Intel HD Graphics Full RGB Rendering

In recent Intel HD Graphics drivers, the range of colour values used for Red, Green and Blue is limited to 16→235 by default and not the full range of 0→255. On a digital connection (such as HDMI) to a monitor or television this can result in grey looking blacks and washed out colours.

This article describes how to extended the driver settings to the full range on a per-user basis, so that full colour rendering is restored.

Should work in all Ubuntu releases. Tested on 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) 32 and 64-bit Desktops.

None, as the xserver-xorg package will already be installed.

Create the file .xprofile in the appropriate user's home folder and add the following to it (replacing x with the port number your display is connected to):

xrandr --output HDMIx --set "Broadcast RGB" "Full"

Once saved, log out of the X Session and back in to see full, deep blacks and an extended colour range.

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