gregj231503560008

That's great advice mello - thanks for taking the time to write it down. I have to say the most disappointing thing was the complete non-effort by the sales guy to sell me one of his high-end screens - he simply accepted that what I was seeing was the best those panels could generate, and I had to accept it. Weird. I'm going to have another crack during the New Year's test match at a totally different store and see if I can generate a better result - I agree that it must be something to do with how the setup worked in that HN, because at home I can stand an inch from my 51" plasma when the cricket is on and while (of course) at that distance I see a lot of noise, I don't see three balls jumping across the screen!

I don't suppose the feed in Tasmania is any lower in quality than anywhere else in the country? I'll try another showroom when the New Year's test is on and see if the result is different.

I don't want to buy into a spat between posters ... but I do appreciate Owen and Alan taking the time to respond. I take your points Alan - that it's not necessarily the panel's fault that the quality of feed it's receiving from the broadcaster is sub-par (for a number of reasons) and that it's doing the best it can with what it's been given. And Owen I appreciate your explanation of what the different technologies being applied are trying to to with more or less success. I guess the upshot for me is that I need to go into the store and play with the settings on the 55" Samsung 9000 and see if I can get something acceptable out of it for the cricket. If it's going to struggle with the cricket, I can't imagine how bad it's going to be when AFL is back on and while a panel of this size at 3metres doesn't constitute anything like 'big', I'd just as soon wait if it's going to take me backwards from the standard of picture I can still get on a 3 year old Samsung plasma (albeit at 51").

I've followed this forum slavishly for about ten years now but haven't posted for about 4. Bought my first Fujitsu (US) plasma through a group buy organised on this forum back in 2005, my Aventage A-2000 from a fellow member, my Oppo 103 on a recommendation here and bought my current 51" Samsung 8000 series plasma based on the forum's recommendation a few years ago. Of all things, I'm in the lucky position now of having my wife agitating to buy a bigger panel this year. I've (not surprisingly) arrived at the conclusion that it's the LG OLED, 9000 series Samsung or top of the line Sony, in either 55" or 65". I sit 3 metres away from the display in a large, bright room. So today I went in to compare panel performance at the local HN. Usefully, they had the LG and Samsung side-by-side (albeit a 55" LG and a 65" Samsung) and both were playing the 9'HD' stream of the cricket. I stood back 3 metres and what I saw was truly, truly awful. On both displays, as soon as the ball was it with any force into the outfield you actually saw three balls rolling across the turf and some awful ghosting. The Samsung looked like they'd used Vaseline on the camera around the players - all the players had this dull smudging about a cm thick outlining them. And the LG had terrible banding whenever they showed the outfield - it looked more like stripes than colour gradations. I spoke to the salesman who approached me. I said it had been a few years since I'd looked at panels and it appeared that 50" was still the sweet spot for free to air sport given what I was seeing, describing the artefacts that were obvious on his two top of the line panels. He just agreed and said "yep". I asked if the Sony was any better and he said "nup". So, outstanding salesmanship there. So my question is this - from those who own these panels and have ditched the shop settings and calibrated them properly, is this the best result I'm going to get from a $3k best of breed panel these days at anything above 50 inches? Are they not capable now of doing a better job with a crappy Australian signal and bitrate? Would welcome views. gregj23

I had the same experience. When I saw the 51 inch in store, even playing One HD the picture was shocking. Bathurst was a banded, clay-faced, pixellated joke even at 3-4 metres. Same result on the VT30. I took the plunge on the Samsung anyway based on all the reviews I'd read, advice on this forum and my experience with my previous panel where the result improved markedly as soon as I got home, set it up properly and ran it off a better quality STB. Same thing this time. Got it home, set it up with a completely different group of settings, ran an upscaled 1080i picture from my Toppy and took a deep breath when I turned it on for the first time with FTA. Chalk and cheese compared with the result in-store. Is it perfect ... of course not. But I'm very pleased with it even sitting less than 3 metres away. The downside of all this is ... side by side comparison in store is pretty useless unless you can tinker as you please with the settings and control the source.

It's much better on my new 51 inch Samsung D8000 than it was in my old 42 inch US Fujitsu, and I was quite happy with how it ran on the old panel. But in the end, there's no such thing as an objective test of user acceptability - just because I'm happy with it, doesn't mean anyone else will be. One week in though, I'm really happy I made the move.

Thanks for that. I found the service menu only to also find that the 'expert' menu is greyed out and not accessible, and this is the one you need to access to enable cal-day and cal-night. Such is life. You're right, about reset - once I exited the service menu all my picture settings had to be re-entered. No big deal though.

Had to upgrade the firmware to give myself a shot at the advanced calibration options. Firmware upgrade went just fine but still can't access advanced calibration. Tried the 'mute ... power' sequence as advised on AVS, but the menu doesn't come up for me to allow me to use 'cal-day' and 'cal-night' settings. Anyone have experience with this?

Has anyone successfully enabled the advanced calibration features on the D8000? I keep reading about 'cal-day' and 'cal-night' options, and from what I can tell the way to enable these is to bring up the advanced calibration menu. From reading AVS, it appears that the way to do this is to turn the panel off, and then hit mute-1-8-2-power. I've tried that, and the menu doesn't come up for me. I'm using the most recent firmware. Is there a trick to this?

Well, I pulled the pin today and bought the Samsung PS51D8000 FV. I was a little nervous when I turned it on to One HD to watch some motorsport, but the result was far superior to anything I had observed on the floor of the store. No noticeable pixellation at 3.0 metres running off my Toppy 2400. The Rugby tonight on faux-HD Gem looks great, and the image quality all up is definitely a step on from my beloved Fujitsu 42US. I have no buzzing at all (and I know what to listen for, because my Fujitsu buzzes) and no brightness pops so far, using run-in settings I found from Zoyd on the AVS forum. The built-in wifi had no trouble finding my home network, and now all I need to work out is whether there will be any benefit performing the firmware upgrade. Thanks everyone for all your advice along the way.

Thanks Owen ... that was the sort of advice I was looking for, and what I suspected. Thanks to Peter too on the "take the Toppy into the store" suggestion ... it's an excellent idea ... unfortunately I don't have any relevant sport recorded and the season is over!

Well, at the heart of it my issue as the originator of the thread is this - as someone who watches a lot of sport on FTA, and who has two major viewing locations in his lounge room where one is 3 metres from the screen and the other is between 3.5 - 4 metres from the screen, if I take home a 51 inch D8000FV or a 50 inch Panasonic ST/GT/VT, set it up properly and use the tuner in my Topfield to feed the display, will I get a decent result when I watch sport or will I experience the pixellated mess that I see when I view these screens on the showroom floor and they're being fed One HD and showing marathon runners or Bathurst. At the moment, on my old 42 inch Fujitsu, I have no issue with such viewing.

So ... the Harvey Norman in the city here is offering the Samsung 51D8000FV for $1598 ... which seems like a reasonable price by Hobart standards (given that there is almost NO competition here and whenever you show them a receipt from interstate they run a "yes but that doesn't include the cost of transport" line). Anyway, as I said earlier I'm not that fussed on price but I don't burn dollar bills to stay warm either and I see today in the mail that they're running a 'VIP Night' next week that I have been invited to (exclusively of course) ... and I'm wonder if anyone has been to one of these and whether it's worth waiting a week for a cheaper price on the night or whether I should just walk in and pull the trigger now.

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delete - sorry wifi playing up ...

I'm wondering if driving the whole thing (upscaling included) through my Topfield PVR (Masterpiece 2400) direct to the panel is likely to affect the result for better or worse on either panel ... I remember reading on another post awhile back someone (Owen I think) writing about the image 'softness' introduced by the Panasonics when doing their own upscaling and recommending that it be avoided. (Sorry Owen if I've got the author or the argument wrong.)

At the risk of drawing a provocative conclusion ... it's interesting that despite all the advances in technology over the last 7 years, a 50-inch display today still can't be relied on to deliver a better FTA image than an old 42-inch. Garbage in, garbage out I guess!

Amazingly, my wife walked into the living room on Saturday and said she thought it was time for us to buy a new plasma. I've had the old Fujitsu 42US for 6 years now and it has given me amazing service and is still going strong. Our panel watching is almost always FTA and we are avid watchers of sport ... though we do a reasonable amount of 360 gaming when a good title is released and watch the odd Blu-ray. Like many on the forum, I've spent the past 12 months working out what my next panel would be should the opportunity arise ... as it has now. The two best seem to be the Samsung D8000 and the Panasonic VT30. I'm not too fussed about the price difference, I just want the best panel. The new plasma will have to operate in a fairly bright daytime environment. Viewing distance is typically between about 2.5 - 3.5 metres. I won't be going over 50 inches because the only place for the panel is in front of a very large picture window and I don't want to block out any more of the view of the mountains and the sea than I already am when the panel is off. I've read the various reviews in the various forums in the Europe and the US. The debate doesn't seem conclusive and there seem to be differences of view about which is the superior panel coming out of the two continents. One thing that worries me is that a lot of the reviews conclude that the larger Samsungs in the D8000 range are superior to the smaller models, but it's always the larger models that get reviewed head to head with the VT30 and I haven't seen any head to heads of the 50-inchers. I've done a side by side on the showroom floor but had limited ability to change settings. The Panasonic had richer and deeper blacks, and the Samsung had sharper detail on fast moving images ... but who knows what result I would've gotten if I could've toyed with the settings. I thought both panels had pluses and minuses in terms of their general 'look' as a piece of furniture. Unforuntately, here in Hobart there is limited opportunity to do such fiddling. Any and all views welcome. Cheers gregj23

I have the 32-inch version in a bedroom where the panel is regularly the only source of light on in the room at night. I've watched sport, darkly-lit movies and a wide range of television programs without once noticing any uniformity or variability issues across the screen. I did do some tweaking with the settings in the first week though, to modify significantly those out of the box. This included playing both with backlighting and brightness settings. This is my third panel in the house, having done exhaustive testings of all my panels before purchase over the past five years, and I'm very pleased with the result.

In Tasmania, the least competitive market in Australia, the starting price is $1250.

I haven't seen any issues at all after a week of viewing ... but then again ... I can't see myself sitting in bed watching a horror movie with someone going down a dark alley at night with no lights on ... so should be ok!

Hmmm ... can't see any reference to that in the settings, or in the instruction guide ... because apparently you can only get to it through a specific service menu which requires a set key combination to be entered when the panel is in standby (there are plenty of references after a quick google). I haven't bothered at this stage, because the problem it is set to 'fix' isn't present on my panel (so far).

Sorry ... you're right ... I got confused between two posts. The auto dimming. Because I've adjusted the backlight, the Eco Sensor (read 'ambient light sensor' in any other panel) is automatically turned off. I'm assuming this is what you're referring to?

I obviously still am ... these are the settings I'm running ... but if you're after specifically which settings I changed ... I can't remember so I thought I'd give you the full run down. If you're after something else ... then what is it?

This is what works for me for both daytime and night viewing: Mode: Standard Backlight: 18 Contrast: 60 Brightness: 60 Sharpness: 50 Colour: 45 Tint: G50/R50 Black Tone: Off Dynamic Contrast: Low Shadow Detail: -2 Gamma: 0 Edge Enhancement: Off Led Motion Plus: Off Colour Tone: Normal Digital Noise Filter: Auto Motion Plus: Standard