Alyosha2001 Thank you I checked, its very obvious. However, did the eyestrain then disappear when the dithering was disabled?

@Gurm That is exactly what we have to do - eliminate the known issues one by one in order to solve this and work pain free, or work at all. In my case I really need a damn laptop by now, but I am getting an oscilloscope first to measure whether if it bothers me, its PWM. Then ill just go down that road from there.
I am also doing a nice run through all possible doctors and examinations, but more of that in the health thread.
I couldnt measure any PWM on one iphone I !have! to use for work and that gives me the worst strain ever (iphone 6s), so maybe the better oscope will finally pick it up.

I am still conflicted on why symptoms that PWM gives us would be the same for other, unknown cases where PWM isnt present.

      martin Yes, the difference is worth it, I prefer the banding all the time.
      As far as I know, iphones do not use PWM, but a very interesting similar matter I encounter with the mirrorless Sony NEX5 and a6000. If I use them even for very short period, like taking 2 or 3 pictures, a very sudden dizziness occurs. And as far as I could tell, their LCD's are PWM free. On Canon 550D (T2i) I did not encounter this. I suppose it's only the dithering, but it's like some are affecting more than others.
      Unlike the PWM, I don't know how to measure or acknowledge the dithering.

        martin Martin, my feeling here is that we are sensitive to some kind of ... "flicker". Flicker is a term that could cover - strobing, pixel marching, pulsing, or any of a variety of other ills. If I take two screens, one which hurts and one which does not, there tend to be two kinds of differences. Either the one that hurts seems, when you look closely, to "flicker" (i.e. static images are subtly moving) or else it is painfully sharp. In that case, I suspect blue light but can't rule out a third, unknown factor.

        What I can say is that we've come closer to hitting the nail on the head in some cases here. We now know - in the vaguest terms - what android phones are doing wrong, and it's color spaces. We know what Windows 10 is doing wrong, and it's image compositing. We don't know WHAT in that layer is going wrong, but we know what the problem is. We're getting there.

          9 days later

          quantumzipper Any updates? Did the S7 work out for you with the screen protector? What about the Dell XPS? Downgrading Intel driver?

            23 days later

            hard to know the right "dithering" thread, but thought this was helpful from the displayCAL forum. (I havent seen much talk here of using monitor calibration software)

            How do I know if a graphics card is capable of dithering?

            Looking at a smooth grayscale gradient in an image viewer with color management turned off(!) is usually a reasonable test. I.e. first look at it with the videoLUT set to linear (no calibration) to make sure banding is not in the image itself or introduced by the display (some panels are less than 8 bit and use dither internally to generate intermediate steps). Then load your calibration. If it still looks smooth, the graphic card either dithers, or ouputs a higher bit depth (both should suffice to reduce or eliminate calibration-related banding artifacts).

            4 days later

            So, the dithreing is done either in the LCD panel itself, either by the graphics card? Are there any panels that do not dither by default? Can we make a list of them? Is there any true 8 bit panel? Is there a test to spot the dithering simmilarly to the pwn one? (Seems like although it affects a lot of people, not many are aware of it)

              Alyosha2001 So, the dithreing is done either in the LCD panel itself, either by the graphics card?

              Correct. On laptops the LCD panel doesn't have much electronics of its own so it's often done by the graphics card.

              FRC is dithering, which is often used in desktop monitors, and if your using a panel with FRC and a graphics card that is dithering, it can cause issues with image quality.

              https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/10-7-1-update-no-good-getting-the-dell-u2211h-to-work-properly-on-a-2010-mac-mini.1022386/

              Is there a test to spot the dithering simmilarly to the pwn one?

              Very hard to do I'm afraid. I have some ideas that involve a microscope and high speed camera ($$$$)

                  JTL FRC Very interesting article! I do happend to have a Dell with eIPS, and it does not use PWM for backlight, but gives me some kind of headache. The bad part is theese panels have dithering of their own and cannot be turned off in video drivers.
                  Still I think the best way to spot the dithering nowadays is banding, until some prooves a 8 bit FRC-free panel exists

                  • JTL replied to this.

                      JTL I don't know, but I would like to. I also have headache with Sony mirrorless LCD's, with old Canon I don't

                        20 days later

                        I tried ditherig using the Disable All Dithering option and it doesn't seem to help in my work laptop, perhaps a little. Is there anything else I can try? Intel Graphics 510. I get headaches, dizziness, and burning eyes when using it for more than a few minutes. I hate going into work because I know I will have to sit there for hours and suffer looking at the screen.

                        Have also tried flux and Gunnars, doesn't make a difference for me.

                        • JTL replied to this.

                          JTL Yes there's definitely visible banding. I notice it other places than that website. When I load that website and switch the options from "Disable all dithering functions" to "Spatial (Default)" you can see the banding disappear.

                          So I think my problem might not be dithering; something else is going on. There still feels like there's something "moving".

                              ryans Maybe your screen has PWM on the leds. That is easy to check with a camera. One symptom of the PWM I noticed on many people at prolongued use is red eyes.

                                  Alyosha2001 @JTL I took a video, would be grateful if you could take a peak. I don't think it's PWM since if I decrease the brightness from 100, PWM is very obvious. There still looks like some type of flicker going from left to right.

                                  But, when I attach this laptop to a Dell U3417w, even with Ditherig installed, I see no banding. Perhaps because this is an expensive monitor and actually has 8-bit colors. However I still get eye strain with it. I'd be fine with eye strain from the laptop if I could get none with the Dell monitor.

                                  Here's my video:

                                  https://drive.google.com/file/d/18aKec17gTa_S5AgSUavvD3NycSijj75a/view

                                  I'd consider getting my company to use my old Thinkpad T430s and image it, since it gives me no eye strain, but it doesn't support the resolution of the Dell monitor afaik.

                                  I don't think I'm sensitive to PWM since I can use a Galaxy S5 (AMOLED screen with PWM) fine, but, I have issues with Macbook Pro (no PWM); perhaps PWM is not made equal (some is worse than others).

                                  Thanks for all your help. Nice to know I'm not alone here.

                                      I think that is PWM. The reason why it's horizontal is because you are holding the phone vertically. Not all PWM's can be captured with a phone camera, the high frequency ones are indetectable unless a DSLR or oscilloscope is used. And the reason the external monitor is not showing banding is because it cannot be disabled, since it is not driven by the videocard

                                        Alyosha2001 Oh I thought the videocard does determine dithering on the external monitor? Interesting. And I see...when I make the brightness lower the PWM is very obvious. I didn't think PWM happened at 100% brightness but maybe this screen is particularly crappy. Thanks for checking.

                                          10 days later
                                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCDfn9IWc6g

                                          took some video of what dithering looks like on a Dasung Paperlike Pro. I had to use a video because I have eliminated dithering (for the most part) from my setup. Microsoft seems to choose colors that dither preferentially. The youtube compression caused a loss of fidelity, ask me and I'll email you the original video

                                            ShivaWind E-ink definitely requires dithering because it is a 1-bit display technology.. something I remember well from black and white 9" screen Mac days. I looked up your monitor, says it has 3 dithering modes A2 which is black and white only, A16 which attempts to simulate 16 shades of grey, and Floyd which is their implementation of a Floyd-Steinberg algorithm for watching video with. Nice thing to have, enjoy it.

                                                Sunspark

                                                this is a better video

                                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y-I3hqQgCQ

                                                There is more to it than just the panel. There are colors that are fixed, and colors that dither. the dithering pattern can be sort of Celtic knots or like moving dots. there is dithering that always moves, and dithering that only moves when in proximity to a moving mouse cursor. I can say with certainty that the source of dithering is not the Dasung panel because the dithering pattern follows the mouse pointer in video other people have uploaded of thier computers to utube. so the dithering was following Their mouse, not mine.

                                                    dev