8bit LCDs vs. 6bit LCDs
Read this article by bit-tech.net. Right away I suspected that my Compal GL31 might have a 6 bit LCD. I mean, c’mon. It’s a freaking laptop, one which isn’t marketed as a high end one. But I still wanted to make sure for myself.
So I went out and Googled, and found this. Basically you have to download a bitmap which shows certain colours that a 6bit LCD wouldn’t like. Using my trusty ColorZilla Firefox extension, I’ve determined these colours to be.. oh wait a minute, Firefox can’t blow up the image so I can see the gradient lines. Wait, Photoshop to the rescue:
#141414
#161616… I’m starting to see a pattern here. Skipping ahead:
#1a1a1a
#2a2a2a
#383838
To compare these colours to other greys, just subtract 1 from each colour component. So if you were to view a #383838 band next to a #373737 one, you’d see that the #373737 one is pretty solid compared to the #383838 which will have a slight pattern caused by the dithering on the LCD panel. No, zooming in does not help, you have to physically go put your eye next to the monitor. I like this side of geekiness.
So I confirmed that my LCD is actually 6bit. Nothing to shout at mom for – this laptop was marketed as a budget model, through and through, with its GMA950 graphics and all. Still, it’s kinda disappointing given that I’ve got Photoshop on this sucker.
I still wanted to find out the manufacturer of this LCD, though, so I hopped onto the internet and searched for AUO1344. Turns out that AUO is some Chinese company (surprise surprise), but I couldn’t find a AUO1344 anywhere on their website. I searched around again, and came across this cached Google page of a forum. This guy is basically trying to play his lovely dating sim game (I don’t know that game) which is made in 4:3 aspect ratio, just like all the Sakura Taisens and… pretty much every damn dating sim coming out of Japan nowadays, in his spanking new AUO1344 monitor with a 16:10 aspect ratio, which he says is named:
Monitor Name AU Optronics B141EW01 V3
Wow, thanks! I go back to the website, and it doesn’t have a B141EW01, but it does have a B141EW02. I take a look at that, and thank lord for Chinese straightforwardness – it says 262K for Number of Colors, which means that it’s a 6bit LCD all right.
Then I found out that in Everest, right below that AUO1344 line, was the B141EW01 V3 line already. Sigh. Anyway, good to know other people have this LCD panel besides me. I don’t see anything wrong with this panel, actually, so I won’t complain. In fact, I’m very happy to have a laptop that can emulate Neo Geo games and play music and shit and have 80GBs of storage already. Why am I thankful for this? Well, because my last laptop was that crappy VIA C3 I told you all about in ‘Ode to a Gentoo Linux install‘… what, you haven’t read it yet? Go read it now! Anyway, a step up from 256MB to 2048MB in RAM sure is fun. And anything would be an improvement over that S3 Savage, for which VIDIX never worked. And that VIA C3 couldn’t freq-throttle to save it’s life… it’d crash. And get 1 hour’s worth of battery life. I have here 4 hours of battery life. Damn, what a step up. So I’m not complaining about my new laptop.
Although Yonah is based on late 2005 technology…
