yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Just got my nice new XDA2...

And I am dismayed to find that the screen colours/wallpapers etc, all seem to be dithered images in a low colour depth.

Instead of smooth gradients, it seems banded from one colour to the next, and shades are made up of dots instead of many colours.

As this has 65,556 colours, I was not expecting this.

Its much like a real pc running in too low a colour depth - but unlike a real pc where this can easily be changed to 24bit or 32bit colour, I can find no such option on my XDA2. Anyone got any ideas, or is it really this bad (because that's how I would genuinely describe it - bad...)
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Bumping ^

Anyone?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Tekguru:
Same problem we all have, I think it is down to pixel alignment as if one tilts the top of the Xda II backwards the pixels and display appear how one would expect.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] skenliv:
I feel cheated, i used to have a Dell X5 Advance. That display was flawless. Now i cant use some colors, especially blue. It gets really messed up...

Its sad :cry:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
I still never found a satisfactory explanation, as it STILL looks as though the screen is simply NOT displaying anything like 65K colours...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] rene_canlas:
Discovered this bug early on, but found a workaround. The problem seems to be a contrast issue (too high). Use the Pictures application and adjust the contrast of your pictures one notch downward.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] ednap:
I had an iPAQ H5555 before the XDA II (and a long list of iPAQ's before the H5555 :D ) I have no complaints over the display on my XDA II colours are crisp and clear, focus contrast and brightness are fine also.

Are you having problems with the default wall paper themes or other inages you have installed?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
I have problems with any image used as the today background.

Even those created in Paint Shop Pro.

On my PC, they are smooth, gradiented fills, and blend smoothly.

Soon as you put them onto the XDA2 however, and it gets 'Banded' terribly. Legs appear in what seems like just two colours, a light flesh pink in the mid, and another lighter colour for the outline - a sharp jump from one colour to another - no gradiented fill in between.

Alas, I can't of course attach REAL screen shots, as in so doing the images would appear fine on here, as the images really ARE fine - its only their appearance on the XDA2 that goes haywire.

A simple example of what I mean, SIMULATED however, is as attached.

I have done this simply by posting a view from my window, in true colour 24K format, and then a copy of it, with the colour depth reduced to just 256 colours, with no error diffusion used.

This is almost EXACTLY what the resultant appearance is like on my XDA2. But sure enough, as some users say, if you ANGLE the XDA2, this becomes a lot less pronounced.

I am at a loss to understand why it does it at all however, becuase as far as I know, current screen technology does not need to suffer an issue such as this.

Mmmmmm.....
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] skenliv:
I have not found any sollution to the problem. :cry:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
I am saddened to say, but it seems like it's the phone to blame.

So much for 65K Transflective being the bees knees.

I have designed a batch of about 60 themes for the phone, using photos. No matter what quality I save at, or even saving as .bmp based, half of them look terrible, with skin tones such as legs being made up of a lighter outline colour, with a big pool of a darker colour in the middle - TWO colours used to make up a part of an image that should be 100's of colours.

Terrible.

Even worse, I notice now, that this applies to Windows Media Player, playing back videos too.

If you angle your head/the XDA2 a certain angle, this reduces the effect. But I mean come on.

Obviously (based on my last comment there) this is a limitation of the screen technology.

Not impressed by far is all I can really say.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] andyclap:
This annoys me too.

It feels like somewhere deep inside the XDA2 there's a hardcoded 4096 colour setting left over from the XDA 1. It's especially noticable on web pages.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] hshortt:
You should bring this device back to where you got it from and test it side by side with another XDA II using the same themes.

The quality of my screen is perfect and the colours are all vivid and no banding appears unless the theme itself has banding.

I had an iPAQ 5455 that had the same problem as yours, colours appeared to only show 4096 colours 8bit. I sent back and it was replaced with another one that had a perfect screen.

Cheerio

Howard
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Mmm - now this topic is getting interesting...

Anyone else think that there is a problem?

I have hinted all along that it's as if the XDA2 is only displaying images in a limited number of colours, and to now hear other people saying the same kind of thing makes for interesting reading...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] izeman:
hmmm

maybe i'm totally wrong, but: do you use CLEAR TYPE ???

i did activate it, and realized that eg. in the phone application the "talk" or the "number" buttons did really look awful.

so i turned clear type off, and my problems where gone... or was it all imagination ? i don't know ...

just a thought

servus ize|man
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
I do use it, so I'm about to experiment, and report back.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Was worth a try, but alas, no difference on my XDA2.

Just chose a couple of my themes that seem poorly 'dithered' and colour 'banded'.

Turned Cleartype off.

Did a reset...

And the themes look no different or better alas.

Damn.

Thanks for the suggestion though mate.

It REALLY does seem as if the 65000 colour XDA2 is forced into running with just 4096 colours - possibly even less.

But the way or angle you look at the screen makes all it look different, so then again, this could be an inherit issue, and in effect, 'feature' of the screen technology.

A very poor one if so, given the hype of how much much better this new screen is over the original XDA.

Probably one of the poorest that I have seen...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] hshortt:
Here's my image quality.

I took your good image and put it onto my machine and took a screen shot. Here's the sample.... no banding!

Cheers
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] lan_xda:
Exactly the same for me: no banding, good quality.

Perhaps something is wrong with your device.. :roll:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Er no guys...

Because that was just a SIMULATED screen shot, which I don't even use on my XDA2 - I just took a photo I had from my back window, and recoloured it down to 256 colours, to simulate what I see (as this is EXACTLY what it looks like with other themes).

I SHOULD have done it with a real theme I use, but in this case I hadn't.

I will post a theme file that is bad for me, and you can try that if you like...

My problem of course, is that all my many themes, are ADULT based images of my gf and her gf etc, so not suitable to post in a general forum such as this.

I have attached a screenshot of one of the 'tamer' ones though.

The screenshot, taken straight from ActiveSync Remote Display, appears FINE on a PC - it's on the DEVICE that it looks bad though.

So take a look at the screenshot, the area where I indicate bad 'banding' then run the also attached theme on your device, and tell me if you get 'banding' where I indicate, when you put the theme on your actual device?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] rene_canlas:
Shadamehr,

It's the result of too much contrast. Try this:

1. Take the background bitmap you used for your theme and copy it to your XDAII.

2. Load the Pictures application and view the picture you just loaded.

3. Click Edit|Brightness And Contrast and adjust the contrast one or two settings downwards until the picture looks okay.

4. Save the picture, copy it to your PC and us it in your theme.

5. Try your new Theme on your XDAII and see if the banding problem goes away.

Hope this helps,

Rene
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Well with your help and hints, I did some experimenting.

Indeed, lowering the contrast does help.

In some cases, it can't cure it fully, but it certainly helps.

But it causes some issues sometimes, in that using paintshop pro to reduce the contrast by a value of -10, means the brightness also needs come down to a value -5 or the image looks to 'bold'.

In so doing though, when I use the new image as the basis for designing my theme using Theme Generator 2, the banding is nearly gone now, but the images seem washed out and flat.

BUT, certainly better than before.

Ah well, only 90 - 100 images to edit, then themes to re-create.

Nightmare...

But thanks guys - we're getting there...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
But I have no idea what I can do about the videos in Windows Media Player - as these suffer terrible too, but I can't artificially alter those though...

Why does the XDA2 seem so choosy and restrictive when it comes to contrast one wonders?

But, never mind... progress is still progress, and things are better than before.

Thanks again mate...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
I see your problem... I think it does show 65k colors, but the contrast is messed up. If only there was a contrast slider like on my old Cassiopeia EM500 (most brilliant screen ever made for indoors) Maybe there is a way to adjust the contrast through the registry?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
Welp, seems like contrast options are unsupported... Oh well.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Good idea...

Anyone know if there IS any hack or way to change the registry to alter the contrast (not the brightness) on an XDA2???
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
I think if we get the contrast options from an ipaq, it might work...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] rene_canlas:
I seem to remember a hack for the registry, which causes a contrast slider under settings to appear. Unfortunately, the slider is disabled and the settings cannot be changed :(
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] rene_canlas:
Shadamehr,

Have you tried adjusting Gamma in Paintshop Pro?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
There should be a way to do this in the registry...
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Asterix:
dunno know, where to find the hack

-i´ve enabled the contrast slider on my mdaII in the past, but the slider has no effect - seems to be hard-coded/not accessible via gui
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
Indeed, I did so too. by renaming some key named Redirect to xRedirect in HKLM.

I wonder how can the contrast be adjusted.. I just hope WM2003SE adds that functionality back in
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
I've found something new...

If you go into the Pictures application, then go to "Tools > Options"...

There is an option marked "Enable dithering ("Dithering improves display for devices that support less than 16 bit color")"

By default, mine was ticked (enabled).

Now why should/would this be enabled on a device that supports 65,556 colours?

More to the point, disabling it has an instant effect on images displayed in the Picture application itself, in that they go much 'grainier/more colour patterned (which they shouldn't as this IS a 16 bit or greater device - so no impact should be seen - this is what makes me wonder if the XDA2 is not doing something wrong and using too few colours).

The info clearly says that this is feature only relevant to devices with less than 16 bit colour depth, yet it has an impact on the XDA2, which has MORE than 16 bit colour depth. That is worrying straight away.

BUT, in any event, whilst this DOES have a detrimental impact on images shown with the Pictures application, it has absolutely no discernable impact on themes, even after a soft reset.

Any thoughts about what I have found, anyone?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] darkcell:
Someone should contact O2 for support ASAP... :roll:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] hshortt:
And Shadamehr should give us a link to his themes! :lol:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] [Krueger]Dr.Stein:
O2 Active Theme

Anyone kind enough to confirm the original O2 theme (Active User Interface) does appear having bandings as the bubbles rise from light to dark blue?

TIA.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
If there's a bit general interest for them, I will get her indoors to give permission, then zip them up.

Provided its ok with the mods, I would then post the zip here.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] sublimatica:
You're not going to like this, but I don't have a problem with image colour banding on my machine at all, and I've tried a bunch of themes in the past before settling on the one that I use today (Sunflower).

Could you and I have different machine settings, Shademehr? Maybe I should send you the theme I'm using to see whether you get the banding problem on a picture that I don't get this on, or you could send me the image that you're having problems with and see whether it works differently for me?

Most of the images I have on my XDA2 don't have large areas of slowly-graduated colour. Maybe this is the problem. Must be frustrating.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Rogge:
I've got my XDA2 today. This first thing i noticed was the color. The screen contrast and brightness are great but te color is very low in compare with the XDA1. Very noticable in WindowsMedia player. The movie seems to play in 8bit instead of 16bit, as on the XDA1.

Tomorrow i'll get back to the Orange shop to discuss the problem. But i don't think they 'understand' the problem.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Panja:
Have the same problems on my XDA II...

Plus the colors are different on my XDA II than on my pc.

Got a screen from a site, the bars should be yellow but show orange on my XDA II :shock:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] jacro:
Re: O2 Active Theme

Yes I get the bands on the O2 theme.

16 bit colour is usually divided into 5 bits for red, 6 for green and 5 for blue. This means that in a straight graduation from black to blue there are only 2^5 possible levels (=32) The eye is very sensitive to shades of blue - more so than the other colours, (mostly because we evolved in a world with lots of shades of blue in it I think). Certainly sensitive enough to spot the difference between 32 different shades.

I can count at least 20 bands on the 02 theme, which would not be possible with 256 (non indexed) colours, or even 4096 (12 bit = 4 bits for blue or 16 shades), so I think the problem we are having is a conflict between our expectations and our excellent vision! If your screen seems better than most people are reporting, you are probably slightly colour-blind.

Even with 24 bit colour, you can still sometimes see banding in non-dithered images with pale blue graduations.

If the banding really bothers you I would suggest:

- Using themes with lots of red (which the eye is less sensitive to) or green (there are twice as many shades available).

- Using texture instead of smooth graduated tones (e.g. sea instead of sky)

- dithering the image when you produce them

- Using the Posterise filter to force the colours to a small set that will be accurately rendered

- wait for the 24 bit xda III (I made that up - don't get your hopes up :wink: )
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Rudegar:
i always believed that colour-blind people mainly had issues with telling orange, red, greenish colours

like these 2

http://members.aol.com/protanope/democard.gif

http://www.tiresias.org/itv/images/app34.jpg

maybe i'm colour sensitiv but i cant tell the difference between the xda1 and 2 screen of cause this is from memory since i havent had them beside eachother to check

but i think that i can say for sure that i notice a HUGE difference between the 16bit colours of my xda2 and if i set my

TFT monitor to 16bit colour
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] thumper:
When looking at a TFT monitor about 30cm away (the same distance when working with the XDAII), I also notice some banding.

When looking at the screen of the XDAII about 50-60 cm away (the same distance I took when working behind the desktop screen) I hardly see any banding.

On some images I notice banding on the XDAII, and these occur not only on blue shades, but other color tones as well.

Maybe the resolution of the XDA's screen (the size of the pixels) have anything to do with it?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] [Krueger]Dr.Stein:
Re: O2 Active Theme

Anyone please?
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] jacro:
Another feature of blue perception is that the eye is very bad at resolving it spatially whereas it is very good at resolving red. This means that blue pixels are relatively blurred compared with red pixels viewed at the same distance, so as you move away from the monitor, blue pixels naturally blend into each other reducing the banding effect. LCD pixels are very well defined whereas CRT ones are not, so comparing an LCD monitor with the XDAII is valid, wheras comparing a CRT monitor with the XDAII is less valid.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Rudegar:
yes i know that a crt cant be compared but even at 30cm i dont notice it on my samsung 19" TFT monitor when i set the colour to 16bit

sure a bit but nothing like the xda2 nothing like it at all
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
Er guys,

These posts about colour blindness, banding, bit depth etc, are all well and good excpet for one thing...

I can display these images on a Nokia N-gage, or a Series 40 Nokia, or many other of my devices that are just 4096 colours for example, and they look MUCH better.

So this REALLY is NOT an issue about the human eye, or colour depth.

But it really IS an issue about the poor quality of screen as displayed by the XDA2
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] jacro:
The real question whether the XDAII is actually displaying all 65k colours it claims, and how accurately it is displaying them.

There are lots of test images at

http://www.webcolors.freeserve.co.uk/test4096.htm

including the following htm files which can be copied to your XDAII and viewed with IE.

http://www.estats4all.com/pph/dlcount.php?id=kwatson&url=/Web_Colors_toolbox.zip

Comparing some of these test images on the XDAII and PC, it seems to me that I can see variation between all the test colours (ie the XDA is displaying 65k colours) , but that they are all a bit darker on the xda screen than on the PC.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Rudegar:
women would be more affected by those colour things right seem to recall they are more sensitiv to colours then men which is also why most colourblind people are men
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Pobman:
I have to agree that pics on my MDAII often looked very poor, skin tones are often just a mess of what seems like just a few colours.

And yet other people seem to have no problems!
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] [Krueger]Dr.Stein:
Re: O2 Active Theme

10X M8!

Relieved dat de banding iz not due 2 a skrewed up skreen.

:D

Thankz again Bro!
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] elliott911:
XDA 2 Screen resoloution is reduced

Hi there, i have had this problem on my XDA 2 twice, i am running the latest O2 Rom and i am using the TomTom navigator with a glass mount and magnetic base for the XDA. This problem came to light when i was using TomTom navigator. My phone rang and i disconnected the gps cable from the bottom of the XDA, answered the call. When i put the phone back on the base the screens resolution was total cr*p. :? I thought that unplugging the cable whilst using the device caused an internal error or that the base had magnetised the phone and affected the screen. After about 30 mins tring to replicate the fault, i gave up and put the xda back on the base a bit harder than usual (in anger) behold the problem went away. So it seems like a little tap on the back fixed the problem. It was obvious afterwards. Maybe your device has had a knock on the back and needs the same to rectify it? Hope this helps :idea:
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] hshortt:
:D hee hee, the use of a hammer is discouraged.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] andyclap:
Hmm, just had a play. I created a truecolour image with three strips fading from black to red/blue/green. I'd expect to see 32 bands in red and blue, and 64 in green.

I've tried it in various applications, with mixed results, but generally the colour space is correct.

IE - 64K colours

Album - 32K colours 555, dithered

Pictures - 64K colours when undithered, 32K colours when dithered.

Today screen - 32K colours 555

Note the dithering is absolutely dreadful. There seems to be a problem in the algorithm used. When I manually dithered to 32K colours on the PC, the results were far far better.

There is also a slight concern in that the banding between bright colours is more noticable than the banding between dark colours, this would be a result of contrast settings.

So basically, 64K colour is going to look "bandy" anyway. When you use 64K colour on a PC, windows creates an optimal palette of 64K colours from the truecolour domain, so you usually won't see banding. The XDA uses a fixed 565 palette, or 555 in certain applications, contrast isn't optimal, and dithering is just plain wrong.

If anybody wants the images, tsk, html etc, to test on their device, let me know and I'll post them here.
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Rudegar:
could dithering be having any impact on cleatypes because

some rom versions seem to have a poore cleartypes then others
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] sumitk:
This freeware ute includes a tweak that displays a contrast slider in Settings.

http://www.funnysnake.com/products_easytweak.php
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] skenliv:
Umm, on my Qtek 2020. The program "easytweak" ****ed it up, coulnd even restart. Had to take out the battery!!
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] Shadamehr:
NEVER before have I had an application before that caused my whole XDA2 to f*ck up.

Especially not one to do it the second it was installed and first run.

Easytweak is the application that changed all that.

So far, my battery has been out while I type this (as even a soft reset doesn't work).

Here's hoping it works without a hard reset when I put the battery back. here goes...

"Tap the screen to set up your pocket pc"...?

Your f*cking joking aren't you?

I never even hard reset it... Just took the battery out for one minute (with plenty power in the backup...)

I don't fl*cking believe it!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, don't touch Easytweak with a barge pole. No disrespect to the author, but I'm fl*cking fuming... I don't beleive it... All my data...

Nice one!
[MDA II, XDA II, 2060 General] aceangel:
You guys do not have to add the contrast slider as there is no way (as of now) to change the contrast. You can't using window's utility because the screen cannot use it. I'm not saying it isn't possible, maybe there could be a utility via gapi or via the ATI Imageon to adjust the contrast of the screen. Again, the windows utility cannot do such.

Wwell, if you want to have it enabled or something, just open up your favorite registry editing software (either phm or resco, or something else) and go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ControlPanel\Contrast\ and rename the Redirect key to something like oldRedirect. Then softreset your device and that's it.