[Monitor Electronics Hack] World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe Experiment with VRR-DyAc!

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elexor
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[Monitor Electronics Hack] World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe Experiment with VRR-DyAc!

Post by elexor » 19 Sep 2020, 03:16

Hi guys i was curious how single strobe would perform on a 240hz tn here are my initial results

phpBB [video]


As you can see it's amazing only very faint crosstalk that's really hard to see it nearly brought a tear to my eye haha.

the whole screen looks the same crosstalk wise. no bands. the image can be adjusted to be super bright the zowie didn't lose any brightness at all with this mod.

I think i could get an even better result with more tweaking.

How did i do this? it's a dumb trick. I found out that the panels backlight is compatible with my old benq XL2430 (has single strobe support) uses the same connector and everything I simply disassembled them both and have them both running from the one pc running at the same refreshrate I can adjust the backlight strobe with the handy blurbusters strobe utility even when i can't see the output.

Seems to be a few issues with perfect synchronization which i think i can solve with a hdmi or display-port splitter (right now they are running on to independent outputs.

One extremely cool thing is i can put my zowie in 240hz freesync mode and then strobe at whatever refreshrate i want how cool is that? I think modern monitors should have this kind of functionality.

Yes I know I'm crazy for even trying this, enjoy.

elexor
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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by elexor » 20 Sep 2020, 21:32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=758dx_A ... e=youtu.be
whole screen test it's crazy good.

I'm using a hdmi splitter now but still have this werid issue where they are not quite in perfect sync and the strobe phase sorta moves back and forth a little bit, despite this i can still hide the crosstalk.
I would expect even better results with perfect phase alignment between the two monitors.

After playing some games this is the best single strobe monitor I have ever used bar none I think the motion is actually better then a crt.(no geometry distortions or phosphor trails) I play 240p games with perfect integer scaling. the image maintains the same sharpness even during very fast scrolling and I really can't spot any crosstalk in games. I'm sure you could spot some really faint crosstalk if you tried hard enough to find it.

More proof that single strobe on monitors with tons of refreshrate headroom are awesome.

elexor
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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by elexor » 21 Sep 2020, 01:28

https://i.imgur.com/TIicjNI.jpg

That's with standard 1080p timings it gets better with larger VT's Problem is the 144hz benq can't do more then 1350VT. 1800VT looks the cleanest but the monitor backlight will switch off after awhile due to it being unsupported and the two monitors are essentially linked.

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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 22 Sep 2020, 02:25

elexor wrote:
19 Sep 2020, 03:16
Hi guys i was curious how single strobe would perform on a 240hz tn here are my initial results

phpBB [video]


As you can see it's amazing only very faint crosstalk that's really hard to see it nearly brought a tear to my eye haha.
Congratulations on succeeding a 60 Hz hardware single strobe hack via parts hacking. Your XL2546S-XL2430 Frankestein is pretty neat -- do you have a photograph of how you reassembled the parts?
elexor wrote:
19 Sep 2020, 03:16
One extremely cool thing is i can put my zowie in 240hz freesync mode and then strobe at whatever refreshrate i want how cool is that? I think modern monitors should have this kind of functionality.
VRR strobing -- so you've mashed together a DyAc-SYNC successfully?

Seems like the strobe backlight is flashing relative to the VBI pulse.

Somebody else mentioned trying to download a BenQ firmware and trying to hexedit-hack it to remove the 60Hz range limitation, then reflashing the monitor -- since it's theoretically just a one-line code edit to range-extend the strobe range to a lower Hz. Without opening up the monitor.

While I don't officially sanction this, since you can brick your monitor, but monitor hacking enthusiasts who wants vendors to add 60Hz single strobe support should be aware of the market demand for single-strobe 60 Hz support.
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elexor
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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by elexor » 22 Sep 2020, 04:00

Thanks. right now it's just temporary hooked up rather precariously I have not figured out how to non destructively mount it. I'll post a pic once i have figured that out.

It seems to work well with other hdmi devices and a splitter.
VRR with fixed rate strobing works only with dual inputs from a pc
I'm doubting the firmware hack would work they have different scalers afaik. Surprisingly the two monitors are built nearly identically

I tweaked the contrast a tiny bit and I'm not seeing any crosstalk at all now It sorta looks cleaner then a pc crt at 60hz because no phosphor trails or warping and much sharper image. If i turn up the image persistence the display gets brighter then I'm comfortable looking at.

Here's a pic of this display lag tested compared to a crt. exactly 1 frame of lag which i think isn't bad.

https://imgur.com/a/SD0NhZS


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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by nuninho1980 » 06 Nov 2020, 06:24

:D

But try 50Hz... If you get bigger vertical pixel total at 1920x1080 at 50Hz on your XL2540, your this monitor can work 100% strobe enabled and very good minimum crosstalk (but NOT any mini-double image), ok?
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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by AddictFPS » 09 Nov 2020, 10:02

elexor wrote:
20 Sep 2020, 21:32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=758dx_A ... e=youtu.be
whole screen test it's crazy good.

I'm using a hdmi splitter now but still have this werid issue where they are not quite in perfect sync and the strobe phase sorta moves back and forth a little bit, despite this i can still hide the crosstalk.
I would expect even better results with perfect phase alignment between the two monitors.

After playing some games this is the best single strobe monitor I have ever used bar none I think the motion is actually better then a crt.(no geometry distortions or phosphor trails) I play 240p games with perfect integer scaling. the image maintains the same sharpness even during very fast scrolling and I really can't spot any crosstalk in games. I'm sure you could spot some really faint crosstalk if you tried hard enough to find it.

More proof that single strobe on monitors with tons of refreshrate headroom are awesome.
Good work, thanks for share ! ;)

How you feel the flicker compared with CRT ? Phosphor decay trail help smoothing flicker, in teory this mod without trail nor rolling scan, should show more intense flicker, right ? Anyway, you can play 60p games confortabily ? thx

elexor
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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by elexor » 11 Nov 2020, 07:47

The flicker isn't that bad compared to a pc crt running at 60hz (most people ran them higher at that because of flicker) I wouldn't use it on the desktop for text reading etc but for games and movies I'm fine with it. It's worth using imo it makes the sea of 60fps games smooth like a crt.

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Re: World first zowie XL2540 240hz 60hz singlestrobe? Experiment.

Post by CubanLegend » 22 Nov 2020, 09:19

this is amazing..! thank you for sharing this. Would you be willing to share a tutorial of how exactly you achieved this 60hz single strobe?

Like if i were to buy both monitors, what would i need to do exactly, to replicate this?

And if this is too hard to recommend for others.. then what single monitor (if any) can single strobe this well at 60hz and 120hz+ with no crosstalk?

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