Anyone interested in a Hi-def (1920 x 1200) mod for PB/MBP?

Read the wiki but nothing mentions why the system must run Leopard. Is it simply a driver with the support for this resolution? If so can the driver be extracted from a Leopard install and grafted onto a Tiger system?

Has there been any recent status change on available 1920x1200 LED displays available that will work with newer machines?

drayon said:

Read the wiki but nothing mentions why the system must run Leopard. Is it simply a driver with the support for this resolution? If so can the driver be extracted from a Leopard install and grafted onto a Tiger system?

Has there been any recent status change on available 1920x1200 LED displays available that will work with newer machines?

Click to expand...

Not sure about the Tiger functionality, mine is Leopard. Now that I have the new screen it works great in OS X but bootcamp Vista looks like crap.

I'm going to try to figure that out tomorrow.

Have not seen anyone carrying a 1920x1200 LED panel

Cheers,

looks like im outta luck trying to obtain info.

like panzer06 discovered there are a multitude of the LG/Phillips LP154WU1 with many suffix. I want a matte and would be well pissed if a glossy turned up. After all panzer ordered a LP154WU1 A01 expecting a glossy an he received a matte.

Tired of having to wait for Apple to ship a new 15.4" machine with the option of a hi res WUXGA. I decided to buy a 17" 1920x1200 earlier this year when they were announced i really only wanted a 15" tho, but sadly had to send that machine back because the display hinges were floppy an the display flopped down on my hands (unusable) when it was on any angle, went thru 3 different units with the same fault until i finally requested a refund. Pretty poor design IMO.

Seems now the only solution is to buy an older 15" machine and mod it with the display res im desperate for. I hate 1440x960, sh!eet is way way to huge for me.

From what i have read there is a lot of inconsistency .

ive scanned a few threads an list some details of the mod using the LP154WU1

• noakail LP154WU1 (from blisscomputers.net)- inverter and the cable for the inverter are not the same. asks for help no-one replys.
• ShadarJP LP154WU1 (A1 K6) [2nd hand from a IBM Lenovo z61p] won't display anything on: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024. no-one offers any help or ideas.
• 5to1 LP154WU1 (from lumenlab .com) flickering timing issue, and a weird buzz issue in 10.5 an Vista
• catdog02481 LP154WU1 [from blisscomputers.net] no issues reported no mention of Vista
• louden LP154WU1 (TL B1) [from-ebay laptopservicecenter/smart-micro] no issues mentioned

anyone else wanna step up an provide some info for the LG Philips LP154WU1

wanna know:
what suffix an did it have brackets
where u bought it
any operational issues in X and Vista
did it automatically work when booted from the Leopard DVD

cool

drayon said:

snip

anyone else wanna step up an provide some info for the LG Philips LP154WU1

wanna know:
what suffix an did it have brackets
where u bought it
any operational issues in X and Vista
did it automatically work when booted from the Leopard DVD

cool

Click to expand...

As you know I purchased the LP154WU1 A01 Glossy and received Matte
Received just the LCD panel with one cord sticking out. Tech used existing inverter, etc.
Tech had to use sleep method described in wiki to activate screen.
Vista Business 32bit still not working properly. Looks to be driver issue.

Just received bootable eSata card so will install XP to see if the problem persists, also will try fresh Vista load.

More to follow.

Cheers,

panzer06 said:

As you know I purchased the LP154WU1 A01 Glossy and received Matte
Received just the LCD panel with one cord sticking out. Tech used existing inverter, etc.
Tech had to use sleep method described in wiki to activate screen.
Vista Business 32bit still not working properly. Looks to be driver issue.

Just received bootable eSata card so will install XP to see if the problem persists, also will try fresh Vista load.

More to follow.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Only solution I've found for the Vista issue is to install powerstrip and change the pixel clock under advanced display timings.

Mine is at 162.135 MHz (have detailed how I arrived at this in previous post), which fixes the display issues, but does result in an occaisional whining noise. Still not perfect, as you'll see if you go through my previous posts.

5to1 said:

Only solution I've found for the Vista issue is to install powerstrip and change the pixel clock under advanced display timings.

Mine is at 162.135 MHz (have detailed how I arrived at this in previous post), which fixes the display issues, but does result in an occasional whining noise. Still not perfect, as you'll see if you go through my previous posts.

Click to expand...

Is the issue unique to Vista? If I drop back to XP does the issue go away? I only use Windows for games when I'm out of town and the occasional Lotus Notes app that won't run on the Mac version.

I will try the powerstrip thing as well. I just don't want to mess up the screen. It works perfectly in OS X.

Cheers,

noetus said:

I'm curious about you getting the qxga physically into the T60p. I remember some people on forum.thinkpads.com giving up on that project becase the lcd is too thick for the case. How did you do? Does it look hacked from the outside? Lid close alright? Care to post some pics?

Click to expand...

You are absolutely correct, however, i was able to figure it out with the help of great folks at forum.thinkpads.com, specifically user Troels. My journey is described in detail in this thread. Since then I have purchased another T60 and another QXGA to have as backup. I had no problem fitting the screen physically in either T60p or T60 both 15", former was UXGA BoeHydis and latter had a cheapo XGA, now both sport flawless QXGA screens.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=66257

Good luck, and watch for the soldering skills! BTW do not use a MBP LCD cable to hookup to do the flash, it's wired differently from the thinkpad's.

panzer06 said:

Is the issue unique to Vista? If I drop back to XP does the issue go away? I only use Windows for games when I'm out of town and the occasional Lotus Notes app that won't run on the Mac version.

I will try the powerstrip thing as well. I just don't want to mess up the screen. It works perfectly in OS X.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

I haven't tried XP, but believe it will give the same result.

Powerstrip won't affect OSX, my leopard installation still works fine.

I'm waiting for a 15" LED WUXGA to be released, at which point i'll swop for the newer MBP. As my battery life has now become ridiculous (sub 1 hour in Vista). Therefore I've pretty much decided to live with the issues in Vista for now.

5to1 said:

I haven't tried XP, but believe it will give the same result.

Powerstrip won't affect OSX, my leopard installation still works fine.

I'm waiting for a 15" LED WUXGA to be released, at which point i'll swop for the newer MBP. As my battery life has now become ridiculous (sub 1 hour in Vista). Therefore I've pretty much decided to live with the issues in Vista for now.

Click to expand...

I really only use the bootcamp vista for gaming so I guess I can use an external monitor and disable the primary display until there is a resolution to this.

I will try XP first.

Cheers,

panzer06 said:

I really only use the bootcamp vista for gaming so I guess I can use an external monitor and disable the primary display until there is a resolution to this.

I will try XP first.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Just for the record: have not used boot camp for either xp or vista; i am using vmware fusion and parallels without problem. Screen still awesome.

catdog02481 said:

Just for the record: have not used boot camp for either xp or vista; i am using vmware fusion and parallels without problem. Screen still awesome.

Click to expand...

Yes both VMware and Parallels work because they use the underlying OS X for the display drivers.

I am installing XP now and even the pre-load dos screen has the poor display like the wrong refresh rate is active.

Confidence is NOT high!

Don't know why this is other than perhaps the EFI doesn't know what to do with the new display for the bootcamp emulated bios. Perhaps someone who understands the inner workings of EFI and the Bootcamp BIOS can take a look at this problem (after they upgrade their display of course)

Cheers,

panzer06 said:

I really only use the bootcamp vista for gaming so I guess I can use an external monitor and disable the primary display until there is a resolution to this.

I will try XP first.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

I would try powerstrip in that case. The two main issues I have probably won't bother you if your just gaiming on the machine.

1) Whining noise from screen, bugs me when I use the laptop in bed or late at night (essentially when its totally quiet). If your gaming the audio from the game will easily mask this, since I don't notice it during the day when there's other ambient noise.

2) When the screen goes to slepp and comes back, the dodgy colours come back. I have to go into powerstrip and toggle the display timing up and down again. Won't be an issue for you if your gaming, since the screen won't be going to sleep.

Other then that powerstrip works fine, and I haven't had any other issues. Its been perfectly stable aswell.

Once you've installed powerstrip, go to:

display profiles -> advanced timing options

Now adjust the "Pixel Clock" using the arrows next to the setting until the display works fine. By default the "Real-Time adjustment" box under the "custom resolutions" button should be ticked. This will mean you'll see the settings applied as you change them, which makes things easier.

Mine is set to 162.135 MHz, which works fine other then the two issues listed above.

Powerstrip has a free trial, so its worth giving it a shot. The only minor issue with the free trial is a popup message on bootup, which you can't close for 5 seconds (theres a timer that ticks away in the popup, and it just gives you little "did you know" messages about the features of powerstrip). Good luck.

5to1 said:

I would try powerstrip in that case. The two main issues I have probably won't bother you if your just gaiming on the machine.

1) Whining noise from screen, bugs me when I use the laptop in bed or late at night (essentially when its totally quiet). If your gaming the audio from the game will easily mask this, since I don't notice it during the day when there's other ambient noise.

2) When the screen goes to slepp and comes back, the dodgy colours come back. I have to go into powerstrip and toggle the display timing up and down again. Won't be an issue for you if your gaming, since the screen won't be going to sleep.

Other then that powerstrip works fine, and I haven't had any other issues. Its been perfectly stable aswell.

Once you've installed powerstrip, go to:

display profiles -> advanced timing options

Now adjust the "Pixel Clock" using the arrows next to the setting until the display works fine. By default the "Real-Time adjustment" box under the "custom resolutions" button should be ticked. This will mean you'll see the settings applied as you change them, which makes things easier.

Mine is set to 162.135 MHz, which works fine other then the two issues listed above.

Powerstrip has a free trial, so its worth giving it a shot. The only minor issue with the free trial is a popup message on bootup, which you can't close for 5 seconds (theres a timer that ticks away in the popup, and it just gives you little "did you know" messages about the features of powerstrip). Good luck.

Click to expand...

Ok, I installed Powerstrip and was able to get it working. Once installed and the icon was on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen I right clicked and selected disply profiles, configure, advanced timing options. For horizontal timing I clicked down once and it changed to 74.114 kHz

Screen is perfect. The only issue is the screen resets with each boot and does not correct until Powerstrip loads at boot. We need someone who understands how all this bootcamp bios emulation stuff works to be able to set timings at boot.

View attachment 134705

Thanks for all the help. This has been a great project!

Cheers,

panzer06 said:

Ok, I installed Powerstrip and was able to get it working. Once installed and the icon was on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen I right clicked and selected disply profiles, configure, advanced timing options. For horizontal timing I clicked down once and it changed to 74.114 kHz

Screen is perfect. The only issue is the screen resets with each boot and does not correct until Powerstrip loads at boot. We need someone who understands how all this bootcamp bios emulation stuff works to be able to set timings at boot.

View attachment 134705

Thanks for all the help. This has been a great project!

Cheers,

Click to expand...

I've found that every other increment works. You can adjust any of the three timing settings (vertical, horizontal, pixel clock) as they are all related and the others automatically adjust.

Mine sorts itself out 5-10 seconds after bootup. Problem is it doesn't always do so after resume from suspend, or after the screen shuts off for power saving. To resolve that you need to toggle the timing up and down again.

Do you experience the screen whine issue?

Also, when the battery is fully charged, how long does the battery report you have? Mine has gone down significantly, with it reporting 50 mins when screen is on full brightness and balanced mode selected in Vista. (I've found balanced mode gives best performance even when on AC power.

5to1 said:

I've found that every other increment works. You can adjust any of the three timing settings (vertical, horizontal, pixel clock) as they are all related and the others automatically adjust.

Mine sorts itself out 5-10 seconds after bootup. Problem is it doesn't always do so after resume from suspend, or after the screen shuts off for power saving. To resolve that you need to toggle the timing up and down again.

Do you experience the screen whine issue?

Also, when the battery is fully charged, how long does the battery report you have? Mine has gone down significantly, with it reporting 50 mins when screen is on full brightness and balanced mode selected in Vista. (I've found balanced mode gives best performance even when on AC power.

Click to expand...

I never have the display sleep in Vista as I'm only in there to play a game and I go back to OS X. Perhaps I will experiment just to test.

Ironically, I had the screen whine with the original display whenever I was not at full brightness. The problem has disappeared since installing the new display.

My battery is only at 52% @ 354 cycles. I ordered a new one from China. We will see if that has decent life.

I wish the display had come as glossy (what I ordered) but other than that it works great. As an added bonus, ever since the new display went in my latch work better. Only a light touch is required to close and open where before I had to fight to get it open. Go figure!

Cheers,

panzer06 said:

I never have the display sleep in Vista as I'm only in there to play a game and I go back to OS X. Perhaps I will experiment just to test.

Ironically, I had the screen whine with the original display whenever I was not at full brightness. The problem has disappeared since installing the new display.

My battery is only at 52% @ 354 cycles. I ordered a new one from China. We will see if that has decent life.

I wish the display had come as glossy (what I ordered) but other than that it works great. As an added bonus, ever since the new display went in my latch work better. Only a light touch is required to close and open where before I had to fight to get it open. Go figure!

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Let me know how the new battery goes. I think I maybe needing a new one aswell.

What did you use to check the original battery btw?

I am pretty sure my screen whine is down to the screen timing in windows, since it doesn't appear to do it in OSX. I'll have a look at your screenshot and compare settings.

Thanks

And it look like it works

For some reason Vista had picked up completely the wrong sync width and back porch. I'd tried playing with the scan rate and refresh rate, but without knowing which settings were incorrect it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Thanks for posting your settings.

My old ones are below incase your interested.

I used iStat Pro to read the temp and battery info. Glad you got rid of the whine. Enjoy!

Cheers,

I may have spoke too soon. The screen whine came back after the next resume from suspend. Been in OSX for hour afterwards and it was perfectly fine. Very annoying

I checked my battery with istat pro (thanks) and as expected its reporting 46% after 235 cycels. Not very impressive to be honest, as I have other laptops, some of which are considerably older then the MBP. And all their battery's are still performing much better then this (i.e. well above 50% of their from new performance).

5to1 said:

I may have spoke too soon. The screen whine came back after the next resume from suspend. Been in OSX for hour afterwards and it was perfectly fine. Very annoying

I checked my battery with istat pro (thanks) and as expected its reporting 46% after 235 cycels. Not very impressive to be honest, as I have other laptops, some of which are considerably older then the MBP. And all their battery's are still performing much better then this (i.e. well above 50% of their from new performance).

Click to expand...

I know my PB 12" gets 5 -6 hours of moderate use (some of that time is no display, etc while I'm on con calls, etc) on the highest battery saving setting.

My MBP is lucky if I can get 90 minutes. Hopefully the new battery will arrive soon.

Have you noticed interest in this display mod seems to have waned? Do you think it's because the LED MBPs can't be modded and therefore the pool of modders is limited? Or perhaps the difficulty of the mod is too high for most? (After all I paid to have someone install it)

There was a guy who tried to track down all the folks who had done the mod and determine the actual sucess rate but doesn't look like he got much response.

Cheers,

Check for banding issues!

For those using PowerStrip in Vista to resolve the color issue it's a good idea not to rely on subjective impressions what the screen looks like when displaying your desktop or what-have-you before concluding that it is "perfect".

You must look at a full spectrum of colors, a gamut or granger rainbow to ensure that there are no banding issues, no posterization, no 'speckling' where colors appear to cycle in a small area of the display, and that all the colors are being displayed with full color depth.

I previously posted a granger rainbow on page 31 of this thread. Go look at it! (Scroll down to near the bottom.) And compare it with some other display, on another computer, preferably one you know to be high quality.

(It will also be helpful to look at this image within Mac OS with your new 15.4" WUXGA display and compare it to an unmodified MacBook Pro showing the same image. You might notice some differences!)

I never managed to get a satisfactory resolution of the color issue in Vista by tweaking display frequencies using PowerStrip, as seen when testing the display with this image, and I have given up and now run Windows within Mac OS using VMware Fusion.

And on my 15.4" WUXGA display within Mac OS, it is apparent that colors are displayed very well, but just not quite as well as on the original Apple display. (I am using the LG display.)

The Granger Rainbow test, by the way, is a very tough test! So do not be too despondent if your display is now revealed not to be 100% "perfect"!

noetus said:

And on my 15.4" WUXGA display within Mac OS, it is apparent that colors are displayed very well, but just not quite as well as on the original Apple display. (I am using the LG display.)

The Granger Rainbow test, by the way, is a very tough test! So do not be too despondent if your display is now revealed not to be 100% "perfect"!

Click to expand...

I am not a photographer. Tell me why this would matter to me. Other than making sure I don't have the yellow or blue cast to everything on the MBP display, why do I care about color matching? As long as it looks good in OS X and in Vista, Powerstrip makes the screen stop shimmering I am fine with it.

Of course, I also don't see any differnce between downloaded iTunes or Amazon songs versus an original CD so obviously I am not particularly concerned about absolute perfect reproduction.

Other than photogs and DTP professionals, would this matter? Does this issue have any impact on the screen contuning to work?

Educate me please.

Cheers,

Sure.... I'm not sure about 'color matching' but if you're worried about a blue/yellow cast and the accuracy of color representation you should calibrate the display and create a custom profile through system preferences>displays>color>calibrate.

In any case after replacing the lcd it would be a good idea to calibrate the display.

But that isn't what I was talking about. The issue is that if people are using PowerStrip or DisplayConfigX or SwitchResX to fine tune the display (in particular, by changing the vertical refresh rate) to get rid of banding issues (and color 'speckling' or 'shimmering') in Vista or Mac OS with the custom lcd and just eyeballing it from whatever happens to be displayed on the desktop the chances are they're not going to get as they could to optimal settings.

It's true that you might never be able to tell the difference, depending on what you use the computer for, and how close you happen to manage to get. On the other hand, you might. Better to be safe, I'd say. Using the Granger image you can fine-tune it very accurately - and also get a sense of the inherent color gradient limitations of your display.

It's also educative to see in Vista/XP BootCamp how close you can get to optimal - not very, I discovered, no matter what settings I chose.

And in Mac OS I have found on both the WUXGA displays I've tried that I have to change the vertical refresh rate to 50Hz (Mac OS sets the default to be 60Hz) to get rid of all the speckling, although it isn't bad at the default of 60Hz.

panzer06 said:

I know my PB 12" gets 5 -6 hours of moderate use (some of that time is no display, etc while I'm on con calls, etc) on the highest battery saving setting.

My MBP is lucky if I can get 90 minutes. Hopefully the new battery will arrive soon.

Have you noticed interest in this display mod seems to have waned? Do you think it's because the LED MBPs can't be modded and therefore the pool of modders is limited? Or perhaps the difficulty of the mod is too high for most? (After all I paid to have someone install it)

There was a guy who tried to track down all the folks who had done the mod and determine the actual sucess rate but doesn't look like he got much response.

Cheers,

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Thinking back, I believe it did slow down a bit after the LED MBP's were released. Not only did it mean new owners couldn't do the mod, but also there was the option of going 17" instead.

noetus said:

For those using PowerStrip in Vista to resolve the color issue it's a good idea not to rely on subjective impressions what the screen looks like when displaying your desktop or what-have-you before concluding that it is "perfect".

You must look at a full spectrum of colors, a gamut or granger rainbow to ensure that there are no banding issues, no posterization, no 'speckling' where colors appear to cycle in a small area of the display, and that all the colors are being displayed with full color depth.

I previously posted a granger rainbow on page 31 of this thread. Go look at it! (Scroll down to near the bottom.) And compare it with some other display, on another computer, preferably one you know to be high quality.

(It will also be helpful to look at this image within Mac OS with your new 15.4" WUXGA display and compare it to an unmodified MacBook Pro showing the same image. You might notice some differences!)

I never managed to get a satisfactory resolution of the color issue in Vista by tweaking display frequencies using PowerStrip, as seen when testing the display with this image, and I have given up and now run Windows within Mac OS using VMware Fusion.

And on my 15.4" WUXGA display within Mac OS, it is apparent that colors are displayed very well, but just not quite as well as on the original Apple display. (I am using the LG display.)

The Granger Rainbow test, by the way, is a very tough test! So do not be too despondent if your display is now revealed not to be 100% "perfect"!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the chart. On first look I don't see and major issues. But I'll have to compare it to some of the other screens when I get back.

I think the most interesting comparrison may be with my brothers T60p, which I believe has the same screen.