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Intel DPST / Active contrast issue

AMill15
Novice
10,280 Views

Description

Intel Active Contrast (DPST) driving me nuts.

Hopefully anyone running across my issue is already semi familiar with the term. DPST (Display Power Saving Technology) or called Active Contrast by some is a power saving technology Intel has been implementing / continuing to improve since before 2007 in laptop displays to save power. (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~mobile/elec518/readings/display/intel07.pdf http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~mobile/elec518/readings/display/intel07.pdf , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Display_Power_Saving_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Display_Power_Saving_Technology)

My brand spankin' new Dell Inspiron 7370 laptop that I just purchased in January has had this annoying problem since day 1. Due to a bad charge controller on the motherboard, I ended up getting a 2nd 7370, so I've also now had two machines, that both did / do the exact same thing.

If you're still not familiar with what DPST does, it's a little hard to explain. The best I can do to summarize, is that its "color sensitive brightness control" based on screen content. So, if you've got more dark colors of your window / desktop whatever you're looking at, the display dims. If you've got lighter colors, it brightens. It's actually sort of the opposite of what you'd think, because it ends up blinding the user when you get a nice white page like google search landing page, and the whole screen lights up; to squinting when you hit bing's search page, which almost always has a really good looking photo of some trees or water, both of which are darker, causing the entire screen to dim, and text to get really hard to see until your eyes adjust.

And yes, I've worked with Dell for over a month, we've tried every single thing through Windows you can to turn off any power saving, auto-dimming or auto brightness, or adaptive brightness, etc that there is at least three times. Dell says they've escalated it to their engineering (read, development) department, but I'm not convinced they know what is going on, either. I also made a video of my duplicating the problem (Dell tech support India called it "strobe lights / club on a computer") which you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vC4tREV1z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vC4tREV1z4

I specifically focus on the clock/address in the tray / notification area because to me, I cannot see any reason why that should change based on what is happening with regards to screen colors. You'll see me fairly rapidly alt-tabbing between a light full-screen window, and a dark one. Notice how long it takes my iphone to adjust to the light difference!

I'm not the first to have this problem, its gone on for ages. Different laptops, different people. They've all eventually done one of two things. A) Done something to get the option to show up in the intel graphics control panel to "turn off adaptive" or "full performance" instead of "balanced" for display, or B) a registry modification. I'm looking for B, because I've done A, and it hasn't helped. Heres some more articles on others that have had the problem, and what they did to fix it (I've also attempted to do everything they have, which is why I included the links)

Please place an X to the right of the option showing how often you see this issue using specific steps. (Ex: 'Every few times a game is started it flickers.' <- This would be "Often")<p> 

Always (100%): X

Often (51-99%):

Sporadic (20-50%):

Very Sporadic (<20%):

Hardware (HW)

Brand and Model of the system.

Dell Inspiron 7370

Hybrid or switchable graphics system?

 

ie Does it have AMD or NV graphics too?

No, native Intel UHD 620 Graphics adapter

Make and model of any Displays that are used to see the issue (see note2 below). 

LFP = Local Flat Panel (Laptop panel) N/A

 

EFP = External Flat Panel (Monitor you plug in) N/A

How much memory [RAM] in the system (see note2 below). 16GB

Provide any other hardware needed to replicate the issue.

 

ie: Cables&brand, cable type [vga, hdmi, DP, etc], dock, dongles/adapters, etc N/A

Hardware Stepping (see note1 below). N/A

Software (SW)

Operating System version (see note2 below). Windows 10 Pro v10.0.16299 Build 16299

<...
30 Replies
idata
Employee
4,320 Views

Thank you very much for contacting the Intel® Communities Team, bigbro6.

 

 

For me to perform a deeper research regarding this issue you are facing, please provide me as well with:

 

 

1. A System Support Utility Report:
  • Download the utility
  • Run the exe and select 'Scan'
  • Save and include as an attachment int he Intel Community Forum
2. A DxDiag* Report, in order to generate it follow these steps:
  • Click on the "Start Menu" -> Type "DxDiag" -> Press "Enter" -> Wait for the DirectX Diagnostic Tool to finish loading
  • In the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, click "Save All Information" -> Save the file DxDiag.txt
  • Include DxDiag.txt as an attachment in the Intel Community Forum
3. A DispDiag report:
  • Click on the "Start Menu" -> Type "cmd" -> Then a command shell window will open
  • In the command shell, type "dispdiag -out %homepath%\Desktop\DispDiag-Intel-Issue.dat" -> The command shell will output something similar to "Dump File: C:\Users\[username]\DispDiag-# -# -# -# .dat"
  • Locate the .dat file on your desktop and include DispDiag-Intel-Issue.dat in the Intel Community Forum
Antony S.
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AMill15
Novice
4,320 Views

Hi Antony,

Thanks for reminding me - totally forgot to attach those, I had generated them already, but forgotten to attach. They're attached now to the OP.

Adam

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idata
Employee
4,319 Views

Thank you very much for all the information provided, bigbro6.

 

 

Allow me to verify all this information and investigate more about this issue you are facing, once I have an update I will let you know.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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AMill15
Novice
4,319 Views

No, thank you Antony!

I forgot to mention, Dell had me try these as well -

  • See if the DPST/Dynamic contrast issue was present in the BIOS setup screen (It isn't)
  • See if the DPST/Dynamic contrast issue was present if I booted into safe mode in windows (It isn't)

Not sure that helps you, but I'm pretty sure it helped them.

Thanks again,

Adam

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AMill15
Novice
4,319 Views

Any luck?

Dell L3 / engineering has declared it to be functioning as designed, and so doesn't want to work on it anymore. (I've learned from experience thats one of two things - 1) They don't actually know how to fix it or 2) The problem is so deep - the ability to install a toggle switch, or to make the darn thing actually follow the windows power plan rules is "too hard" so they throw their hands up.)

Hep me, hep me...

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idata
Employee
4,319 Views

Hello, bigbro6.

 

 

Please try the following steps:

1.Click on the Start button, then search for "Power Options".

 

2. Click on "Change plan settings".

 

3. Now click on "Change advanced power settings" to launch the Power Options Advanced Settings.

 

4.Scroll down until you get to the "Display" section and click on the plus sign to show the submenus. Now click on the plus sign next to "Enable adaptive brightness" to expose its settings.

 

5.Change the settings to off.

 

 

I that does not work for you, please try this: Get into the Intel(R) HD Graphics Control Panel (CUI) then go to the "Power" section, after that on the left navigation panel will see an "On Battery" option click on it and will see more options on the main panel. There is an option "Display Power Saving Technology" then select "Disable" and Apply.

 

 

Please share with us the results.

 

 

 

Antony S.

 

 

 

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AMill15
Novice
4,319 Views

Both already checked, and rechecked countless times.

"Enable adaptive brightness" is off on all of my battery profiles. No change.

No option in intel graphics control panel - battery profile - mention of adaptive or DPST. Only option is "Balanced" "Maximum Performance" or "Maximum battery" - Set to "Maximum performance".

Every. Single. Power. Setting. For. Both. Windows. And. Intel. Has. Been. Checked. And. Rechecked. Over. And. Over. Again.

If you know anything about disabling intel / windows dynamic contrast / DPST / through registry, specifically -

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000] "FeatureTestControl"=dword:00009a40"

I've tried it through what was recommended, did not seem to work. (Obviously if I'm at registry tweaks, I think I've exhausted everything through a toggle switch in windows).

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/4hj09g/is_there_any_way_to_kill_off_adaptive_contrast_on/

https://mikebattistablog.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/disable-intel-dpst-on-sp4/ Disable Intel Display Power Saving Technology on Surface Pro 4 – Mike Battista's Blog

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/4p87qq/adaptive_contrast_fix_finally_sp3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/4p87qq/adaptive_contrast_fix_finally_sp3/

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idata
Employee
4,319 Views

Thank you very much for your reply and that information, bigro6.

 

 

I will continue researching about this issue, I will come back to you once I have more information.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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idata
Employee
4,319 Views

Hello, bigbro6.

 

 

There is a new driver released on March 27th (4982). Can you please try those?

 

Click https://downloadmirror.intel.com/27650/a08/win64_15.65.5.4982.zip here to download them and use https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005629/graphics-drivers.html this guide to install them.

 

 

Please share with us the results.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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AMill15
Novice
4,319 Views

Already installed, no change.

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AMill15
Novice
4,319 Views

Note - Dell T2 support got back to my "can I please just have the bloody registry path to turn this off" with this:

As you requested we were given a registry to make changes, but was said it has to be done at your own risk as we do not recommend changing registries.

  • Select the Start button.
  • Type Regedit and then press Enter.
  • Navigate to the paths below and then double-click ProcAmpBrightness.
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Brighten Movie
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Darken Movie
  • Change the value to 0.
  • Close Regedit and then restart your PC.
Note: Try this at your own risk.

But unfortunately it did not help, either. I also checked all the other folders under \media and set all the values to "0" (after making a backup of course) and rebooted. Still, nothing. I rolled the registry entries back in.

If you know of a similar path that I can just completely shut this off from - I would be very happy to take it. This "feature" is awful, awful awful awful awful awful.

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idata
Employee
4,319 Views

Thank you very much for your reply and the information provided, bigbro6.

 

 

Please allow me to continue researching more about this issue, I will be back to you soon.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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idata
Employee
4,320 Views

Hello, bigbro6.

 

 

Thank you very much for your patience. In this case, since we have tried the latest generic Intel® HD Graphics and did not work, please get in touch with DELL* Support to get the correct indications of how to disable this feature.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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AMill15
Novice
4,320 Views

Antony,

As I had mentioned in my previous post; I am already working with Dell T2 and T3 support. They seem unable or unwilling to change this feature. I have been told 1) It is working as designed;

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 3:28 PM, <</span>mailto:US_CTS_Premium_Support@dell.com US_CTS_Premium_Support@dell.com> wrote:

Dear Adam,

I have received an update from the L3 (Resolution Experts), stating that the Content Adaptive Brightness control is a built in feature and cannot be disabled, and adds that it is working as designed.

Please revert with your thoughts on this.

(Which, by the way, it clearly HAS the ability to be disabled, since it does automatically as soon as its plugged into AC)

And 2) The registry keys I provided in my last post did not shut off the feature, which is why I have contacted you / Intel; because no one seems to know precisely where the reg keys are to disable this feature anymore.

previously, there seemed to be a fairly easy reg key that was being used for several years (cica 2010-2016)

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0000] "FeatureTestControl"=dword:00009a40"

That would disable the dynamic contrast / DPST altogether. This is no longer the case on my system. So both the recommendation from T3 Dell:

Navigate to the paths below and then double-click ProcAmpBrightness.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Brighten Movie

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Intel\Display\igfxcui\profiles\media\Darken Movie

Change the value to 0.

As well as the previous community driven answers to the "featuretestcontrol" reg key both do not work. Dell is supposedly continuing to work on getting me the specific reg key in question.

I guess, since the "feature" is shut off automatically / completely when it is plugged in (charging on AC), I dont really understand why no one can give me the reg location to where the two values are (one for plugged in, one for on battery) since it has to be querying those two values, so I can simply plug in the same values for the plugged in profile. OR to just simply put in a "0" like above.

I'm open to any 3rd party tools / suggestions as well. There is a MS Surface Pro tweaker utility someone built that does just that (unfortunately does not work on my inspiron).

This is a really crappy situation! Everything I've read is saying either a) its supposed to be able to be toggled by the intel graphics control panel or turning off all the correct power saving features in the win10 battery settings (adaptive brightness, etc), OR, theres thousands of posts of people just like me fighting this issue saying "nope its not there, or it didn't work" since it was introduced in 2001 or 2003 whatever it was, that simply cannot use a monitor that keeps forcing us to turn up the brightness to read text every time we hit a darker colored background.

I've even gone to the point of running process monitor and isolating the igfxCUIservice.exe and igfxEM.exe, plus the other two Intel**** processes and trying to ascertain which keys are being read from when I pull the plug and put it back in.

Monday I reloaded Win10 as a "new installation". The issue persists and I have not had any luck swimming through the 837 entries that are recorded in sysinternals / process monitor when I pull/put in the plug.

So while I understand from Intel's perspective that "it may be a custom design on Dell's part" I'm saying, overall you guys are the ones that designed and built both the processor and GPU, and wrote the driver for it, so you "should" know how to turn things off and on again, better than Dell does. : )

If you can help me, I would appreciate it,

Thank you Antony.

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idata
Employee
4,320 Views

Thank you for your response, bigbro6.

 

 

We indeed design the graphics controller and the processor that is inside your DELL* system nevertheless, some features can be modified by the system manufacturer and we can not change them after this is done.

 

It seems this feature cannot be disabled as DELL* L3 informed you. If this was set like that by DELL* on your mainboard, we are not able to change it.

 

 

 

Antony S.
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TBhat2
Beginner
4,320 Views

First of all thanks bigbro6 for the detailed post. I'm having the same issue and cannot figure out how to turn DPST off on my new Dell Inspiron 7000 series.

Anthony - It seems unlikely to me that Dell built this into the "mainboard". Clearly, when you use the computer with the power plugged in, it is disabled, leading me to believe that it CAN be disabled. Is this really the case that Intel and Dell together decided to take this option away from users? Why is it that previous versions of the Intel Graphics Control Panel had this option (see attached screenshot)?

Please escalate this issue further as this does not seem like a satifactory response. This is such a huge annoyance I am considering returning my laptop if this is truly how Intel and Dell decided to make this very poor behavior for their users.

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AMill15
Novice
4,320 Views

Thank God lol someone besides me with the same issue! Haha misery loves company - jk but validation, for once. Of course, thanks to my ridiculous amount of reading I've spent on the topic, these issues are present, through just about every laptop produced by dell, hp/lenovo, acer and half a dozen other reputable big brand companies, on and off since 2002 it seems like. I guess, the only consistency is whether or not the manufacturer a) builtin the option to turn or toggle off the feature, or b) whether the community / people decided to post about it. I'm guessing it was more of b) than anything. I did run across this in some of my reading, regarding the XPS 13 model release for 2016 -

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9869/dell-issues-patch-for-content-adaptive-brightness-control-on-the-xps-13 Dell Issues Patch For Content Adaptive Brightness Control On The XPS 13

So if it's enough of an issue to patch for their flagship line, the Inspiron has the issue, too.

I think, what Antony is saying, is that the issue is in the BIOS firmware. I read that (cant find the article now, but it was just speculation anyway by a couple fairly technical people like us in a dell community forum) sometime in 2014 or 2016. That explains his "mainboard" statement - if they coded the firmware to call and turn off/on DPST at the hardware level, then he's right - there's almost nothing Intel can do (I can actually vouch for that, since I force-installed the straight Intel latest drivers and no dice) so something else is keeping the stupid dynamic contrast on through unplugged use, and firmware makes sense at this point.

I would say that made me happy to have narrowed down the culprit, but it doesn't -

On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 5:20pm, US_CTS_Support <</span>mailto:US_CTS_Support@dell.com US_CTS_Support@dell.com> wrote:

Hello Adam,

Thank you for choosing Dell. I am one of the floor supervisor. This email is related to your recent interaction with Dell technical support.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused with the ongoing issues(Adaptive Brightness).

As per the Products Engineering team the system is working as designed and unfortunately there is no other settings to change on the system to fix the issue.

I understand that you have been working with us and Intel for a long time and we appreciate your time and patience.

If you wish to contact us for any reason, please reply to this email.

Thank you for choosing Dell support.

D.S.Sai

Dell | Technical Support Supervisor

I of course already responded to the supervisor, and said I did not care if it was "working as designed" -

This is the equivalent of building a car, but instead of a windshield, you make a wall, with a periscope or a monitor with a camera to see in front of you. When the customer says "this periscope / camera really sucks and limits my field of view; why didn't you guys build a normal windshield like everyone else" are you going to answer with "well, its working by design because that's how it was designed"?

So now, I guess the question is - who is going to do something about it? I appreciate your post - it adds credibility to my original, there's a ticket on file with dell (Service Request Number: 960373349) and I've given them the link to this post. So, they should have everything they need.

I also said I would return the laptop under a warranty condition of screen not working. I can't keep using the otherwise great Inspiron like this.

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AMill15
Novice
4,320 Views

I did not look at your attachment until just now tanb2000 I would suggest, if you have not already, trying two things on yours (I don't even have those options on mine).

  1. Have you unchecked the DPST box indicated in your screenshot? I see you adjusted it to maximum quality, but the checkbox suggests it would turn it off completely.
  2. Both the above, as well as the "high performance" toggle simultaneously? I know that would be far from optimal, but at least if it turns off DPST, maybe you could live with the reduction of an hour or two on the battery life.

Just trying to be helpful.

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TBhat2
Beginner
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Thanks bigbro6 - appreciate you following up with Dell. The screenshot I posted is unfortunately not my computer, but one that I found from other searches on the web into this issue. I wanted to show that in the past Intel has provided an option to turn the DPST off and it seems like for some reason they (or Dell) decided to take that option away from the user.

I've even tried to look for registry changes that would allow me to turn it off, but so far no luck. I'll keep you posted if I find a solution...

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AMill15
Novice
3,609 Views

Ah, yes, you are correct - there has been in the past. I don't know why the toggle was removed. What I can tell you, is that I basically told Dell - if this is going to be how it is, then the laptop is essentially "broken" in my opinion, and I want to trade it for one that is not broken. I had to request the supervisor who had emailed me to escalate it further, but in the end I did get a "Senior Support Resolver" with Dell Consumer Support, who agreed to make an exception to my now 90 days past purchase date and trade in my 7370 and credit my account towards another Dell.

Seems like a huge amount of resources for what would seem like a no brainer - a feature that was already there, and then removed. I also gave the senior support resolver my opinion on the entire matter and said - going forward, they could solve a lot of issues / head them off altogether by simply bringing that toggle back, whether it be in the Intel graphics menu, or in the Dell BIOS.

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