Overly Dim Sony FW-900

Hi guys,

I've been searching through the forum for my specific issue with the FW900, but no one seems to have covered it -- folks have only talked about the monitor being too bright.

So, I bought this monitor used and it has deep, wonderful blacks. The previous owner didn't abuse it much, and I've owned several CRTs as well as flat panel displays in my lifetime. So, now that I have the FW900, I'm awed at the blacks (totally blows the TFT flat panel out of the water), but it only achieves these blacks with the brightness turned waaaay down.

The sRGB color setting on the monitor requires 15 Brightness and 85 Contrast for it to display the blacks as black as it should be. However, at those settings the monitor is TOO dark -- to the point where if it's a night scene in a movie, it'll be barely visible (same goes with games). Good luck with watching Thor if the monitor is set at these settings.

However, if I turn up the Brightness to some better-viewable level, the blacks turn into browns. So I can discern better what's going on in the movie/game, but now those wonderful blacks have been lost!

So, my questions are:

1. Am I too used to the large contrast in LCD panels? I've been without a CRT for a while (my old Mitsubishi died ~4 years ago), and it's been quite a challenge to re-accustom myself to the CRT world, especially with a monitor this dark. (By the way, I went back to CRT because I couldn't stand the ghosting effects of pretty much every flat panel I tried. I play FPS games, and I hated playing on flat panels.)

2. What can I attempt to remedy the situation?


I've tried to do the Image Restoration feature, as well as playing with color temperatures. I've also read something about using Windas or even manually changing the "G2" setting inside the monitor, but I want to see if this even a feasible solution before I bust out the screwdriver. From my reading on the G2 setting, folks are using it to adjust overbright monitors back to normal levels. But will this fix an overly-dim monitor -- especially if I CAN increase the brightness already (but it screws up the black color)? It's not like the monitor is already at 100 Brightness.

I love the FW900, and I definitely want to keep on using it as long as it wants to live. But it's quite annoying that I have to have a pitch-black room in order to view the monitor somewhat properly. Even with a super-dark room I still can't resolve some of the images on the screen, especially with a movie that has really dark scenes (like Thor).

Thanks!

P.S. The monitor is plugged into the computer via a regular VGA jack. The computer is a 4-year-old Core 2 Duo machine running Windows 7.

Thanks for the reply, and for confirming my suspicions that fooling around with the G2 voltage wouldn't solve my problem.

I sure do feel silly: I thought about adjusting gamma when I was fiddling with the monitor, but I never went into Nvidia's control panel -- I just kept trying to adjust settings on the monitor. It's definitely been a long time since I had my last CRT / needed to adjust video settings

This morning I let the monitor warm up and then changed the Nvidia brightness (very slightly) and gamma until the blacks were still black, but I could actually see the dark scenes in Thor. All the games looked much nicer as well -- thanks!

With regard to your question, the blacks still do turn into browns when I raise the monitor brightness levels, even after the monitor is fully warmed up. I've done the Image Restore function, and that did not affect the browns in any way. Here's how it looks like: http://cl.ly/image/3L1s0J3E0a45 For that shot I purposely turned the brightness way up so you could see what I'm referring to. This isn't how I'd normally view the monitor, even before the Nvidia brightness/gamma adjustment -- but you get the idea.