The Problem
If you’re connecting your laptop to a TV and the black in the image is gray instead, your laptop is not outputting the full 8-bit-per-channel color range. Instead of sending values between 0 and 255, it’s sending 15-255. You could compensate for this in some TVs’ settings, but you’d be losing color definition.
Intel defaults to 15-255. There is a setting for this in the Intel Graphics Control Panel (In Video > Color Enhancement), but it doesn’t seem to take any effect… unless you do the following:
The Workaround
- Make sure Input Range is set to ‘Full Range‘.
- Now go back to the main menu and into the Display page.
- In the Color Settings section, Enable ‘YCbCr’.
- Wait for several seconds for the setting to revert itself. You should now be getting full 0-255 color range.
You have to do this every time you restart the computer or reconnect the TV.