VW246H Gradient Issues; any ideas?

Hi, I recently purchased a ASUS VW246H. So far, Im not very pleased with this monitor.

The blacks and dark colors are just horrible. I mean horrible. They simply dont blend. Playing games or watching bright color things the monitor looks fine, anytime there is a black screen in a movie, or lots of shadows or dark colors, its abysmal with pixellated looking garbage all over my screen and blobs of blacks that dont blend well.

I only bought the monitor because the reviews were solid, and I recently had a small house fire and my old LG monitor I bought from Best Buy 3 years ago kinda got melted. I havent tried it to see if it still works(the casing is melted, screen might work), but its image quality in movies and such was 100 times better, and it was even cheaper to boot.

Im seriously considering RMAing this thing. IS there something Im not setting correctly? Ive scanned the web for calibration settings, and they make my colors looks well and nice, but as soon as I watch a dark lit movie or have blacks on my screen it goes to crap and I get agitated.

Its not even always blacks. Mainly shadows and darker colors are just trash. I need some help here before I just RMA it.

Ive set the brightness to 45-47, contrast 80, and the colors, and 40-60 on trace free. Thats all ive found on calibrations. I even tried fixing it with my vid card. I simply cannot get rid of this blending or gradient problem.

Any help? I dont understand how this monitor has such good ratings when the blacks are horrible. Shadows do not blend. Is there something I can set or is this it?

I really need some help to decide to RMA the monitor or not. Can someone recommend a good monitor where the blacks are good, and everything blends well together?

Im thinking of returning it. Im taking screen shots now to see if it shows what I mean. If my LG monitor works, Im seriously considering RMAing it. I dont see how this monitor got such high marks looking so crappy.

Here are a couple quick picks. I can take more if need be, but hopefully u can see what I mean. IT looks even worse playing because they flicker.

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Edited by Destructodave - 8/23/12 at 6:32pm

I noticed. Im sending it back anyways. I cleaned my old LG monitor off and it works fine for now. Im sending the ASUS back for a refund. My LG monitor back and trim is melted to **** lol, the corners come over the screen, and it took some serious cleaning to get the soot off of it. I think the backlights got soot on them, its not near as bright as it used to be.

Basically, the ASUS wouldnt blend shadows and blacks very well. Bright colors would look amazing. But shadows simply wouldnt blend, and the flickering or tesselation or whatever the hell it is when a lcd tries to blend colors or shadows would drive me insane. Esp because it was usually a solid color, like dark black or a dark red, and would simply not blend into the next color fluidly. It flickering trying would make it even worse. Even 1080p videos would look bad. It reminded me of my dad's cheap LCD TV. IT simply doesnt do blacks or shadows well at all.

I think its called gradient banding. Where u can see where each new color begins when trying to blend, and it would basically color 90% of the shadows full black, or full red or whatever. I dunno what the shadow problem was called, but same deal. If they had a shadow say, in their hair, it would be a pixelated black blob until the next color. I tried every setting I could find, even the random calibration websites. Nothing fixed it.

Even on 1080p movies the ss below's problem would happen.

Heres a google screen to show my point: