# Dual NEC monitor calibration



## sneef (Dec 4, 2009)

I am in the middle of buying an NEC LCD269'WUXi2-bk & NEC LCD3'9'WQXi-bk?

I have in fact placed the order to have them imported from NEC japan (i am in Thailand). But then i found some reviews on B&H for the 3'" which said if you have mismatched NEC screens you can not calibrate them both. I asked the NEC rep in Thailand and they said

"The 26 and 3' inches are difference Brightness, contrast ratio and pixel pitch
so I recommend you change to same model such as 26" x 2 or 3'" x 2"

So of course i am torn completely by this, I must have at least 1 x 3'" so he is saying i must have 2 x 3'" and while i like the idea of the real estate, my Visa card is screaming no-no-no.

Then i started to do some googling on dual monitor calibration and found lots of talk about WinXP users using the Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP, but i am not using XP.

My setup is currently Vista Ultimate 64 bit, but i intend to migrate to Win 7 within 9' days unless i get some good reason not to from this question.

My video card is quite good, so i assume it has dual LUT. It is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 with 768mb of ram.

I have ordered the spectraview II software and color sensor from B&H but it is heavily backordered and can probably cancel that if it's not what i need.
I also own a Spyder 3.

So what is the deal folks, can i calibrate 2 different NEC screens or do i need to sell a kidney to get 2 x 3'"?

Basicially i shoot in RAW in AdobeRGB and wanted to work on my pics in AdobeRGB on the 3'" and to have the 26" setup for sRGB.
I must admit i am somewhat new to the whole idea of color spaces and color profiles.

Any advise would be appreciated.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 4, 2009)

I have no idea if Spectraview II can do two separate, different monitors. It seems like it should, it has a place to chose the monitor.

Note that Spectraview is going to calibrate the internal settings of the monitor -- it does not work like Spider 3, which is calibrating the LUT on the video card. It literally calibrates the monitor, starting from whatever the video card is putting out. 

Spectraview II can also work just fine with the sensor from Spyder 3 -- that is what I use. You just need the software, and (at least in the US) you can buy and download it right from the NEC web site, same day. I had heard it was not available outside the US, but I have no idea really. I got mine off the web site, got the serial number a bit later in the day, and used the Spyder sensor and it works great (mine is a 249' -- I'm cheap).

As to your comment about "new to color spaces" -- that's a lot of money to be spending on extended gamut monitors. Make sure that's really what you want. There are some complexities in editing on a wide gamut monitor -- I'm not competent to describe, but I read enough to decide that the 249' (normal sRgb approximation) was plenty good with me.

PS. You don't "Shoow in Raw in AdobeRGB" - Raw has no color space. You convert to a color space when you run through ACR or another converter, and you can convert to any color space you like at that time.


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## sneef (Dec 5, 2009)

For me i do not see it as a lot of money, when i first bought a 15" NEC CRT back when a Pentium 133 was a good thing... you would pay around ~$8,''' for a 21" CRT (in Australia at the time), so the fact that these are ~$2k to me is almost laughably cheap, though you see i balk at buying 2 of them... merely because i want a D3s some time before next Xmas.

I would be interested to know more about complexities with wide gamut monitors, i am just getting into post production, but i am not affraid to learn.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 5, 2009)

Sorry, I'm not competent to comment really, other than to say as I read about them a lot I got more confused.

I will say I have been very happy with the NEC I bought, and Spectraview worked great -- I mount the puck periodically, hit a few clicks, and go get a soda. When I come back it's nicely calibrated. I think you will be happy with the quality. 

It was just the idea of "new" and running one at sRgb and one in AdobeRgb that sounded like you might be getting something that sounds better than it ends up being, but maybe it is wonderful. I really do not know.  Hopefully someone else will comment.

But Google "Spectraview II USA" and read a few, you will see some comments that european NEC's won't work with the SpectraView II. I don't know about Japan, I don't know about current vs. when those were written. But they imply the software detects the other country model and doesn't work. Just make sure it will work with what you are getting.


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 5, 2009)

I think at the worst, you're talking about a second video card. But that's based on my XP experience. Haven't run two calibrated monitors on Vista or Win7.


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## sneef (Dec 5, 2009)

that i could handle, though i kinda bought the 275 because it could run 2 x 3'" @ full res... though heck GPU power is cheap as chips nowdays along with everything else...


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 5, 2009)

The subject of dual calibrated monitors in Windows is a bit arcane, not a lot of data, specs or how-to's seems to be available. Please let us know back, how you make out, and/or if you find additional info on the subject.

BTW, if no one's said so, welcome to the forums. (Sometimes we jump right on the thread, and forget our manners  )


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## RikkFlohr (Dec 5, 2009)

I am currently running two monitors (19 and 24 Inch) I am running an nVidia 89'' graphics card and calibrating with Spyder 2. Each monitor has a separate profile that loads on boot into the video card. Both monitors look right after the profiles load. 

I am using Win 7.


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## Brad Snyder (Dec 5, 2009)

Thanks for the info Rikk.


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## sneef (Dec 6, 2009)

Cool.

Now all i need to do is be sure these nonUS screens can be hardware calibrated.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 6, 2009)

Spider and other tools do not actually calibrate the monitor, they calibrate the LUT inside the video card/driver. That's why it is often problematic to use two monitors -- the card needs two LUT's, and windows ahs to keep them straight.

But Spectraview II actually does calibrate the monitor -- it does not rely on the video card at all, other than to (a) communicate with the monitor, and (b) consistently handle color. So long as you do not have something else screwing around with the LUT in the video card (say some other calibration software), you are not relying on the card to have dual LUT's or on Windows to handle separate monitor profiles.

Of course this wonly works with the NEC monitors that can be hardware calibrated.

Note: I'm saying this based on the 249' but I am pretty sure that the other monitors mentioned are the same.


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## aneifeld (Feb 17, 2011)

Ferguson said:


> I have no idea if Spectraview II can do two separate, different monitors. It seems like it should, it has a place to chose the monitor.
> 
> Note that Spectraview is going to calibrate the internal settings of the monitor -- it does not work like Spider 3, which is calibrating the LUT on the video card. It literally calibrates the monitor, starting from whatever the video card is putting out.
> 
> ...


 
I am buying a NEC NEC Display Solutions LCD2490WUXi2-BK and want to use the SpectraviewII 2 s/w with my hardware gizmo from the Spyder3Elite package from Datacolor as you say you have been doing. *Can you share with me what you do to accomplish this? I also am guessing that the '249' you ref is a model number; how/where do you find this info?*


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2011)

Hi aneifeld, welcome to the forum!

Linwood hasn't logged in since just before xmas, but hopefully he'll drop by to help.

For what it's worth, I understand that the software distributed with the Spectraview models in some parts of the world is the BasICColor Display 4 software, which can be purchased separately.  http://www.basiccolor.de/english/Datenblaetter_E/display_E/display_E.htm


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## Linwood Ferguson (Mar 21, 2011)

aneifeld said:


> I am buying a NEC NEC Display Solutions LCD2490WUXi2-BK and want to use the SpectraviewII 2 s/w with my hardware gizmo from the Spyder3Elite package from Datacolor as you say you have been doing. *Can you share with me what you do to accomplish this? I also am guessing that the '249' you ref is a model number; how/where do you find this info?*



Sorry, the 249' was a typo, the model I have is a 2490 i.e. the whole string is LCD2490WUXi.  I do not have the Xi2, but as I understand it, the basic process is the same with all of these monitors.

As to what I did, I simply installed the Spectravision II software, and plugged in the Datacolor sensor.  They worked together out of the box, no special setup.  You cannot actually run the Spectravision II while the datacolor software is running, but you need stop it only while calibrating.  I use Spyder Elite (now running version 4) to do one old Gateway monitor while simultaneously using the NEC monitor which has been hardware calibrated with the SpectraVision II.  

The Spectravision II does not run during normal use.  It calibrates the monitor itself (not the LUT in the video card).  You just have to make sure that nothing changes the LUT in the video card once you calibrate the monitor.  So I just do not use Spyder to calibrate that monitor.  I have had no problem with stability -- I can check the calibration and it will still be almost the same after weeks.

As to doing two different models -- no idea.  I would think two with different color spaces may be confusing, even if both were calibrated.  But not sure.  My plan is if the old cheap monitor fails I will try to buy a matching NEC.

PS. Sorry for the long delay, this working for a living is not all it is cracked up to be.


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