XB270HU loses settings after powered off

ssateneth

I am a new owner of an acer XB270HU (27" 1440p 144hz IPS gsync monitor). I upgraded from an asus PG278Q monitor, primarily because the acer has an IPS panel instead of asus's TN, which meant better view angles and some better colors, but I have a problem.

 

Whenever my monitor is off for more than a couple hours, I lose all my settings on it. It reverts to 100 brightness, 50 contrast, and 'warm' color temperature instead of the settings my color calibration unit sets (30 brightness, 45 contrast, and some specific RGB values).

 

What can I do to fix this? Is there a new firmware I can apply? Some driver setting? RMA? Help me out please.

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

That's very strange.

 

Can you access the OSD with nothing pushing a display and make the changes, then power the system that is connected on and see if anything changes automatically?

 

I can't think of anything that would force a change in the OSD display settings other than the video card possibly.

ssateneth

Hello. It is impossible to change any monitor settings with nothing connected to it / driving the display, as it just flashes red green blue white black colors. None of the buttons on the monitor do anything.

 

To add some details to my original post, not only does it revert settings to 100 brightness / 50 contrast / warm color, it also seems to wipe the user settings under the "empowering technology" menu (furthest left button) which, when calibrated, I set the brightness to 30, contrast to 50, and custom RGB settings (something like 47 red, 40 green, 42 blue), but upon turning on the monitor after having it off for a couple hours (Not pulling the power plug or touching the hard on/off switch next to the AC receptacle, but just the normal on/off switch on the front bottom right corner of the monitor, right most button), those user settings are also wiped and restored to default.

 

I'm hoping that there is a new firmware that can fix this.

 

Also, would a technician be willing to share the button combination to enter the service menu? I was able to enter it once, by accident, and saw some overdrive fine tuning settings that I would like to adjust to get a better experience with this monitor. It is, after all, a very expensive, top of the line monitor, and I feel I should be able to tweak specific settings to my liking.

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

Thanks for the update, let me research this a little for you.

 

Typically, to enter factory mode you hold down the menu button and then press the power button.

ssateneth

That key combination doesnt seem to work. Any of the buttons + power button just turn off / on the display.

 

Anyways, looking forward to update.

edit: I'm guessing the monitor has a standby state when you turn it 'off' from the power button on the front of the monitor, then a deeper sleep or full power off mode that occurs after some time of being in standby (30 minutes? a few hours?). The monitor settings are preserved when it goes into this standby mode, but flipping the power switch on the back of the monitor has the same effect as going into this deeper sleep / full power off, which causes the brightness/contrast/RGB settings to be lost and revert to default.

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

You still experience this issue if you don't toggle that switch on the back of the monitor?

ssateneth

Yes, the issue is still there. Maybe you misunderstand. The problem occurs with EITHER the power on/off switch on the back of the monitor (no time delay necessary) OR the monitor turned off with the front power button for at least ~15-30 minutes.

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

Thanks for the clarification.

ssateneth

Here is a video documenting the problem.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKTKX5kf-FI

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

Thank you for the video, I'm conferring with our engineers to see what resolution we wish to take. In the meantime, could you send me a PM with the following information?

 

SNID or serial number

Shipping address

Contact number

Email address

ssateneth

PM sent.

SingeMagique

I just received two XB270HU panels this afternoon and one of them is exhibiting this same odd behavior. It doesn't seem to store any of my calibration settings after it has been turned off (front bottom right power button) for an extended period of time. Just as the OP describes here, when I turn the monitor on it seems to go through test patterns of full screen red, green, blue, white, and black. After these patterns the monitor is reset to 100 brightness, 50 contrast, Warm. 

 

On other thing I noticed is that this particular panel (note, that my other panel works as expected) does not allow contrast to be changed via ADC in my X-rite iProfiler software. When I enable this feature during calibration, my luminance acheived is always 70cd/m^2 when I set a 120cd/m^2 target. Checking the OSD settings after X-rite calibration shows contrast set to 0. 

 

Please let me know if there is anything to fix this annoying bug. 

ssateneth

Nice to know someone else also has an i1display (at least I think you have one...). I got a question for you. After your software calibrates the monitor through the use of ADC, what is the behavior of the monitor when you try to see what exact RGB settings are set? I already sent my monitor in as per the tech's request, but IIRC, if you tried to enter the submenu that lets you set RGB (it says user), the screen gets really dark and nothing happens on the menu. If you push the button to get in a second time, it gets into the RGB menu but shows all 3 values to be 0. So I resorted to not messing with RGB via ADC and instead just setting to user 50/50/50.

 

Another nuance, but not the fault of the monitor, is when I calibrate through ADC, i1profiler seems to always want to set the contrast to 45 instead of 50, which results in abnormally dark colors. Could tell something was VERY off when playing games compared to my previous monitors, asus PG278Q (1440p 144hz TN) and PQ321Q (4k 60hz IGZO). so I don't recommend using ADC at all with this monitor.

SingeMagique

Yep, I use an i1Display Pro. I also noticed the same odd behavior when setting rgb and all values get set to zero. When I used ADC the faulty panel actually has contrast that always get set to 0. Manually adjusting settings seems to work okay. First monitor I have seen have a problem with ADC. I will try calibrating my second panel via ADC today and see if it goes better. I assumed the ADC not working was normal behavior, as I started with the faulty panel and didn't know any better.

Did the tech offer you an ETA on replacement or a cross ship? I may just return to retailer and get a replacement if the Acer replacement is going to take a while. On the good side neither of my panels have dead pixels, glass smudges, or excessive back light bleed.

ssateneth

he said 7-10 business days. they gave me a prepaid ground shipping label, so im out of a monitor for a least a full month.

SingeMagique

Thought I would update you on this. Another thing I noted was that I was only getting the test colors (alternating full screen red, blue, green, black, white) when the display wasn't getting a signal. This would happen if my computer was not turned on, or if I disconnected the DP cable. In the same conditions my working panel would give the "No Signal" display instead of alternating test colors. To me this seemed like the panel was in some sort of "test" mode as I remembered having an old Samsung panel you could put in test mode to flash colored patterns. 

 

I decided to do a bit of tinkering on the panel and found that if I held the second and fifth bottons together while the test pattern was flashing it stopped and went to a black screen, then to the "No Signal" screen, and finally to sleep. I then reconnected the DP cable, changed the settings on the OSD, and then tested turning the panel off (via front button, back switch, and fully disconnecting power). None of these cases reproduced the loss of settings I was getting before. As far as I can tell the panel is now working as expected and I'm guessing I was able to "reset" the monitor. Before the "reset", turning off the panel via the back switch or disconnecting the power cable would reset all of the calibration. This is no longer the case.

 

This is speculation, and I haven't yet tested the theory, but what if using the i1Display Pro in ADC mode causes the panel to enter this "test" mode? To support this, I never used the i1Dispaly Pro on my second panel and it never exhibited the behavior and entering ADC on the first panel is the only thing different I have done with the panels. Further I can recall when I first setup the panels that both of them would go to a "No Signal" screen and then to sleep before I connected them to my PC. 

 

If I'm feeling adventurous perhaps I will attempt ADC with the second panel and see if I can reproduce the issue. For now, however, both panels appear to be working. Strange, huh?

ssateneth

Thank you for all the feedback. Its annoying to me that -i- may have caused the problem through using a feature as intended. I await your test to see if using ADC causes the problem to resurface. I thought this problem was like this from the get-go because I immediately calibrated the display when I got it.

ssateneth

I just got back my monitor from RMA. Here is the notes they left me on a paper included in the box, which was a generic large brown box that contained the monitor and a number of polyurethane expanding foam padded bags

 

Problem Description

"The customer's monitor is losing the OSD ettings that they are manually setting after 15 minutes or longer. This happens when using the power button on the front of the monitor, the customer must go and set their configuration every time."

 

Diagnoses / Repair

"Monitor powers on\off with no problems. Monitor powers and has a good display. Monitor has been running for over 24 hours and has been tested at 15 minute, 30 minute, 45 minute, 1 hour, 2 hour and 4 hour intervals. OSD did not lose any settings or reset itself."

 

I'm guessing they did a factory reset on the monitor, which would have probably fixed the problem if using ADC (Automatic Display Control) corrupts the monitor's settings / firmware. I've manually set settings and did a hard power off, settings are no longer lost.

 

I don't want to risk it having problems like this in the future, so I will just avoid using ADC, even if there is a button combination to fix it.

-Justin

ssateneth,

 

Thanks for the update, glad to hear it is working for you. I apologize for the delayed response as well, I've been out of the office on business.

ALevesque

I have the EXACT same problem with IProfiler and my i1Pro: ''but what if using the i1Display Pro in ADC mode causes the panel to enter this "test" mode?''

 

After using i1Pro to calibrate my XB270HU, it CAN'T go into sleep mode anymore. I get the ''test mode'' alternating color screens and the monitor NEVER goes into sleep mode.

 

I then loose all my settings in ADC, and it goes to 100 brightness and 0 contrast, and the screen is really dark.

 

So there is a major problem between X-Rite iProfiler i1Pro and Acer ADC. After performing a calibration, everything goes to hell with the monitor. Everything was working PERFECTLY before using X-Rite iProfiler.

 

Is there anyway to force a ''factory reset''? I totally uninstalled iProfiler but my monitor still can't go into sleep mode anymore, and I get the '' alternating test patterns'' non stop.

 

So what is the problem between X-Rite iProfiler and Acer ACR? Can a senior tech looks into this?

SingeMagique

So it's taken me a while to post back as work and school got incredibly busy for a while. I can reproduce the problem by using iProfiler in ADC mode. It has to be either a problem with the DDC, a firmware issue on the monitor, or perhaps faulty cables. I'm not sure and don't have methods of testing the possibilities. That said, you can "reset" the monitor and fix the issue and proceed with manual calibration, which works great by the way. I was able to dial in an average dE(1976) of 2.48. 

 

I believe the way to reset the panel is by holding the 2nd and 5th buttons of the front panel. I'm not sure because there is a delay on my panels before it resets and I just go along trying 2 button combinations until it resets. You might also try going into the OSD and selecting the "Reset" option. I haven't tried this. Please let me know what combination or if the OSD option works for you.

 

Overall, sounds like Acer has some investigating to do to find the exact cause of the problem. Basically an $800 panel you can't automatically calibrate which would really irk me if I calibrated my monitor daily to account for changing ambient light.