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The High-Res (1920x1200) Matte LED screen thread

My new 17" High Res has come with a 9C7A screen (matte). I haven't taken measurements of anything, but I'm delighted with it. Lighting is exceptionally even, no yellowing, no brightness-related noise etc... no problems of any kind that I can see.

This is a very substantial leap in quality from the 15" LED screen.
I initially bought a 15" (which had some non-screen-related problems) and returned it and paid the extra for the 17" high res. I couldn't be happier with the way things have worked out.
 
Well, this is my second Hi-Rez 17" 2.6 MBP (the 1st one I return due to the screen having shadows in the middle of the screen. It also had the yellow on the bottom, not sure what screen it had). I now have the new for one week and it has the 9C7A screen. I also turned it on at the Apple Store and notices that the right side what some what darker (about 1/4 of the screen) creating a darker stripe going vertically at the 1/4 point from the right side of the screen. When I move a window from side to side (holding it with the mouse and moving it from the right side to the left side I can notice it even more. I then set my desktop picture to the "Solid Color" choices in our System Preference>Desktop & Screen Saver>Desktop>Solid Colors, and I notice that there is a brighter/yelowish on the bottom and more towards the left of the screen. I also notice a halo brightness about 6-8 pixels from the edge at all edges of the screen and a dark corner on the bottom right. Almost as if the edges of the screen is slightly dimmer. The Apple Care guy at the Apple store told me to use the computer for a while since it changes was it warms up and been used for a while. I don't understand why this keeps happening? This is Apple's best notebook they sell (17" MBP 2.6 Hi-Rez, $3,199). I ran other tests and don't have any dead pixels but every time I move my windows I see the shadow and the yellowish when using colors like grays and blues. I also notice that the fans run more on this one and I hear the hard drive too but this could be normal. Not sure what to do. I am thinking of returning it for a 3rd one :confused:

What also is a bummer is that the Apple Store is 3 hours away! I did try buying a computer online, a new 24" iMac, but that had an even worse gradient problem and had to wait for it in shipping. Now I only buy through the Apple Store but it is not close buy.
 
RustyMac said:
Well, this is my second Hi-Rez 17" 2.6 MBP (the 1st one I return due to the screen having shadows in the middle of the screen. It also had the yellow on the bottom, not sure what screen it had). I now have the new for one week and it has the 9C7A screen. I also turned it on at the Apple Store and notices that the right side what some what darker (about 1/4 of the screen) creating a darker stripe going vertically at the 1/4 point from the right side of the screen. When I move a window from side to side (holding it with the mouse and moving it from the right side to the left side I can notice it even more. I then set my desktop picture to the "Solid Color" choices in our System Preference>Desktop & Screen Saver>Desktop>Solid Colors, and I notice that there is a brighter/yelowish on the bottom and more towards the left of the screen. I also notice a halo brightness about 6-8 pixels from the edge at all edges of the screen and a dark corner on the bottom right. Almost as if the edges of the screen is slightly dimmer. The Apple Care guy at the Apple store told me to use the computer for a while since it changes was it warms up and been used for a while. I don't understand why this keeps happening? This is Apple's best notebook they sell (17" MBP 2.6 Hi-Rez, $3,199). I ran other tests and don't have any dead pixels but every time I move my windows I see the shadow and the yellowish when using colors like grays and blues. I also notice that the fans run more on this one and I hear the hard drive too but this could be normal. Not sure what to do. I am thinking of returning it for a 3rd one :confused:

What also is a bummer is that the Apple Store is 3 hours away! I did try buying a computer online, a new 24" iMac, but that had an even worse gradient problem and had to wait for it in shipping. Now I only buy through the Apple Store but it is not close buy.
Click to expand...

Try this test. Stare at the screen for 15 minutes without blinking. If you blink even once, start again. After the 15 minutes is up, quickly close your eyes and keep them shut tight. If you see any kind of colored spots while your eyes are closed, this is clear evidence of a faulty computer screen. Return the machine immediately and repeat the procedure over and over until you find a computer without this fault.
Be sure to ask the Apple staff to try this test too, so they can see the evidence for themselves.
 
Sir Cecil said:
Try this test. Stare at the screen for 15 minutes without blinking. If you blink even once, start again. After the 15 minutes is up, quickly close your eyes and keep them shut tight. If you see any kind of colored spots while your eyes are closed, this is clear evidence of a faulty computer screen. Return the machine immediately and repeat the procedure over and over until you find a computer without this fault.
Be sure to ask the Apple staff to try this test too, so they can see the evidence for themselves.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? Is this for real?:confused:
 
9c79 vs 9c7a

[*]What model is it?
Came with a 9c79, replaced with 9c7a...

[*]How even is the backlighting?
Backlighting is A$$ on the 9c79, uneven with some faint vertical striping through center, and edge unevenness. Backlight on the 9c7a is WAY better. Something like 200% better in evenness.

[*]Any yellowing or other color shifts?
9c79 had severe yellow almost brown shadow along the bottom, uneven in shape. The 9c79 was not useable at normal working distance due to color shifting and brightness shifting from top to bottom. Pure grey at the top of the screen would look greenish while same grey at the bottom of the screen would look pinkish.
9c7a almost does not suffer any color or value shifting at normal working distance.

[*]How's the viewing angle compared to your old CCFL 15" or 17" screen?
9c79's viewing angle was so limited that we couldn't glance from top to bottom of screen without changes in color and value.
9c7a is great. Great viewing angles north/south, good east/west (goes yellow).

[*]Overall impressions and anything you think could be better?
Crapple Store employees could be better. The store made us jump through hoops to get the repair:
"You have to make a reservation with Donna (or whatever her name was); she is the only one who can authorize the replacement. And, anyway that's just the way LCDs look. And it's the lights in the room, blah, blah, blah."
It was obvious that the LCD was bad three ways to Sunday. But they couldn't just admit all the faults, only the vertical light leaks. I love it when lame-a$$es try to feed me a big puddle of steaming diarrhea through a straw and call it a chocolate milkshake.
They said they could make an exception because we are graphics professionals. It shouldn't matter what work we do on the damned thing; crappy, headache inducing LCDs should be replaced whether you're doing graphics or just spreadsheets.
Then, just to make sure we knew our place, Donna stated that this LCD replacement was a "one time" happening, "even if the replacement is worse." That was the icing on the dogpile cupcake. That is customer service.
So, when they called us to pick up the repaired machine, the nincompoop on the phone said that they repaired the screen, but "lines across the screen can be caused by third-party memory" like we have. I tried not to lose my cool and said the defects are within the screen and are anti-reflective coating and backlight unevenness related entirely. She deigned to relate that they "repaired the screen anyway." I forgot that Apple memory is magic and that in the extremely unlikely event a Mac needs repair one should reinstall the magic memory to appease the almighty Applites.
So, I guess I'm not going to be sharing this computer with my wife. She can have all of it. (I'll never finish this post if I get into what a pain in the arse BootCamp is). I'll be saving up for a real workstation notebook.
 
morogue said:
[*]What model is it?
Came with a 9c79, replaced with 9c7a...

[*]How even is the backlighting?
Backlighting is A$$ on the 9c79, uneven with some faint vertical striping through center, and edge unevenness. Backlight on the 9c7a is WAY better. Something like 200% better in evenness.

[*]Any yellowing or other color shifts?
9c79 had severe yellow almost brown shadow along the bottom, uneven in shape. The 9c79 was not useable at normal working distance due to color shifting and brightness shifting from top to bottom. Pure grey at the top of the screen would look greenish while same grey at the bottom of the screen would look pinkish.
9c7a almost does not suffer any color or value shifting at normal working distance.

[*]How's the viewing angle compared to your old CCFL 15" or 17" screen?
9c79's viewing angle was so limited that we couldn't glance from top to bottom of screen without changes in color and value.
9c7a is great. Great viewing angles north/south, good east/west (goes yellow).

[*]Overall impressions and anything you think could be better?
Crapple Store employees could be better. The store made us jump through hoops to get the repair:
"You have to make a reservation with Donna (or whatever her name was); she is the only one who can authorize the replacement. And, anyway that's just the way LCDs look. And it's the lights in the room, blah, blah, blah."
It was obvious that the LCD was bad three ways to Sunday. But they couldn't just admit all the faults, only the vertical light leaks. I love it when lame-a$$es try to feed me a big puddle of steaming diarrhea through a straw and call it a chocolate milkshake.
They said they could make an exception because we are graphics professionals. It shouldn't matter what work we do on the damned thing; crappy, headache inducing LCDs should be replaced whether you're doing graphics or just spreadsheets.
Then, just to make sure we knew our place, Donna stated that this LCD replacement was a "one time" happening, "even if the replacement is worse." That was the icing on the dogpile cupcake. That is customer service.
So, when they called us to pick up the repaired machine, the nincompoop on the phone said that they repaired the screen, but "lines across the screen can be caused by third-party memory" like we have. I tried not to lose my cool and said the defects are within the screen and are anti-reflective coating and backlight unevenness related entirely. She deigned to relate that they "repaired the screen anyway." I forgot that Apple memory is magic and that in the extremely unlikely event a Mac needs repair one should reinstall the magic memory to appease the almighty Applites.
So, I guess I'm not going to be sharing this computer with my wife. She can have all of it. (I'll never finish this post if I get into what a pain in the arse BootCamp is). I'll be saving up for a real workstation notebook.
Click to expand...

God i know what you mean, i stopped going to the "genius" bar after the first time i went with a yellow tinted screen. First the "genius" tried to stare me straight in the eye and tell me that he cant see a thing, and it takes him 10 minutes to finally admit he sees it. Then he takes it back to one of the "techs" who walks out and tells me its normal for LCD to have a certain ammount of yellow tint.....oh and then he tells me its my fault and that its a viewing angle and nothing is wrong with it, even though i have the screen at a 45 degree angle with the keyboard looking straight at the bottom with NO ANGLE and its still yellow. After that i will never go back to the "genius" bar, and ill prolly end up buying everything at the apple online store even though the apple store is 10 minutes from my house.
 
I must've been a lucky one with the 9C79... cuz it's darn perfect!
Even and the contrast is amazing... My background has dark to light colors and the darks are very deep and the lights are brights... Even across the whole screen, no yellowing/browning! I even think this screen is better than some of the others I've seen at Apple Stores...

:eek:
 
morogue said:
[*]What model is it?
Came with a 9c79, replaced with 9c7a...

[*]How even is the backlighting?
Backlighting is A$$ on the 9c79, uneven with some faint vertical striping through center, and edge unevenness. Backlight on the 9c7a is WAY better. Something like 200% better in evenness.

[*]Any yellowing or other color shifts?
9c79 had severe yellow almost brown shadow along the bottom, uneven in shape. The 9c79 was not useable at normal working distance due to color shifting and brightness shifting from top to bottom. Pure grey at the top of the screen would look greenish while same grey at the bottom of the screen would look pinkish.
9c7a almost does not suffer any color or value shifting at normal working distance.

[*]How's the viewing angle compared to your old CCFL 15" or 17" screen?
9c79's viewing angle was so limited that we couldn't glance from top to bottom of screen without changes in color and value.
9c7a is great. Great viewing angles north/south, good east/west (goes yellow).

[*]Overall impressions and anything you think could be better?
Crapple Store employees could be better. The store made us jump through hoops to get the repair:
"You have to make a reservation with Donna (or whatever her name was); she is the only one who can authorize the replacement. And, anyway that's just the way LCDs look. And it's the lights in the room, blah, blah, blah."
It was obvious that the LCD was bad three ways to Sunday. But they couldn't just admit all the faults, only the vertical light leaks. I love it when lame-a$$es try to feed me a big puddle of steaming diarrhea through a straw and call it a chocolate milkshake.
They said they could make an exception because we are graphics professionals. It shouldn't matter what work we do on the damned thing; crappy, headache inducing LCDs should be replaced whether you're doing graphics or just spreadsheets.
Then, just to make sure we knew our place, Donna stated that this LCD replacement was a "one time" happening, "even if the replacement is worse." That was the icing on the dogpile cupcake. That is customer service.
So, when they called us to pick up the repaired machine, the nincompoop on the phone said that they repaired the screen, but "lines across the screen can be caused by third-party memory" like we have. I tried not to lose my cool and said the defects are within the screen and are anti-reflective coating and backlight unevenness related entirely. She deigned to relate that they "repaired the screen anyway." I forgot that Apple memory is magic and that in the extremely unlikely event a Mac needs repair one should reinstall the magic memory to appease the almighty Applites.
So, I guess I'm not going to be sharing this computer with my wife. She can have all of it. (I'll never finish this post if I get into what a pain in the arse BootCamp is). I'll be saving up for a real workstation notebook.
Click to expand...

You have to understand though that all 17" hi res screens will have some sort of minor problems. Some might be a little worse than others but its always there.

IMHO the 17" hi res mbp screen is a temporary solution on the go to do some graphical design and if your home it should be done on a dedicated Apple cinema display/NEC/Eizo type of deal.

I remember when I owned the 17" hi res mbp (both of them were 9c7a) and were amazing and of course since its a TN panel that colors did shift. I remember on a orange background color at full screen the right side seemed more red/orange than the left yellow/orange which didnt bother me much.

But comparing the 17" hi res mbp's screen to my 23" ACD, there was no doubt that the 23" ACD looked superior in color/depth/all around everything.
 
jjahshik32 said:
You have to understand though that all 17" hi res screens will have some sort of minor problems. Some might be a little worse than others but its always there.
Click to expand...

I will have to disagree; my screen has no backlight bleed, no funky pillars, no yellowing, no dead/stuck pixels, no weird noise; I mean I didn't think this was possible!
 
alphaod said:
I will have to disagree; my screen has no backlight bleed, no funky pillars, no yellowing, no dead/stuck pixels, no weird noise; I mean I didn't think this was possible!
Click to expand...

Lol, try loading up windows vista/xp and while the windows logo shows with the black background try turning off the lights in your room and look at your screen. I'm 100% positive that there will be some sort of backlight bleeding/leaking or smearing or whatever. I remember I thought my 17" hi res screen was absolutely perfect and even checked with a dead pixel tester for full colors to check for dead/stuck pixels and didnt see any backlight bleeding until I loaded windows vista.

Every single screen and even my $4000 52" sony bravia xbr4 has some sort of backlight bleeding (which I first exchanged due to bad clouding on the corner issues but 2nd one has very very minimal only at the tips backlight bleed which seemed like none at all).

But my point is there is no such thing as a perfect screen. I also thought about this on both my previous 17" hi res and current 15" mbp until I've seen the windows vista/xp logo pop up and while its black showed the "ugliness" of the backlight bleeding. In regular usage or under solid black background is hard to see those faults.

One thing I noticed is that the 17" screen is big so the screen shifts in color much easier than the smaller 15" screen. For example like the solid color orange if your head is just slightly more to the left side of the big 17" screen the right side seems more red/orange or yellow/orange as to the left side. Same goes for green, grass green on the left and darker green on the right.

But what do you expect these are all TN panels. I'm not saying that those are problems but rather its "normal".
 
jjahshik32 said:
Lol, try loading up windows vista/xp and while the windows logo shows with the black background try turning off the lights in your room and look at your screen. I'm 100% positive that there will be some sort of backlight bleeding/leaking or smearing or whatever. I remember I thought my 17" hi res screen was absolutely perfect and even checked with a dead pixel tester for full colors to check for dead/stuck pixels and didnt see any backlight bleeding until I loaded windows vista.
Click to expand...

Okay you just destroyed my hopes and dreams; I took some pictures in the dark. Anyways I think it's still very good; I took a few pictures of the XP load screen; yes a little bleed, but it's still as perfect as I can see it:
(didn't resize; pics @ 8MP)
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/a48c6ee8.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/cda8e38a.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/b0f29dea.jpg
 
alphaod said:
Okay you just destroyed my hopes and dreams; I took some pictures in the dark. Anyways I think it's still very good; I took a few pictures of the XP load screen; yes a little bleed, but it's still as perfect as I can see it:
(didn't resize; pics @ 8MP)
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/a48c6ee8.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/cda8e38a.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f390/alpha_ran/b0f29dea.jpg
Click to expand...

Thats pretty good in the backlight bleeding department. That's what the 17" hi res mbp that I had looked like as well but it sure seems flawless under osx and I remember I hated to load vista just because I didnt want to see the backlight bleeding, lol.
 
Laptop screen perfection no longer exists

I haven't seen a single MBP screen that I would rate as flawless. But I think the current MBP generation is quite good in general -- way better than the dim, viewing-angle-challenged, screen-door-effect disappointments in the early MBP models.

The barrier to "perfection", aside from the current shoddy QC on assembly of almost all the major brand laptops, is that no-one manufactures IPS displays for laptops any longer. The 15 inch Powerbook was IPS-equipped throughout -- or at least throughout the 1280x854 era -- and it was a wonderful display. IBM's Thinkpad T60 had a similarly good 4x3 display. But IPS is also a fragile, damage-prone beast, and I had to have my TiBook display replaced twice under warranty -- and no-one who saw it could forget the horrible "white patch" effect that developed blatantly in the aluminum ones wherever the display was anchored to the case and a little bit even in the TiBooks where the keyboard sometimes made contact from the other side. The second display replacement was the final straw; almost as soon as it was back, and this was about a couple of months before my Applecare was due to expire, I opted to sell it. Overall in a laptop I'll take durability over aesthetics.
 
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/09/18/lg.led.backlit.17in.lcd/

Hopefully, Apple will use the LP171WU5 panel

khnlim said:
Well, that's true. It did sound like a sweeping statement to me at the time I read it though.

I think the MBPs equipped with LG displays fair better as LG.Philips utilises S-IPS for their panels. Here's hoping that Apple makes a switch to LG panels on the 17" matte Hi-Res screens.

As I mentioned in my post earlier, I really hope that the LG.Philips LP171WU3 makes it way into the 17" MBPs.

Check out the LG.Philips LP171WU5 though. The specs state that it's a 8-bit panel. With a 8ms GTG refresh rate. But doesn't go into mass production till Q3, 2008. Rats!

Here's the link. The specs for the WU3 and WU5 are in the PDF linked to the "Digital Catalog" option.

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/homeContain/jsp/eng/prd/prd300_j_e.jsp


Hadschi: At this point of time, I'm really not sure what's going on. If I had to make an informed guess, I'd say yes. The LTN170CT is LED backlit, but I think it's still a TN panel.




Nicholas
Click to expand...
 
BJNY said:
The panel is finally shipping.
Just giving khnlim/Nicholas credit for first mentioning it 6 months ago.
Click to expand...

Thanks BJNY! Tip-o-the-hat right back atcha!

When I found out about the LG RGB-LED backlit displays back in March, I was really stoked. Imagine, a high end, high res MBP with THAT display! Woo-hoo, heaven.

I've finally gotten a refund from Apple. And honestly, am wary of the MBPs. I'm back to me trusty TiBook G4 1GHz, and am looking forward to the refreshed MacBooks. I'll probably give the Penryn/ Montevina MBPs a miss and wait it out for the Nehalem stuffed MBPs instead.

Think of it as a crisis of faith to Apple's 'Pro' level portables...

Take care y'all!




Nicholas
 
Hi,

Recently picked up one of these systems with the Samsung screen. While it's a wonderful screen, I don't find the colours as uniform as the other system I saw which I suspect was the LG S-IPS panel. I also suspect that the S-IPS panel uses a bit less power as my battery life isn't as good as it should be.

Oh well!

Is there some way to get these changed for the LG? Or am I doing better wih the Samsung? I still must say, the best screen I have ever used on a notebook was the one on my old tibook 1GHz.

If I take the calibration profile away (or boot Windows with boot camp), the screen comes up very blue. I suspect this is why we're seeing yellowing and other artifacts when not exactly at right angles with the screen; I've found this is a side-effect of heavy calibration adjustment on my other consumer panels. It looks very much like a TN panel to me. As HP and Dell are both shipping wide gamut displays (I believe the HP, which is only marginally thicker than the MBP, uses the new LG-Philips matte screen offering full 24-bit colour), I'm now on the fence. I have a week left to return this thing.
 
Color shift while scrolling

Whichever color calibration profile I use on my LG-Philips display 9C7A (apart from the ones supplied by Apple), a color shift to red can be observed while (fast) scrolling text. The effect can also be seen while dragging a window around, e.g. around the corners and in the small loupe icon of the search field of a Finder window or around the address field in Safari.
I find this very annoying and I haven't seen this on any other calibrated screen (PowerBook G4 Ti; Aluminum iMac 20"; MacBook Pro 17 1680x1050).
Anyone seen this? Do I have a defective display?
 
What kind of software do you run to detect dead pixels?????
Can you mail your answer to odessadream@hotmail.com, please.


RustyMac said:
Well, this is my second Hi-Rez 17" 2.6 MBP (the 1st one I return due to the screen having shadows in the middle of the screen. It also had the yellow on the bottom, not sure what screen it had). I now have the new for one week and it has the 9C7A screen. I also turned it on at the Apple Store and notices that the right side what some what darker (about 1/4 of the screen) creating a darker stripe going vertically at the 1/4 point from the right side of the screen. When I move a window from side to side (holding it with the mouse and moving it from the right side to the left side I can notice it even more. I then set my desktop picture to the "Solid Color" choices in our System Preference>Desktop & Screen Saver>Desktop>Solid Colors, and I notice that there is a brighter/yelowish on the bottom and more towards the left of the screen. I also notice a halo brightness about 6-8 pixels from the edge at all edges of the screen and a dark corner on the bottom right. Almost as if the edges of the screen is slightly dimmer. The Apple Care guy at the Apple store told me to use the computer for a while since it changes was it warms up and been used for a while. I don't understand why this keeps happening? This is Apple's best notebook they sell (17" MBP 2.6 Hi-Rez, $3,199). I ran other tests and don't have any dead pixels but every time I move my windows I see the shadow and the yellowish when using colors like grays and blues. I also notice that the fans run more on this one and I hear the hard drive too but this could be normal. Not sure what to do. I am thinking of returning it for a 3rd one :confused:

What also is a bummer is that the Apple Store is 3 hours away! I did try buying a computer online, a new 24" iMac, but that had an even worse gradient problem and had to wait for it in shipping. Now I only buy through the Apple Store but it is not close buy.
Click to expand...
 
Anyone swap to a LP17WU5 display?

So now that the LP17WU5 LG displays have shipped - has anyone done the swap?

Care to share your thoughts?

I currently have a LP17WU1-TLB1 - from mid 2007 on a 2.4 GHz MBP. Id really like to upgrade to a LP17WU5-TLA2.

Anyone see a problem with this?

I contacted Apple Care support and was told that it 'should' work - but there was definately a lack of confidence when the tech was talking to me.
 
Very useful thread. I have a 17" MacBook Pro with the Samsung Panel. Can someone please tell me how to import a .icc colour profile? I've tried but cannot figure it out.

Thank you.
 
insignificantMB said:
Are there any companies that make a 1080p 15" late 2008 macbook pro matte replacement screen? Or even 720p
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Insig,

The 15" MBP has a panel resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. It surpasses 720p resolutions. For 720p, your panel resolution has to conform to a resolution of 1,280 x 720 (16:9 aspect ratio). Therefore, even the MacBook displays are already 720p compliant...


Nick
 
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