Hazro monitor owners I need your help please.

Sacrosanct · 4 Dec 2011 at 17:12

Hi everyone, I've just had a Hazro HZ27WC non glass model delivered and I have a few questions. I'm loving the extra screen space but I'm having quite a few issues.

Firstly, I ran the LCD Dead Pixel Test linked here and haven't found any dead or stuck pixels yet though I haven't had time for a good luck but I noticed on the white and light coloured screens there is a sort of light shadow along the bottom of the screen. I haven't noticed it outside the test yet but someone suggested it might be backlight bleed. Any thoughts on this?

Viewing angles. I was led to believe the viewing angles were great for IPS. When I view videos or games or even my desktop wallpaper at a slight angle the picture fades a lot, just like my old TN panel. Should this be happening?

Movies and videos. This is by far the biggest problem. They look really awful on the Hazro screen. Some of the videos are 1080p but they look really dull and low definition with no clarity they honestly don't even look up to anything approaching 720p standards. Also, the contrast is simply awful. I can't change this using the monitor it only has a brightness control. Does anyone have any idea what could be going on here? I asked on the Hazro thread and one user who has the same screen says his videos look really sharp and the colours look brilliant. I didn't ask if he has the glass model as opposed to the non glass which I have but it couldn't make that much difference surely? Blacks look terrible too I wasn't expecting deep blacks but blacks and contrast are far worse than they were on my 22 inch Samsung TN.

I don't know why I'm having these problems. I look at the display details and the monitor is listed as generic DVI maybe there's a driver I need for the monitor but no disks came in the box.

Another problem might be I upgraded my card from an ATI 5750 to ASUS GTX 560 ti (which I also bought from OCUK). I didn't remove the ATI drivers first it installed the new drivers straight away. I then removed the ATI drivers from the PC and installed the latest Nvidia drivers. I don't know if any of this affects things. Is it worth messing around in Nvidia control panel and if so what settings should I change?

Any help really would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to send this screen back but it has been very disappointing so far. I want to know if it's anything I am doing wrong or can improve but I have to decide soon whether to send it back or not. Thanks for reading.

Axeia · 4 Dec 2011 at 18:19

I was a bit dissapointed by the contrast as well but the rest of your problems are a bit odd.

Viewing angles should be much better than on a TN, the screen will get a 'white' tint when viewed at angles but that's normal and not quite as degrading to the image quality as what a TN-panel does.
As for adjusting the contrast, NVIDIA control panel -> Adjust desktop color settings. If you like oversaturated colours you can play with the 'digital vibrance' slider as well as you mentioned to find them Dull.

As for the videos, try another videoplayer. I use potplayer myself and the videos all look great.
Also, adjust the brightness as far down as is comfortable via the monitor itself is a better idea than using the nvidia control panel for such things so try to get the best contrast using the lagom tests before fiddling with the NVIDIA Control panel.

The shadow sounds more like the opposite of backlight bleed. Backlight bleed causes a part of the screen (usually the edges and/or corners) to look brighter than the rest, best tested with an entirely black screen in a dark room.

There is no driver for the monitor and it should work fine without one.

Sacrosanct · 4 Dec 2011 at 19:05

Axeia said:
I was a bit dissapointed by the contrast as well but the rest of your problems are a bit odd.

Viewing angles should be much better than on a TN, the screen will get a 'white' tint when viewed at angles but that's normal and not quite as degrading to the image quality as what a TN-panel does.
As for adjusting the contrast, NVIDIA control panel -> Adjust desktop color settings. If you like oversaturated colours you can play with the 'digital vibrance' slider as well as you mentioned to find them Dull.

As for the videos, try another videoplayer. I use potplayer myself and the videos all look great.
Also, adjust the brightness as far down as is comfortable via the monitor itself is a better idea than using the nvidia control panel for such things so try to get the best contrast using the lagom tests before fiddling with the NVIDIA Control panel.

The shadow sounds more like the opposite of backlight bleed. Backlight bleed causes a part of the screen (usually the edges and/or corners) to look brighter than the rest, best tested with an entirely black screen in a dark room.

There is no driver for the monitor and it should work fine without one.

Hi Axeia thanks for the reply. I tried pot player and got the same problem. I also tried the lagom tests and according to that the contrast is as good as it's going to get. I haven't done anything in Nvidia panel yet.

Let me try to describe the problem. No matter what videos I watch and no matter what video player they all look like SD videos. There is not detail in the faces or objects or background it looks kind of flat. I have seen much better video quality on 720p TV's. The contrast, can you elaborate a little on what you consider 'disappointing' do you mean it's not excellent but quite acceptable? To me it's not disappointing it's absolutely awful so I don't think I'm seeing what you and others are seeing on the same monitors.

There has to be something wrong at my end but I don't know what. Is it anything to do with the 2560 x 1440 resolution i.e. is the video being stretched or something? I need to get to the bottom of this in the next couple of days because as things stand it's going back but I'll only do that as a last resort.

Thanks for the help I'm willing to try anything and everything if anyone comes up with any ideas to fix this.

Rroff · 4 Dec 2011 at 19:11

My brother had that problem once with videos, everything was like it was 8bit color - no detail on faces, lacking smooth gradients between color blends and basically looking "chalky" was something to do with contrast settings in the nVidia control panel IIRC but it was a long time ago.

anttonij · 5 Dec 2011 at 06:10

For improved contrast in videos, you should check the video color settings in the nVidia Control Panel. Select "Adjust video color settings" -> "With the NVIDIA settings" -> Advanced -> Dynamic range -> Full (0-255).

Sacrosanct · 5 Dec 2011 at 13:01

anttonij said:
For improved contrast in videos, you should check the video color settings in the nVidia Control Panel. Select "Adjust video color settings" -> "With the NVIDIA settings" -> Advanced -> Dynamic range -> Full (0-255).

Thanks anttonij that has definitely helped. My big problem is the movies still look SD to me not HD. I wonder if it's anything to do with the fact the monitor doesn't support HDCP? Full screen the movies look a bit grainy. I'll keep messing around with it, any more suggestions greatly appreciated.

jack.mitchell · 5 Dec 2011 at 13:31

If you can, get a fresh copy of windows/linux live cd running and test the video under that. This should rule out any odd configuration problems.

Random Guy · 5 Dec 2011 at 13:44

Are you running a 1080p movie full screen? It is definitely not going to be as sharp at 2560x1440. Try dropping your resolution and replaying the movie to see if it still looks blurry - I suspect that you will notice a difference.

Contrast-wise, viewing-angle-wise, and black-level wise, this monitor simply annihilates my old TN panel.

The white glow you mention sounds like an artifact of having the backlight turned up to full brightness. You may want to tone that down a few notches (I did) as I found the default level (maxed out) too much.

Take some time to view photos and compare that to your old panel if you still have it to hand. Some pics of mine here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=20419981&postcount=1911

Axeia · 5 Dec 2011 at 14:00

That could be the case as well, try using a file you're sure of that's copyright free/unprotected.
If you lack one, go grab one of the mkvs from the Sintel site.

Video is completely legal - it's used to show off the capabilities of the opensource blender software

Sacrosanct · 5 Dec 2011 at 15:02

jack.mitchell said:
If you can, get a fresh copy of windows/linux live cd running and test the video under that. This should rule out any odd configuration problems.

I'll have a look for that, thanks.

Random Guy said:
Are you running a 1080p movie full screen? It is definitely not going to be as sharp at 2560x1440. Try dropping your resolution and replaying the movie to see if it still looks blurry - I suspect that you will notice a difference.

Contrast-wise, viewing-angle-wise, and black-level wise, this monitor simply annihilates my old TN panel.

The white glow you mention sounds like an artifact of having the backlight turned up to full brightness. You may want to tone that down a few notches (I did) as I found the default level (maxed out) too much.

Take some time to view photos and compare that to your old panel if you still have it to hand. Some pics of mine here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=20419981&postcount=1911

Thanks Random Guy, dropping res didn't make much difference. I have a ton of movies that look amazing when they are on my TV via PC but they don't look HD quality on this monitor for some reason. Photos look fine, the stuff you linked looks great it's just video. Bizarre really.

Axeia said:
That could be the case as well, try using a file you're sure of that's copyright free/unprotected.
If you lack one, go grab one of the mkvs from the Sintel site.

Video is completely legal - it's used to show off the capabilities of the opensource blender software

Hi again Axeia, I just downloaded one of those videos and it looks amazing. It's rendered though, it seems to be normal video I'm having problems with.

Thanks for the help everyone. It's obviously me that's having problems others haven't I'll keep going till I fix it. I really don't want to send this monitor back I love it apart from this one problem.

smilertoo · 5 Dec 2011 at 15:16

if youre watching a standard low res video it will look very poor, just a result of a bigger screen.

Axeia · 5 Dec 2011 at 18:08

If that Sintel video looked good then I do think you might be trying to play HDCP content resulting in some icky poor quality stuff.

You could use something like passkey to get around that.