole is still not colour aware, so icons and colours may appear oversaturated. Games are also not colour aware, every game to date has been designed in the sRGB colour space (because up until recently that's what most monitors have been reproducing) so colours in games will be inaccurate until a solution is produced. The obvious solution is a colour aware operating system which just automatically tags non-colour managed content as sRGB and rescales the output signal accordingly, perhaps we will see something like this in the future, but unfortunately there's currently no such thing available."

It is now the future and Windows 7 is aware of the larger colour spaces but (most) graphics cards still only use 24bit colour.
Windows should be able to draw from the larger pallet (higher than 24bit) and allocate a subset of that pallet (based on the displays colour profile) to sRGB 24bit colour output.
If the monitor supports more than 24bit colour, it will need to be aware that sRGB is being sent in 24bit format.

The sad truth though is that without a profiled sRGB monitor mode and with current 24bit software/hardware, removing the shades you dont want will lose some of the 24bit resolution.
This results in a form of colour compression as many wider gamut colours cannot be used and thus there are greater steps (less resolution) between adjacent colours and thus some shades will be missing.
This results in some colour banding, much like (but not necessarily as bad as) going back to 16bit colour.
Once graphics cards, displays, the OS and software are able to map and express all colours without this compression (ie all have higher than 24bit capability and correct colour mapping), then the problem will be fully solved.

Given that graphics cards no longer require a DAC (analogue is on the way out) and graphics data is transmitted serially to the display, there is less restriction getting higher bit colour enabled, so maybe it will be possible via a driver update for current gfx hardware.
I imagine that games will continue to only use 24bit sRGB for a long time as it will take a lot more memory and processing power to handle extended colour ranges, something we are short of with 24bits let alone more!


If your wide gamut monitor has an sRGB mode, it should compensate itself (remap 24bit RGB) without any intervention required from the OS.

can we go back to the black and green CRT days? Yeah, what's with all the wide crap? Black and green is all we need.

Biges said:

Oh, great! So the way is to create hardware which can't work with software?
What about a super-duper enhanced powerful CPU, whose only flaw would be complete incompatibility with all motherboards?

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Around, I think, 12 years ago, Intel released the Pentium Pro processor. Initial reviews were mostly negative: while 32-bit code runs quickly, 16-bit code runs slower than on the Pentium processor. Many people thought that PPro was a step backwards; new motherboard, new CPU, for what? Nobody runs 32-bit code anyway. We should just stick to the Pentium.

But I am happy that we did move forward.

I do not have issues moving forward with technology, but I do have issues buying $1000+ screens that are supposedly top end [H]ardcore models just to have most content glow when viewing it on them.

My calibrated NEC 2490 is the best screen I have ever owned, but it looks like I wont be able to top it any time soon. So is Windows 7 color aware for all parts of the UI and will it some how make sRGB games appear correctly?

I am using Windows 7 RC now with my sRGB color profile, but obviously I do not have a wide gamut display yet.

There is no need to complain about your inability to use something properly. Just, well, don't buy it.

And by the way, calibrated or not, unless you are in a color managed application, the colors on your wonderful 2490 are also wrong. Less wrong than on a wide-gamut monitor, sure, but wrong nonetheless.

Yes, Windows 7 does display colours correctly for the desktop when using the monitors profile.
I imagine that apps which arent gamut aware will be displayed using sRGB as the monitor profile is already loaded. hopefully this is correct.
This chap confirms Windows 7 desktop is fine
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=633562

The good news is that Windows 7 is finally color managed and supports wide gamut monitors. I tested it today: connected the laptop to my HP LP 2475w, calibrated the monitor using my Huey Pro calibrator and FINALLY GOT GOOD-LOOKING REDS AND GREENS IN WINDOWS!!!

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Windows 7 Hi Color support
http://keznews.com/5098_Windows_7_High_Color_Support

Users of Window 7 will be able to take advantage of the new High Color capabilities when it will come down to handling HD photos, digital photographs in RAW formats, HD photo and Blu-ray videos.

"Support for improved color is a visible difference in the viewing experience and makes applications look better and leverages the PC owner's hardware investment. Supporting these scenarios reaches out to all segments of users and improves the overall satisfaction with their Microsoft Windows PC. Modern GPUs and displays already support these pixel formats, and new brands are shipping with support for 10-bit and beyond." Microsoft revealed.

The Redmond company has taken Windows 7 beyond 8-bit per channel sRGB and to 10-bit per channel sRGB (high precision); 10-bit per channel xRGB (extended range) and 16-bit per channel scRGB (high precision and wide gamut). In Windows 7 this is valid for the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) and the Windows color system (WCS). Of course, Direct 3D also supports rendering values of 10 bit, 10 bit XR and 16 bit per channel.

On top of the evolution of Direct3D, WIC and WCS, Windows 7 also supports High Color when it comes down to XPS printing, namely for print and image acquisition tasks, but even for Display Drivers (for 10-bit XR and Float16 scan outs).

"Windows 7 provides a complete set of technology to load, display and print High Color content. Using High Color-supported technologies in your applications will provide a premium experience for the users and enable them to fully unleash the potential of their display and print hardware," Microsoft concluded.

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It looks like there is a good feature set already in place and Direct3D is compliant too.


Some handy info for later
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...f/thread/34f8ce60-7343-43b9-b835-8cb50c071e74

At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB.

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The high color or wide gamut displays can be dealt with if you take the time to calibrate
and use the right software. It takes some time and patience plus an ATI video card helps along with the Catalyst Control panel.

Just from the pure fact that I am bringing up color gamuts, color profiles, color management, color aware software, calibration, etc., proves that I am not a complete idiot to this realm as one of you is making it sound. Just because I'm not some pro graphics designer does not mean I am oblivious to how it all works. I have been using Firefox in Vista 64 for quite awhile now along with the color aware plugin. You are right that it does not make much of a difference though since my monitor is sRGB and is calibrated via hardware to sRGB and as far as I know, Vista and most all the apps I use are non-color aware native sRGB. I personally cannot really even tell the difference when using Firefox (in comparison to say IE8).

I have seen wide gamut displays before and the neon colors are horrible in my opinion when viewing in a native sRGB non-color aware OS/App.

I do think this thread is very valid because I see complaints about the wide gamut issue here and on other forums. Again, it is not that I want to halt progress...I would just like more team work between the hardware and software industries (I know..yeah right). If Windows 7 resolves this issue, then I and many others will be happy campers. Now I just need to learn how to properly set it all up (yes, I admit I do not know how to properly setup a wide gamut environment in Win7). Would you need to calibrate one profile for sRGB and one for wide gamut? Anyone willing to write up a how-to?

wow, so basically when nvidia control panel lets me choose 32bit colours it is actually 24bit?

chrcoluk said:

wow, so basically when nvidia control panel lets me choose 32bit colours it is actually 24bit?

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Three 8-bit color channels, plus one 8-bit channel for alpha blending = 32 bits.

chklin said:

There is no need to complain about your inability to use something properly. Just, well, don't buy it.

And by the way, calibrated or not, unless you are in a color managed application, the colors on your wonderful 2490 are also wrong. Less wrong than on a wide-gamut monitor, sure, but wrong nonetheless.

Click to expand...

Maybe you are happy that you have over-saturated colours, but most people are not. And not everryone is an IT professional so he/she can choose an appropriate monitor. People just want to buy a monitor and have colour looking in the exactly same way how the program developers wanted them to look.

So far I'v NOT seen a single complain from a person like "Oh, my sRGB colours look so baaad, I wanna wiiiiiide-gamuuut!". But the exactly opposite posts/topics are quite numerous. And this is important, what do customers, monitor users think.
Maybe you should explaing all these people fighting with their over-saturated monitors how actually the wide-gamut is cool and that they are idiots not to appreciate it.