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AndrewWilliams

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Posts posted by AndrewWilliams

  1. I was going to get a 65" plasma while I still could but the new OLED displays are getting rave reviews from the hard-core plasma gurus/calibrators. "Much better than Kuro" seems to be the consensus on the new LG OLED. The LG even has more calibration options than a Samsung or Panasonic plasma. Motion is apparently very impressive too but I won't believe it until I see it.

    OLED still isn't proven in the long term but I wouldn't be surprised if Panasonic sees the writing on the wall for plasma with OLED.

    LCD will continue to provide for mainstream and less discerning viewers unless OLED can continue its rapid price drops.

  2. I'm a big fan of the newer Samsung Plasmas. I thought LCDs were going to take over about five years ago but it just hasn't happened. LCD picture quality has stagnated and plasma picture quality has moved ahead in leaps and bounds while plasmas have gotten much thinner too.

    I also love the colour management systems (CMS) and 10-point white balance on newer TVs and I wouldn't buy one without those features any more. They allow you to calibrate to astonishing colour accuracy without the need for an external video processor.

  3. I've got my new Quad installed now and it's working really well in MediaPortal.

    It replaced an Avermedia Twistar PCI-E and a KWorld Dual USB connected via a splitter. My signal level would drop down to ~54% with all tuners in use and this would cause picture break-up sometimes. I tried a Kingray powered splitter and it was no better than the passive splitter.

    With all four tuners of the quad in use, the signal only drops to 65% (75% with one tuner in use) on the weakest channel with no sign of drop out. This was a pleasant surprise after what I'd read about the quad needing a strong signal.

    I tried recording 13 channels at the same time on four transponders for an hour or so and there wasn't a single dropped packet. Very impressive.

    Channel changing speed is about 1.75 seconds according to the MediaPortal stress test which isn't the fastest I've seen but it's very close.

    Congrats renura on a great product. :phone:

  4. Dedicated video cameras costing thousands only provide average quality and no 1080 camera in existence can provide 1080 visible resolution, digital sampling does not allow it.

    That may have been the case five years ago but the current top-of-the-range, happy-snap camcorders put all but the very latest pro-sumer (and most studio) cameras to shame in terms of raw picture quality. It's almost ridiculous how good cameras like the Panasonic HDC-7XX are for the price. The limiting factor 99% of the time is lighting - not the camera.

    But yeah, no mobile phone even comes close to that level of performance. I've never even seen one that can do half-decent SD video.

  5. Those are some strange settings. Warm1 with Blue gain cranked up?? To me, that suggests an issue with his Windows/graphics card settings.

    The internal tuner calibration settings look more like what I would expect.

    I haven't had a pro calibration (yet) but I found it very difficult to get rid of the orange face syndrome. The controls just seemed a bit too subtle to completely eliminate it. I tried some of the AV forums guys' settings and still get a little bit of orange skin tones.

    At the moment, I'm watching everything through HTPC using a calibrated colour profile and skins tones look perfect. That doesn't help if I want to watch Foxtel/external Blu-ray player though...

    With everything reset to default, I measured 2.2 Gamma and ~6500K colour by setting gamma to -1 and using Movie mode, Warm 2. That's a starting point - just need to tweak it from there.

  6. I've had my 64" for a few days now. Initial impressions are very positive. I'll need to live with it for at least a week or two before I can give a definitive opinion.

    The sharpness was ridiculous out of the box but thankfully it looks much better when dropped down to 0-10. Black level is very good - bordering on spectacular.

  7. I usually catch up with this thread every 4-5 months. This time I can report that my trusty 70" has developed the dreaded green/yellow patch. It started at the middle top of the screen a few weeks ago and has now spread to the point where it fills the top 1/4 of the screen and I notice it almost all of the time. After a lot of contemplating I decided to downgrade to a Samsung 64" plasma.

    I have to say that, overall, my experience with the Sony was generally negative. I had a few wow moments and it served its purpose but I was never really happy with the blurred motion compared to the old CRT projectors. The poor black level, obvious silk screen problems, bad geometry and enormous bulk also irked me quite a bit too. And of course the longevity (even by today's standards) was very disappointing. That said, it was still probably the best TV available when I bought it so I can't complain too much. Some of the LCDs and plasmas that friends bought at that time look tiny and/or hideous today.

    Maybe I'll think differently after staring at a noisy, dithered-looking plasma for a few months but for now, anyone in SE QLD with a ute and a carton of beer can have an SXRD with a stuffed optical block. :D

  8. Because I'm using a HTPC, I decided to use a PC calibration device (X-rite) to calibrate my 70" SXRD. The results were very impressive. I've calibrated it to 2.2 Gamma and 6500K colour temp.

    The one interesting thing to note is that I got much better calibration measurement results by using 'Neutral' colour with blue and green gain greatly reduced as opposed to using 'Warm 2' which I believe most people use because it typically looks the best without any other colour adjustment. During calibration, the blue measurements always seemed to be a bit screwed up with 'Warm 2' no matter what.

    It's almost like having a new TV watching a nicely calibrated set. :)

    I just wish that I could load the .icc profile onto my PS3! :o;)

  9. I've been suffering with deteriorating colours on my 70" SXRD for the last six months despite having replaced the lamp. I've always had to reduce the blue and green gain considerably to get natural skin tones but even that hasn't been working. The blacks had also gone a dark-blue colour. I'd even started glancing at 60+" plasmas and LCDs in catalogues.

    However, in the last few weeks, the colours seem to have magically fixed themselves (!?) I'm currently running with the following settings and everything looks as good as when the set was new.

    Picture (Contrast) - MAX

    Bright - 52

    Colour - 55

    Iris - Min

    Warm 2

    RG - 0

    GG - 0

    BG - 0

    RB - 0

    GB - 0

    BB - -5

    Has anyone else had the colours change like this?

  10. I consider myself somewhat of a videophile and I'm actually very impressed with the picture quality of the Ashes coverage so far. It may not be 1080i but it's very clean 720p that's well deinterlaced and has minimal artifacts. The quality of Sky's camera equipment is also excellent - even the stump cams are HD and have great detail and well balanced colour. I'm viewing it on a 70" Bravia full HD through Vista Media Center (nVidia 9600GT) that has been professionally calibrated and the skin tones of the players look pretty much perfect. It's at least as good as anything on One HD if not better.

    Unlike Ch9, all of Sky's graphics are rendered in HD and look very sharp albeit not quite as fancy. There has been a few issues with sound 'ringing' on the HD feed on some days throughout the series and it's a shame that they're using MPEG audio but it's still reasonably decent when they get it right.

    The studio team were a bit flat in the first test but they've improved. On the whole, I'd have to say well done to SBS though, admittedly, I don't have access to Foxtel HD so I can't compare it to that.

  11. With regard to ND filters etc., I actually disabled the 'Auto Iris' since I found it far too distracting even though most people probably don't notice it. Also, on bright scenes, even 'Auto2' iris is so bright that silkscreen also becomes another distraction. I'm currently using 'Min' iris but I still need to have an ambient light turned on in the room at night to help ease the grey blacks problem.

    Is it normal for projectors to require recalibration throughout the life of the lamp? When my display was new, I had 'Colour' set to 41 and now I need to set it to 55. The display has also become more 'yellow' as it's gotten older requiring a further reduction in Red & Green than what I already had.

    (It doesn't help that so many new Bluray movies are incredibly yellow-tinged as well - check out 'Knocked Up', 'Juno', 'Zack & Mirri', 'Hancock' and to a lesser extent 'Slumdog Millionaire' etc) Most other BDs like Batman Returns, Pulp Fiction, Frost Nixon, Borat etc look perfect so it's not my display(s)

  12. I'm no lover of Nein but I have to take issue with anyone who thinks that their Cricket coverage is anything less than world class. I've watched Cricket on cable from networks all around the world and none of them even come close. If having three commentators is enough to upset you, then you really have your priorities mixed up. (unless one of them is that annoying Ian Healy)

    PS Isn't SBS still 576p ? If so, I'm sorry, that's not HD.

  13. Ah no, this is bad and it's getting worse. The blacks were getting smokier and 'bluer' so I thought the lamp was about finished and replaced it. but now I get this...

    Ouch! I don't understand how a new lamp could cause that unless it's some sort of self-calibration issue.

    I've had to increase the color setting from 41 -> 46 and reduce the brightness from 52 -> 48 as the lamp has aged but other than that it still looks superb.

  14. Hi guys,

    I haven't dropped in to take a look at this thread for at least 8 months but I'm happy to report that my 70" has now racked up two years of flawless performance (touch wood). I'm still using the original lamp too which is pretty impressive considering how much the display has been used.

    There's been a few new technologies in that time like 100Hz (and 200Hz!) but frankly those are just gimmicks that do more harm than good so I'm glad that I didn't wait for them.

    The only slight weaknesses that I've noticed are pretty much what I expected before I bought the TV - less than perfect black levels and a bit of silk screen. I don't know if the newer plasmas have drastically improved black performance but even if they have, I doubt they could compete in terms of bang for buck.

    Hope everyone else is as happy as I am.

  15. Well during the F1 today, Southern Cross ran a ticker along the bottom apologising that the F1 was not available in HD. Surely this has to be a good sign. I have never seen them apologise for their incompetence before and I don't know how long they will go on apologising for not delivering to their customers.

    Yeah, those were my thoughts too. I don't know why they're apologising for it not being "currently" available. Traditionally, it's almost NEVER available.

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