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Calibration advice for Pana TH-42PV500A


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Again, if you use a calibration DVD like the popular Digital Video Essentials, it tells you to lower sharpness. When I calibrated my set using the test pattern for adjusting sharpness, 9 was the highest I could raise it to without getting extra "noise" adding to the picture.

At first it's hard to adjust to such a low sharpness, so just like you I started off at a higher level. But over the first few weeks as I adjusted and started to see the extra white lines around black lines, and the added pixellation/grain that a higher sharpness introduces, I lowered it to 9 which is the correct level for me.

You can set it to whatever pleases you, remember that I don't pretend to be an Audio visual/calibration expert - these are just the settings I found have worked extremely well for me :blink:

Thanks. Any setting which reduces pixelation and graininess is a very good thing, esp with sport

Out of interest, how far back do you sit from your screen ? Do you think your settings would be OK for a short viewing distance of say 2.5m or doesn't it really matter ?

Many thanks

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I sit around 2.5 - 3m away from the screen. Try the settings yourself and see how they look. Distance shouldn't have any impact on any setting other than sharpness.

will do this on the weekend. so by being closer are you saying to play with increasing the sharpness?

Sorry to be pedantic but the sales guys in store get very suspicious when you take control of the remote and watch over your shoulder

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Optusman - no, the closer you sit the slightly lower your sharpness should be generally. Higher sharpnesses introduce white lines around images - if you can see this, you need to lower the sharpness. If you can't see it (perhaps because of distance or your eyesight, or the source involved), then raise the sharpness.

squirm666 - yes, you need to use lower contrast and brightness during run-in, typically below 50 for both. Read through this thread and the Burn-in sticky at the top of this forum for more info.

People have said you can use the same settings for the PV50A, but increased sharpness is necessary.

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Now here's the funny part, after saying I wouldn't change my settings and I was happy with them, for some reason I decided I wasn't totally happy after 5 months and got back into tweaking them! I think it's because I watch a lot of DVD movies late at night in the dark, and sit relatively close to the screen, so I've noticed some imperfections I want to fix. Particularly in Space scenes where I noticed things were a bit more washed out than they should be.

Anyway the main change is that I've lowered Brightness significantly and raised Contrast a bit to offset this and make the picture a bit darker but also a bit more 'movie like'. This helps make blacks darker but doesn't lose that much detail. Lowering the Brightness also helps remove any visible grain from movies, and I've specifically kept my Sharpness low for that very reason.

Unfortunately any major changes to Contrast/Brightness require a fair bit of readjustment to get the Color right again, and that's the hardest part. The new settings which I've been using/refining over the past few days are:

DVD (via Component)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 80 (if too bright, leave at 78)

Brightness: 34

Color: 56

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

D.PNR: Off

MPEG NR: Off

HD STB (DVI->HDMI)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 80 (if too bright, leave at 78)

Brightness: 39

Color: 38

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

MPEG NR: Off

I'm impressed with the improvement using these settings, and when I try my old settings they seem far too bright and overcolored now. Not sure why, I was happy with the old ones for so long!

Anyway I've posted these here for people to try for themselves. It may take a little bit for your eyes to adjust to the new settings, but I feel it looks much richer now and much more natural.

The colors in particular are damn hard, but the trick is to raise color until greens are natural and rich, but reds, yellows and oranges are not neon bright. It took me two days and several hours to arrive at this point.

Give them a try and post your feedback :blink:

/EDIT: I notice the Contrast setting may be too eye blasting in some situations, so Contrast can be set to 78, 79 or 80 depending on your taste. It seems not to make a huge difference to Color accuracy either way.

/EDIT 2: Had to rejig brightness + colors again a little :D

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After all that frigging around, it looks like I've been suffering from a bout of the stupids.

I went back to my original settings and lowered the brightness slightly and that looks absolutely perfect. I have no idea why I decided to change the Color in particular as the calibrated values I had before seem to be the only ones which actually work.

Anyway my settings are:

DVD (via Component)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 78

Brightness: 34

Color: 59

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

D.PNR: Off

MPEG NR: Off

HD STB (DVI->HDMI)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 78

Brightness: 42

Color: 43

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

MPEG NR: Off

So the only change from my proper settings before is a drop in Brightness on both sources, mainly to enhance blacks, particular on the DVD (component) source.

I apologise if anyone tried using my recent settings, I have no idea what I was thinking. Maybe a case of TV mid-life crisis? :blink:

/EDIT: Nope, still going - had to lower the color a bit to reduce the red glare.

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It's hard to stop tweaking :D I thought I had found the perfect settings (a slightly modified version of yours) for my 50 inch pana, but then watching a HD imax video file on it yesterday I accidently switched to Dynamic mode and it looked a lot better. Not that I'm going to use Dynamic mode, but it made me want to tweak Standard some more :blink:

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Tell me about it. All I wanted to do was lower the brightness a bit, and it started a whole week almost of fiddling with the settings. Last night and today I found I still needed to lower the Color setting a bit with my new Brightness settings.

Based on advice from Aaron (a genuine calibration specialist) earlier in this thread, a Contrast of around 80 and Standard color mode are correct for this set. Everything else is as much subjective as anything else. I believe my color settings are close to being both rich and also natural, but the main problem with this set is that the reds are oversaturated, and I'm not game to get into the factory menus and alter it there.

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Hey Persian do you notice any minor image retention with your contrast at around 80?

I have mine at 80 now and can sometimes notice it when the screen is black but when I have a moving picture it isn't noticable at all.

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Only very minor, and not noticeable at all even during things like white credits on a black background, or dark space scenes with bright planets.

I only notice it when I turn off the TV and see the imprint for a little while on the black screen, or if the screen goes black for a while after a bright scene. Otherwise not noticeable at all.

A CRT TV will also have similar sorts of image retention at high contrast.

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I find that having my colour down at 40 gives far more natural skintones. Just my 2 cents... :blink:

same, my pvr has a slight red push on component so turning the colour to cool + lowering colour down to about 45 makes it all natural.. otherwise people look sunburnt

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As oohgee suggests, a 60,000 hour life is around 27 years of viewing 6 hours every single day. Let's say a Contrast of 80 reduces that by even as much as 50% (highly unlikely), you still have around 14 years of viewing at 6 hours every day, so it's not a concern.

You also have to remember that the correct color mode of Standard for this set is a lot less harsh even at 80 Contrast than the Dynamic mode is.

And my settings are just a starting point, every person will have both different preferences, and also different equipment will have slightly different image output to start with.

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Actually I just tried 40 on my HDMI (HDSTB) connection and although I thought at first it'd be too low, it looks great, thanks for the tip. In the transition from 41 to 40 Color in particular you can notice the reds dimming, which is important in reducing the oversaturated reds.

My eyes are still adjusting to the drop in brightness and color from before, so it's taken me longer than I thought to get my new settings.

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People often go on about price/PQ being the most important when buying a plasma but a thread like this is just as important in making that decision. PIs settings and how happy people are with them has been a major influence in swaying me toward getting this panel. Wish people would post their 50" Fuji settings. Cheers to PI and all!

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No worries, it looks like it's a group effort now which is great :blink:

I think my HDMI settings are now final, and pretty much:

DVI->HDMI (HD STB)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 78

Brightness: 43

Color: 40

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

MPEG NR: Off

Color Matrix: HD

Ch Color Set: Middle

Component (DVD)

Mode: Standard

Contrast: 78

Brightness: 35

Color: 58

Sharpness: 9

Color Temp: Standard

Color Management: Off

D.PNR: Off

MPEG NR: Off

Color Matrix: HD

Ch Color Set: Middle

Important: I just noticed that for the Component source, in the TV main menu under the Setup sub menu are the options Ch Color Set and Color Matrix. I forgot to change these (or mention my settings for them), but they're very important when setting the color to look natural.

On my TV, I've now set the Ch Color Set to the mid point, and Color Matrix to HD and this has really helped the colors look better, and reduced the red saturation. That's why I've changed back my Color setting again for Component (still not 100% sure if it's right but it looks good so far).

If we're going to compare color settings, I guess people should also mention these settings. I also highly recommend people try the HD Color Matrix setting as it makes colors look much better on Component. I have no idea why mine was set to SD for component, I'm sure I'd changed it before.

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Are those settings reccomended for the connection you use, or the device??

What i mean is that you use HDMI for your STB and component for DVD, giving you those settings. What if someone used component for the STB and HDMI for the DVD which settings would they follow in this example??

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They're by source rather than device. Different video sources such as Component, DVI/HDMI and S-Video have different color and image quality, so refer to the source I'm using when trying out settings.

Also keep in mind that you should disable/turn off any additional source-based enhancements, such as additional image sharpening, noise reduction, color enhancement etc. type options in DVD players, STB's and so on. Most of the time these only make things look less natural anyway.

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