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Hacking a Dell S2716DG

Posted: 03 Aug 2016, 15:23
by Bakaiya
A little bit ago I got a Dell S2716DG monitor. Unfortunately, it's been annoying me due to some intense inverse ghosting/coronas. It seems a lot of Dell monitors have aggressive overdrive enabled and offer no option to turn it off or down. This one only has the option to make it more aggressive. I would really like to tone it down or even fully disable it, but Dell's firmware offers no option.

See: Dell S2716DG Ghosting Issue - Advice?, Dell S2716DG Lining Effect From Motion (and no, nothing fixed it. Ramping up contrast to an extreme level hid it, but that's an awful solution.)

While fiddling with it, I discovered a full 34 pin MIPI port on the bottom of the monitor labeled as "For Service Use Only". I was pretty surprised they made what looks to be a fully functional debug port accessible without any disassembly.

Unfortunately, hacking hardware is not something I have much experience with. I do know quite a bit about memory and the likes, but the main stumbling block here is getting enough control over the device to be able to toy with it. I wasn't able to find any information on modding this monitor (or other closely-comparable Dell monitors), nor anything about hacking devices via MIPI.

Does anyone have any experience with Dell monitors (especially their higher end ones) or this debug interface? I'm definitely willing to keep people up to date on any progress I have fiddling with the software, if I can manage to get that far.

Re: Hacking a Dell S2716DG

Posted: 03 Aug 2016, 17:23
by Q83Ia7ta
That port is on every G-sync monitor.

Re: Hacking a Dell S2716DG

Posted: 04 Mar 2017, 22:09
by Chief Blur Buster
You could try enabling ULMB or LightBoost -- that will often get rid of the overly-aggressive overdrive on this display.

Also, the Dell S2716DG is one of the few that has an undocumented trick where you can enable LightBoost+GSYNC simultaneously.