Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

STDP6038 - STMicroelectronics

* Programmable zoom and shrink scaling
* DisplayPort 1.1a compliant receiver – four-lane DisplayPort input
* Ultra-Reliable DVI®receiver (165 MHz) (STDP6026/STDP6036)
* Triple-channel (10-bit) ADC (205 MHz) and PLL
* Faroudja RealColor®color processing:
o Image enhancement
o 12-bit processing
o Deep color support
o xvYCC color space support
* Dual channel 8-bit LVDS output
* HDMI 1.3 receiver integrated with I2S (L/R channel) or SPDIF audio output ports (STDP6028/STDP6038)
* Intel x86-compatible microcontroller with external SPI ROM interface
* 12-bit panel gamma correction and high-quality dithering for 8-bit and 6-bit panel
interface
* DDC controller for host interface purposes
* PWM signals for backlight, audio volume control, etc.
* Energy Spectrum Management®(ESM®)
* Package: 128-pin PQFP

 

STDP8028 - STMicroelectronics

Dual 10-bit triple ADCs with capture up to 205 MHz
Integrated dual digital inputs supporting HDMI 1.3 receiver
Integrated DisplayPort 1.1 compliant receiver
Integrated 3D video decoder
Next generation true 10-bit Faroudja DCDi Cinema® format processing
Flexible DDR2 memory interface 32 bits wide
Advanced Picture-in-Picture (PIP) features capabilities
Faroudja RealColor® processing
On-chip microprocessor
Advanced bit-mapped OSD controller
Embedded 10-bit dual-channel LVDS for WUXGA panel support
Multi-standard digital and analog audio decoder and post-processor
Package: 409 HSBGA

 

This has turned into a personal discussion between two people that will not budge. I will do my best to avoid arguing with you.

This post was originally longer, but in the end it would have only drawn things out more.

 

That is a very nice chip. It is known from HP's specs that it is dithering down to 8 bits, but I don't understand why they are still doing it. It looks like they could have a full 10bit video setup. I know the last gen HP panel was 8 bits, so maybe there is an unknown carryover. Could be software or hardware or even an error in the HP spec sheet.

The other big question is whether in 2011 software can handle what a chip had to do in 2009 when this chip was last updated.

We do know the Dell is fully 10 bit from card to panel. It may be that all it needs is software. I also need to do some research to see what video processing chips Dell might be using.

When my IPS Precision gets here, I will compare it to my normal U2410 display, but will also make sure to compare it to the Eizo monitors in the media services photography studio. They also have some of the newer Lacie models. They shoot Hassleblad digital medium format and are completely ocd about color. I am only mildly ocd.

I keep debating on whether I should request a demo HP with dreamcolor at work to test and compare. We only purchase Dell and Apple, so I don't normally get to work with HP's high end products.

 

Firstly, big thanks to Bokeh and Gatehouse for their responses. Some useful info in there. I certainly agree about backing up statements with links to sources. Sorry I was not around the last couple of days to reply.

Secondly, it seems useful to review just why we need more than 8 bits so here is my take on that, with links to sources where i have them.

sRGB can (just) be encoded in 8 bits per component without introducing visible banding due to it's restricted gamut and the (approximately) 2.2 gamma which is close to the theoretical ideal.
RGB Working Space Information
Finding the Best Gamma From a Data Set
Beta RGB

However, if an 8-bit look-up table (LUT) is used to provide the gamma function, less than 256 unique values will be output (except for the trivial case where the input and output are identical). As an example, encoding a 2.2 gamma function in a lookup table gives only 184 unique output values for 256 input values. An 8 in/9 out table gives 254 values while 8 in/10 out gives all 256 values.
Levels Calculator

For 10 bit input, 12 bit output is needed to retain all 1024 unique values for a 2.2 gamma. (same link as above)

While CRT displays natively had an approximately 2.2 to 2.4 gamma, LCDs have a rather different transfer function (sigmoid?) and so require an internal LUT so that they can appear to be a 2.2 gamma device.
(No link, would appreciate pointers to the native transfer function of the various types of LCD display).

If a wider RGB gamut is encoded in 8 bits, the individual values will be spaced further apart than they would be in sRGB (larger delta E between values) and will produce visible banding. Thus, 10 or more bits are required to encode the colors, and these must be transmitted through a 10 bit or higher interface to produce 1024 distinct output values per component.
(I'm not aware of an analysis that demonstrates the minimum number of bits per component required to give less than 1 or less than 0.5 delta E in a particular RGB colorspace. Wish I could link to such an analysis).

Most monitors do not provide access to their internal LUT and thus, color management solutions perform the calibration step by writing to the video card LUT. The closer the display is to the target gamma (and white point, so the channels do not need to be scaled in the LUT to correct the white point) and the better the grey scale tracking, the less correction needs to be applied in the video LUT and this, the less values are discarded; this is particularly important if the video LUT is only 8 bits (for sRGB) or 10 bits (for wider gamuts such as AdobeRGB). Therefore, posting transfer curves produced by such calibration is useful. The ideal curve is a straight 45 degree line for all three channels.

 

OK now lets look at what we know about the HP and Dell wide-gamut laptops, in particular regarding bit depth.

HP EliteBook 8560w and Dell Precision M4600/M6600 can use Nvidia Quadro 2000M graphics card, which has 10-bit video LUT and supports 10 bit transfer with DisplayPort.
NVIDIA Quadro Mobile Solutions
Features and Benefits
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

HP EliteBook 8560w and Dell Precision M4600 have external DisplayPort connectors.
HP EliteBook 8560w Mobile Workstation specifications - HP Small & Medium Business products
Precision M4600 ? Lightweight, Performance Mobile Workstation | Dell

DisplayPort supports 6 to 16 bits per color channel
DisplayPort - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HDMI mandates support of 8 bit sRGB and has optional support for YCbYr and higher bit depths. Its not clear to me whether this is studio 16-235 or computer 0-255, for the 8-bit per component case.
HDMI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rec. 709 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HDMI 1.3 and up supports xvYCC and DeepColor, which appears to be a wide gamut and deeper bit depth option using the sRGB colorspace but extended to allow out of sRGB gamut values. HDMI 1.3 supports 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths
HDMI :: Resources :: Knowledge Base
xvYCC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Color depth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For DVI, 24 bits per pixel (8 per component) support is mandatory, and optionaly up to 48 bits per pixel (16 per component) in dual link DVI.
Digital Visual Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My own understanding is that DVI, while theoretically capable of high bit depth color, is in practice restricted to 8 bit in mosty/all implementations.

Both HP EliteBook 8560w and Dell Precision M460 use a 10 bit IPS display on the laptop itself. Neither company seems to state on their own site which model of IPS display this is. (Do the repair manuals state this?)

HP uses LP156WF3
Dell uses lp156wf3-slb2 and internal DisplayPort connection to get 10-bit signal transfer. (asserted in these forums, can't find the link though)

 

Does the image that accompanied this post show the STDP8028? I couldn't read any of the text on the various components because of the size of the image (maybe a crop from a higher resolution image would show this better).

If that image isn't the source, how do we know that the HP EliteBook 8560w uses the STDP8028? Is there a teardown somewhere, or a repair manual that shows this?
Edited to add: or is it from this diagram in another thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...600-ips-screen-corner-tint-9.html#post8122299


Same question for the Dell Precision M4600, how do we know it doesn't use it?

 

I also don't understand why the HP is dithering from 10 bits to 8 bits, to talk to a 10 bit display. It seems a really odd thing to do. (But we do know, thanks to the specs posted earlier, that the STDP8028 provides dithering to talk to 6 and 8 bit displays). Maybe it is using an internal DVI connection to talk to the display?

How do we know that the Dell is using an internal DisplayPort connection to talk to the display? (I agree that finding which chips are being used in the Dell would be helpful).

 

Hey guys I have an outlet M4600 sitting in my shopping cart... and I am refreshing the page so they don't take it out so some swift help would be appreciated

with the coupon ,tax , and shipping..it will be $850. Is this a good deal?

I'm a college student and will be doing alot of work in Solidworks along with some gaming here and there.

 

That looks like an excellent price! The processor, RAM look good. No obvious problems that I can see.