Hitachi s500/s700 Owners Thread [Text View] - Page 3

Mr Bob

03-30-04, 06:45 AM

Originally posted by keenan
I have a question about what I believe to be termed lens flare. Are the Hitachi's any better at this problem than the Mits? I am looking for some comparisons if anyone has been able to do such. I love the way my Mits performs except for the haloing or lens flare problem that can take a very detailed black area of the image and just wash it out and become unfocused. From doing a little research I have found that this is a problem inherent with RPTVs and was wondering if any particular brand/model handled this problem better than others. It's frustrating and extremely annoying to my eyes when it happens. It just seems that the beautiful black content this machines can produce is crippled badly by just a minor part of the image having a very bright area. I understand that shrouding the lens area with a lens hood and using light absorbent material in the picture box area can have produce a minor improvement. I am afraid the answer is going to be go to a direct view set(to small) or a plasma display(to expensive still).

Thanks in advance for any input,

Jim

How old is your set? Unless I miss my guess what you are describing - murky lack of detail in dark areas, with haze around anything bright - is caused by your optics being dirty.

The entire optical path needs to be kept clear as glass.

Here's an excerpt from my website:

The high voltage inherent in all Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) operation ionizes the air inside the TV, causing all particulates, no matter how small, to be statically charged. As a result they will be inexorably drawn to, and will implant themselves upon, the nearest surface. These surfaces, then, essentially become powerful dust magnets. When the faces of the lenses (front and rear), mirror (possibly two or three), and CRT's – now powerful dust magnets – become matted with pollen, soot, dust, cigarette smoke, and anything and everything else in the air, it shows up in the picture. The result is loss of transparency, crispness, depth and brilliance. The light path must be kept clear, at all points. The Test: Does the picture appear hazy, fuzzy, and possibly glowing in the dark areas, on dark scenes with bright centerstage? Such build-ups need to be removed at least once every year to retain gleaming, crystalline viewing, with the deeper optics under the lenses – the CRT coolant covers – always being examined at the same time, and attended to if necessary.

These surfaces are very delicate; they can also be made of plastic rather than glass, and they can be internally and externally coated, like camera lenses. All of which serves to suggest that they be cleaned only by a professional, experienced and versed in all of the inherent risks involved, including special considerations about first surface mirrors – which are now standard in HDreadys – and their design and formulation.

There is no second chance once a lens has been scratched, even lightly. No second chance once a mirror has been broken, or even cracked, in the cleaning process. Remember: After the electronics are properly adjusted and taken care of, a projection TV – whether it's a rear or front projection type – is first and foremost an optical instrument. Like a fine camera or high powered telescope, special treatment must be performed on the optical-grade components involved.

This is the path to theater-grade viewing.

Mr Bob

Mr Bob

03-30-04, 06:50 AM

Originally posted by gambrelw

I believe Bill mentioned at one point that Freeze button on some models is Surf button on others.

No, PIP CH = SURF on some remotes.

Bill

Thanks for the correction, Bill.

Mr Bob

Wallet Boy

03-30-04, 08:36 AM

Originally posted by bigrig
Yeah, you have to move the grid one color at a time. Green, red, and blue.

Matt

OK, I'll try it. But isn't green completely fixed and unchangable. That's what the manual said. I only see red and blue that I am able to move.

mkozlows

03-30-04, 10:05 AM

I just got an S500, and while I've read the lists of tweaks that are all over the place... well, frankly, they're a bit too complex for me. I don't want to go mucking about with parameters I don't understand (What's a "cut", for instance?) or taking the thing apart.

So, what I'd like to know is: What can I do to the TV that will make the image look better without getting in dangerously over my head. So far, I've:

1. Gone into manual Magic Focus to do the convergence grid thing.
2. Turned off Edge Enhancement.
3. Turned Black Enhancement to "Low"
4. Turned contast and brightness to 50-ish.
5. Turned sharpness down to 40ish.
6. Set it to "Standard" color mode.

Is there anything else easy to do? Do you see anything sub-optimal about the changes I've made?

Unrelatedly: I've got my DVD player (a Toshiba 2900) hooked up via non-progressive component cables; there seems to be a somewhat pixellated look to the image -- not MPEG blockiness, but jaggies on diagonal lines. Is that just the limitations of DVD source, or upconversion artifacts?

bigrig

03-30-04, 10:22 AM

Originally posted by Wallet Boy
OK, I'll try it. But isn't green completely fixed and unchangable. That's what the manual said. I only see red and blue that I am able to move.

Nah, you can move green. It's just the "base" that you converge the other colors to.

Here's the buttons to select the different colors -
a) “STATUS” - Green
b) “0” - Red
c) “ANT” – Blue

Matt

bigrig

03-30-04, 10:40 AM

Originally posted by mkozlows
I just got an S500, and while I've read the lists of tweaks that are all over the place... well, frankly, they're a bit too complex for me. I don't want to go mucking about with parameters I don't understand (What's a "cut", for instance?) or taking the thing apart.

So, what I'd like to know is: What can I do to the TV that will make the image look better without getting in dangerously over my head. So far, I've:

1. Gone into manual Magic Focus to do the convergence grid thing.
2. Turned off Edge Enhancement.
3. Turned Black Enhancement to "Low"
4. Turned contast and brightness to 50-ish.
5. Turned sharpness down to 40ish.
6. Set it to "Standard" color mode.

Is there anything else easy to do? Do you see anything sub-optimal about the changes I've made?

Unrelatedly: I've got my DVD player (a Toshiba 2900) hooked up via non-progressive component cables; there seems to be a somewhat pixellated look to the image -- not MPEG blockiness, but jaggies on diagonal lines. Is that just the limitations of DVD source, or upconversion artifacts?

50-ish contrast is too high, you're risking burn-in. Try 30-ish. Maybe black enhancement "off" would let you lower the contrast more.

Taking apart the set to do a manual focus isn't very hard, just about 8 phillips screws. But if you're too intimidated, it's not a big deal, I couldn't improve the focus very much from the factory settings.

So just sit back and enjoy the show! :D (I highly recommend a HD tuner, you'll be blown away).

Matt

keenan

03-30-04, 01:54 PM

Originally posted by Mr Bob
How old is your set? Unless I miss my guess what you are describing - murky lack of detail in dark areas, with haze around anything bright - is caused by your optics being dirty.

The entire optical path needs to be kept clear as glass.
Mr Bob

The set is brand new. It was calibrated by Robert Busch up here in Santa Rosa. After speaking with him yesterday about what I was seeing he indicated that all RPTV do this to a degree. I'll try and give an example of what I mean. There is a scene in the movie Gothika with Halle Berry. She is inside an old farmhouse which is dark inside but not dark enough to not see some details of whats inside including her face and what she is wearing. As she moves through the room she passes an open window with bright daylight shining through. When this happens I can still see detail in here face even though she is being backlighted by the window light but further out down by her lower part of her body a semi-circle like halo of light washes out and obscures that area of the image. The dark details become a grayish hazy unfocused area. The out of focus haziness is annoying to my eyes in particular because it seems they are now trying to re-focus on something that has no form or shape or depth.

Mr Busch indicated that we could line the interior of the box with a type of velvet and possibly create a lens hood with the caveat that the difference after doing so could be quite minimal and not to expect much. I really like this TV in just about every other aspect especially the ability to produce very nice black content, but that content is compromised badly when there is a high contrast(a very bright area on an otherwise dark scene) image.

I hope I have explained clearly enough what I am seeing. Mr Busch called it lens flare. My original question was do any brand/model RPTV do a better job with this or is there a way to minimize the problem and to what degree?

Thanks again everyone for the input. I am beginning to think that I will just have to decide if this is something that I can live with or not when considering the different issues and problems with other types of display technology.

Thanks,

Jim

bigrig

03-30-04, 03:11 PM

Originally posted by keenan
The set is brand new. ... a semi-circle like halo of light ...

Mr Busch indicated that we could line the interior of the box with a type of velvet and possibly create a lens hood with the caveat that the difference after doing so could be quite minimal and not to expect much. I really like this TV in just about every other aspect especially the ability to produce very nice black content, but that content is compromised badly when there is a high contrast(a very bright area on an otherwise dark scene) image.

I hope I have explained clearly enough what I am seeing. Mr Busch called it lens flare. My original question was do any brand/model RPTV do a better job with this or is there a way to minimize the problem and to what degree?

Thanks again everyone for the input. I am beginning to think that I will just have to decide if this is something that I can live with or not when considering the different issues and problems with other types of display technology.

Thanks,

Jim

I get the same halo-ing around bright whites on a dark screen.

Jason EC said using Duvetyne inside the set and removing the protective screen reduced it by about 80% -
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3473382#post3473382

He only says 70% here, though - :p
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/htsthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB63&Number=553819

Matt

Paul Clancy

03-30-04, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by mkozlows
Is there anything else easy to do? Do you see anything sub-optimal about the changes I've made?

Unrelatedly: I've got my DVD player (a Toshiba 2900) hooked up via non-progressive component cables; there seems to be a somewhat pixellated look to the image -- not MPEG blockiness, but jaggies on diagonal lines. Is that just the limitations of DVD source, or upconversion artifacts?

Turn auto movie mode to ON
Lower Contrast to ~30
Black enhance to off

Mr Bob

03-30-04, 03:24 PM

Originally posted by keenan
The set is brand new. It was calibrated by Robert Busch up here in Santa Rosa. After speaking with him yesterday about what I was seeing he indicated that all RPTV do this to a degree. I'll try and give an example of what I mean. There is a scene in the movie Gothika with Halle Berry. She is inside an old farmhouse which is dark inside but not dark enough to not see some details of whats inside including her face and what she is wearing. As she moves through the room she passes an open window with bright daylight shining through. When this happens I can still see detail in here face even though she is being backlighted by the window light but further out down by her lower part of her body a semi-circle like halo of light washes out and obscures that area of the image. The dark details become a grayish hazy unfocused area. The out of focus haziness is annoying to my eyes in particular because it seems they are now trying to re-focus on something that has no form or shape or depth.

Mr Busch indicated that we could line the interior of the box with a type of velvet and possibly create a lens hood with the caveat that the difference after doing so could be quite minimal and not to expect much. I really like this TV in just about every other aspect especially the ability to produce very nice black content, but that content is compromised badly when there is a high contrast(a very bright area on an otherwise dark scene) image.

I hope I have explained clearly enough what I am seeing. Mr Busch called it lens flare. My original question was do any brand/model RPTV do a better job with this or is there a way to minimize the problem and to what degree?

Thanks again everyone for the input. I am beginning to think that I will just have to decide if this is something that I can live with or not when considering the different issues and problems with other types of display technology.

Thanks,

Jim

A projection system should be like the inside of a box camera - completely flat black and nonreflective. The old accordion-style box cameras went so far as to have the insides of the accordion part lined with a felt-like substance, for this purpose, along with being formed like an accordion in the first place. I once took apart the lens on an old Advent pj, and it had the same kind of sides of its barrel on the inside as the old box cameras: accordion finish inside, even tho it had a very tiny "weil" to it compared to the big accordions of box cameras.

The overall purpose in both cases: no stray internal reflections.

Many RPTVs have lots of reflective stuff exposed in the optical cavity. The metal plate that forms the chassis where the CRTs sit is a prime example. Many brands leave it shiny metal, which is VERY very reflective. Other reflective items are screwheads, some of which are very big. I have seen Pioneers where the entire inside of the cavity has never been even painted black, and is still showing the bright wood surface of the particle board it was constructed from.

The lenses are not coated in RPTVs. They should be, and all the internal lenses in the lens pack - usually comprised of 4 lenses per color/barrel - should be also, and also are not, on any RPTV I have ever seen. The backside of the fresnel lens, which faces the mirror, should not be reflective either, and some of the brands now use a flat, dull finish on that surface rather than a bright glossy one.

The new Samsung DLPs are having a really bad time with internal reflections, there is a long thread here on AVS that has been going on re. that. It is necessitating changing out the lens ass'y.

Robert is absolutely right.

Mr Bob

JData

03-30-04, 06:27 PM

Today, 26th day, I just noticed a faint 3-4" reddish line on the left side of the set. I was curious to see if it was the grid causing it but it wasn't since the location is above the center of the horizontal line.

I turned off the set and it wasn't there and the line is still there on analog/digital/HD viewing when the set is on.

Any techs out there know what this could be?

I do have a service call coming this Thursday since the origin of the call was geometry and focus issues.

Julian

dahacker

03-30-04, 06:38 PM

If anyone cares about the combined Hitachi 51S500 57S500 67S500 Service Manual, I will have it posted to the eMule P2P network whenever I have my home computer online. Make sure you do a Global (Server) search for it.

http://www.emule-project.net/

If other people keep it shared after downloading it, that helps out too.

jwilock

03-30-04, 11:38 PM

Are the DVI connections on the s500 and x500 DVI/HDMI? Is this a dumb question because all DVI connections are HDMI?

mkozlows

03-31-04, 08:18 AM

Paul: Turning auto-movie mode on led to horrible combing artifacts when watching DVD, so I've turned it back off. That DVD was from a video source; would it be sensible for me to only turn it on when watching DVDs from a film source?

Jwilock: DVI/HDCP, you mean. HDMI is another connector entirely. And yes, they are DVI/HDCP. And no, not all DVI connections are.

slick1ru2

03-31-04, 08:58 AM

I was watching the DirecTiVo feed from her Showtime concert Sunday night yesterday on my (then) 8 day old set. A dark scene came up and there were a couple of lines going horizontally across the set that looked like the three primary gun colors, which where flickering, on a black and white background and after few couple of seconds the picture went back to normal. At first I thought it might have been part of the show effects or bad sat feed so I played it back and it wasn't. The scene was dark, but clearly in color and no bands of color on replay. I couldn't reproduce the color bands.

Later that day, I hit the PIP button and the Ant C came up tuned to a station on the left side and the right side was static. I am not sure what the right side was set to, but the left side, with the picture, was black and white and a couple of bands of normal color flickering on and off and changing position. I hit PIP off and the full picture was normal, hit PIP again and this time the image on the left was completely black and white. Turned PIP off and on again and the third time the signal was in color. Anyone else have color dropping out?

Thanks!

Paul Clancy

03-31-04, 09:05 AM

Auto movie mode enables 3:2 pull down correction for film transfers but should turn off (the auto part) when not required. This works well with my Sony 360 interlaced player on component. I've hardly ever watched video based dvd material but I leave it on and see no combing with analog cable video based source or 480i (via component)sat source. What I have found is the s500 scaler will artifact more with lower quality sources ...looks similar to the chroma bug-banding. Seen this on really poor/soft cable channels....not much can be done other than an external scaler or upgrading the source. BTW good cable channels look very good...good hd is ...well ... like being there.

seadoo

03-31-04, 02:43 PM

I had asked a repair person why my DVD player looked better on my 65S700 in 480i vs 480p. He shot question off to Hitachi and here is the response they gave: (Excuse gammar but I am giving you the message as it was received).

"Interlace signal does look better because of the progressive DVD has doubler and this unit has double so its better to use in interlace, and the output of the doubler is 540p out of the doubler (Flex Control Unit), have cust check the page on his owners manual that explains about the info that diplayed when the info button is pressed, on page 23"

slick1ru2

03-31-04, 05:08 PM

That's interesting. I have the the new Samsung DVD player that has the DVI cable and it upconverts to 720p and 1080i and the 720p feed from the Samsung looks better on the Hitachi with better detail and more vibrant colors.

mygyro

03-31-04, 06:24 PM

I'm trying to decide whether to buy an offboard scaler (like iScanHD or Lumagen VisionHDP) for the signals from my VCR, SD OTA TV antenna, and so forth.

It seems clear that the Hit is deinterlacing and scaling, what with the 3:2 pulldown and "VirtualHD." I called a Hitachi tech, and he told me that the set's "VirtualHD" actually only upscales the SD signals to "1 megapixels, versus 1.4 megapixels for true 1080i." So, it's scaling is something less than to full resolution, at least.

I'm wondering how the Hit's included circuits do compared to a dedicated scaler.

Any thoughts or experiences on this subject, anyone? Is buying the offboard unit likely to greatly improve the PQ compared to the Hit's internal circuits?

Thanks!

Chrono123

03-31-04, 09:08 PM

Just purchased a new Hitachi 46F500. I know it is not the S series, but I thought my question would still apply since it is a Hitachi.

Have configured it via the regular menu settings and I have run the Magic focus. Everything I have read suggests that any rear projection TV needs to be re calibrated due to getting bumped around during shipping.

I went to the store where I purchased the set to ask them about having this done. The technician took me through the convergence manually on a set they had in the store. Basically, it was a white grid on a black background. If the technician saw any red peaking out from behind the white line. He adjusted it so it was fully hidden. He then did the same with the blue. He told me there are 72 points on this grid that could be adjusted. He said this was the same as using the service menu to calibrate the set. Having said that, said he has never gone into the service menu on this particular model. He always used this option.

I did try the grid and did found a significant amount of red and some blue that needed adjustment. I think I can now see an improvement.

I thought there were bascically two ways to calibrate your set...

1. Purchase a calibration CD and follow its instructions. (I think what I did with the grid was the equivalent to this option.)

2. Have a technician do it using the service menu. My understanding is that the technician would have specialized equipment to help determine the right settings.

Am I right in that the technician I spoke with really only provided me with option 1? Is option 1 good enough, or will I see significant improvement with option 2? How long does option 2 take?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

bigrig

03-31-04, 11:35 PM

Calibration is more than just convergence adjustment.

Focus, brightness, contrast, greyscale, and color are a few more things that need calibration.

Service techs don't really do a comprehensive calibration. You'd have to hire a specialized ISF calibrator.

Using the manual "Magic Focus" convergence adjustment is a good step. But if you use the auto Magic Focus, you'll lose your settings. If you do the convergence from the DCAM menu, and then initialize the sensors it will stick. Your TV probably does this in the same manner as the S series. Search for the "51F500 Tweaks" thread for a lot of info on how to do this stuff.

Matt

bigrig

03-31-04, 11:39 PM

Dammit! I take the time to write a response, and now I see you've started a whole seperate thread and have received the same advice.

JData

04-01-04, 01:06 PM

If anyone wants to know about the problem I posted several days ago...

Well, the service tech came in today. He disassemblied the set and looked at the tubes in what was causing the faint red line. His findings was that the green tube was bad and it had to be replaced.

On a sidenote:

1. He thought calibration DVDs were a waste of money
2. He touched my user settings and cranked up the contrast to 70% and lowered the color setting. Increased the black enhancement setting.

Now when he comes back to replace the tube, he said that he was only going to calibrate the green the tube and leave the red and blue alone. Yet, I figured that since he's replacing the tube that everything would have to be recalibrated. Would that be correct?

Julian

RexEctor

04-01-04, 11:57 PM

I love my 51" (3 months old) but after reading and digesting some of the posts here, I'm beginning to wonder if I may have a problem.

I've seen a lot of different suggested user settings and have tried a lot
of them but I seem to always end up with ones that are quite a bit different from the "norm" (if there is one).

Mostly it's my contrast. My preferred setting seems to be a LOT lower
than most. I'm anywhere between 15% and 20% on 4 different inputs
and it seems that I could go lower sometimes.

Brightness is 50-55% (seems OK). Color 25-30% (seems low).
My tint is 4-5 clicks to the green side.:confused:

I'm in Standard mode - all enhancements off.

Does this that indicate something is wrong somewhere?

Maybe I need a professional to look at it?

I've been into the SM but shy away from making changes there.
I've done a DCAM which seemed easy enough.

Paul Clancy

04-02-04, 08:54 AM

Your settings seem fine. My cont is 25 (could go lower on some material) bright 48-50, color 35, Tint centered red is at 45 in color management. You're right in the ball park. No 2 sets will be the same setting...all that matters is you've used some sort of cal disk to get bright, cont , color correct. Does it look good?

RexEctor

04-02-04, 10:27 AM

It looks great to me. I've used AVIA but don't really like what I see afterwards. I just eyeball the user settings.

No "trained" eye here either....

Thanks for the reply Paul. I rest a bit easier....

PolkThug

04-02-04, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by JData

2. He touched my user settings and cranked up the contrast to 70% and lowered the color setting. Increased the black enhancement setting.

Its sad how many "service techs" seem to be incompetent.

JIMHALM4

04-02-04, 02:25 PM

Anyone want to buy a 51S500, one month old, paid 2100.00
will sell for 1000.00. Nothing wrong with it, I got a great buy on a Sony LCD
and don't need two Big Screens. I live in northern Michigan

Jim

msegal

04-02-04, 05:14 PM

I know this has been discussed before on this thread, but could anyone give me some assistance in focusing the blue gun.

I've been trying to electrostatically focus the blue gun using the manual convergence menu (after separating the three colors), but can't tell when blue is in focus.

Can you ever get rid of the halo? Can you get rid of the halo by doing a manual focus (I'm reluctant to do that)?

Should I be trying to get the tightest line within the halo regardless of the size of the halo or should I be going for the tightness overall line?

I just don't think my picture is as sharp as it could be. Thanks for any help you can offer.

bigrig

04-02-04, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by msegal
I know this has been discussed before on this thread, but could anyone give me some assistance in focusing the blue gun.

I've been trying to electrostatically focus the blue gun using the manual convergence menu (after separating the three colors), but can't tell when blue is in focus.

Can you ever get rid of the halo? Can you get rid of the halo by doing a manual focus (I'm reluctant to do that)?

Should I be trying to get the tightest line within the halo regardless of the size of the halo or should I be going for the tightness overall line?

I just don't think my picture is as sharp as it could be. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Don't be afraid of the manual focus. Just a few more screws to remove the front control panel and you can access the wingnuts on the CRT lenses. And you get to see inside there, it's pretty cool. :)

I think I had to use the manual focus to eliminate the "blue defocus". I don't think you can ever get rid of the halo, just try to get it as good as possible.

Matt

JayJervey

04-03-04, 01:03 PM

Originally posted by msegal
I know this has been discussed before on this thread, but could anyone give me some assistance in focusing the blue gun.

I've been trying to electrostatically focus the blue gun using the manual convergence menu (after separating the three colors), but can't tell when blue is in focus.

Can you ever get rid of the halo? Can you get rid of the halo by doing a manual focus (I'm reluctant to do that)?

Should I be trying to get the tightest line within the halo regardless of the size of the halo or should I be going for the tightness overall line?

I just don't think my picture is as sharp as it could be. Thanks for any help you can offer.

My experience has been that blue needs to be slightly defocused to give my picture some brilliance (i.e. make the whites "pop"). Tight blue focus isn't going to buy much overall focus -- red and green tight focus and convergence are the key there. Anyway for blue defocus I go into the manual convergence grid and tweak blue electrostatic POT until the grid gets dimmest (this is when blue focus is tightest) and then turn it back until it just starts to brighten up. Then I do a careful manual convergence.

Note that turning blue focus POT may affect your gray scale since blue focus is used as your blue drive when calibrating gray scale. You'll want to check your AVIA gray scale ramps to make sure you haven't hosed things up in your higher IREs.

ajlevine

04-03-04, 06:30 PM

Hi,
I've got a 51S700, and it has recently been changing language on occasion. I'll turn it on, and the prompts and menus will be in French or Spanish. It doesn't seem to be losing any other settings. Anyone else ever see this?

-Andy

DaGurnz

04-05-04, 05:58 PM

I am purchasing the Hitachi 65S500 in a couple of weeks. With regards to calibration, the previous few posts have metioned using the AVIA disc. Is it better than the new Digital Video Essentials? If so, why? I just want the easier disc to navigate for a Newbie.

Thanks,

Da Gurnz

handcyclist

04-06-04, 12:41 PM

I am kind of terrified with some of the stuff I have been reading on this forum. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I dont get a lemon. I plan on eventually getting the set ISF calibrated.

When I looked at this set in the stores, the picture did not look very good, but I think it may have been these sets were out of adjustment do to people playing around with all the adjustments. The Set was highly recommended by a friend of mine who is a tv service tech and I see consumer reports has this set at the top of its list for projection sets. Hopefully all will be good.

I currently have a Hitachi 50 inch that is about 8 years old and have never had a problem, it has been a great set, I just figured I would get a lot more enjoyment out of one of the newer models especially where I have HDTV currently in one of the other rooms of my house, I have a Samsung 30 inch CRT in that room and if the Hitachi has anywhere near as good a picture of that set in HD, I will be happy.

I will keep you all up to date as to what happens when I get the set hopefully in the next week. I asked them at UECWEB if they had experienced any complaints on the s700 and they said no, this scares me a little bit there as I know a lot of people here have complained about fan noise and I am sure they must have heard that one before and just are not telling me. Hopefully my set will not have that problem.

One question, are the lenses more likely to get dust on them due to having a fan inside the 700 model vs the 500 model? Just wondering how often I should clean the lenses? Thanks. Glad I registered with this forum, looks like a lot of interesting info. Also could somebody give me the link for the recommended adjustment setting tweeks for this set?

Wazzu94

04-06-04, 01:18 PM

Hi,

I have a 57T500 that I bought in February, and I have had no complaints at all with mine. Only problem I had was that the set would occaisonally power off for no reason, but I put a Monster Power conditioner on, and that solved the problem.

Set has a great picture out of the box, and I just got the Avia disk yesterday to tune with next month.

I think you'll be pretty happy with the set. I know I am.

handcyclist

04-06-04, 09:25 PM

This was a different CC than the one I had seen the other 500 that looked bad.

It was truely awesome, Like many of you have said on this forum, almost a 3 d looking picture in HD. I am really excited about getting my new TV, I am just praying it looks as good as the one at CC today. Maybe the one that looked bad at the other CC was fresh out of the box or something and was not calibrated correctly? Anyhow, hopefully be gettin my 700 in a few days.

Curt

Paul Clancy

04-07-04, 08:36 AM

Regarding the fan and dust...the tuner with fan are in the lower cavity of the set while the lens is in the upper cavity or light path. The 2 are isolated from each other so the fan will not affect lens dust. Once a year should be enough to dust lenses.Use high quality photographic lens cleaner and lens paper. Since you can enter from the front of the set it's extremely easy.

MCnDaHouse

04-07-04, 04:19 PM

We have tried 2 Hitachi 65s700 and both had a warmer/cream yellow color on the left half of the screen out of the box. I looked at a 65S500 at Best Buy and it had the same problem.

I strongly recommend that anyone considering a Hitachi 65" check it out before you buy it. Get a DVD or tape that has some white backgrounds or a black and white movie. You'll see on the left that the whites are light yellow or cream colored. As the person or object shifts to the right it becomes pure white. It's also noticable on text that goes all the way across the screen.

It's not bad on full color scenes but once you notice it your eye will be drawn to it and it really takes the pleasure out of the TV viewing. Several have suggested lens striping but who wants to have to do that to a brand new $3000 TV? Most of the techs that our local Sears contractor uses are not very skilled and the thought of them working inside a new TV is scary.

Also the fan inside the unit can be quite annoying. We're currently considering the Mitsubishi 65513 or 65613 as a replacement for the Hitachi. Anyone have any suggestions?

MC

oxothuk

04-07-04, 06:25 PM

Originally posted by MCnDaHouse
We have tried 2 Hitachi 65s700 and both had a warmer/cream yellow color on the left half of the screen out of the box. I looked at a 65S500 at Best Buy and it had the same problem.

I strongly recommend that anyone considering a Hitachi 65" check it out before you buy it. Get a DVD or tape that has some white backgrounds or a black and white movie. You'll see on the left that the whites are light yellow or cream colored. As the person or object shifts to the right it becomes pure white. It's also noticable on text that goes all the way across the screen.
All CRT RPTVs are going to have this problem to some extent, because the each of the three tubes has a slightly different reflective path to the screen. On my Hitachi 51SWX20B I can see a slight gradation from reddish white to bluish white moving L-R across the screen. It doesn't bother me too much, I just accept this as one of the disadvantages of this technology that weigh against advantages like black levels and cost.

I would make sure and do a side-by-side comparison with the Mits before assuming that's any better. And yes, lens-striping is a way to mitigate the issue; if you are planning to have the set calibrated it probably wouldn't cost much more to have lens-striping included.

rdecius

04-07-04, 08:52 PM

I have a 65T500 and do not notice this at all. I have calebrated with DVE and also done both electronic and mechanical focus. The picture is really good at 14 feet away. I do not notice and cream white at all.

philbin

04-07-04, 10:56 PM

Having recently purchased a 51s500 I can honestly say with each passing day that PQ keeps improving. Just curious if there is anyway to alter the black background on the closed captions? With my DVD I can eliminate it totally and view "CC" with white lettering only. But, I can't figure out if there is an option that would allow me to alter the captioning background while viewing regular TV.

MCnDaHouse

04-08-04, 06:00 PM

Just curious if anyone has had a successful repair to the fan on the Hitachi 65S700? Is there a quieter fan available through Hitachi? Is everyone just ignoring it or has anyone gotten their's actually fixed?

Thanks,

MC

57s500rick

04-10-04, 04:23 PM

After reading just about every page on this site I am ready to start doing some tweaking. I have a question about electronic focus... What do I use to guage if I am in focus or not. I have seen various listings on using the user manual convergence menu, disabling guns etc. I just want to be clear on the procedure. Do I need to wait for my DVE disc to arrive? Here's what I am thinking of doing

-Going into the service screen, and going to ISF to disable the a colors.
-Exiting (because I cant seem to bring up the user menu on the remote when I am in the service menu).. and going to the convergence lines in the manual con menu and doing my focus there.
-OR should I just wait for the DVE to show up and it will guide me through it.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

JayJervey

04-10-04, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by 57s500rick
After reading just about every page on this site I am ready to start doing some tweaking. I have a question about electronic focus... What do I use to guage if I am in focus or not. I have seen various listings on using the user manual convergence menu, disabling guns etc. I just want to be clear on the procedure. Do I need to wait for my DVE disc to arrive? Here's what I am thinking of doing

-Going into the service screen, and going to ISF to disable the a colors.
-Exiting (because I cant seem to bring up the user menu on the remote when I am in the service menu).. and going to the convergence lines in the manual con menu and doing my focus there.
-OR should I just wait for the DVE to show up and it will guide me through it.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Just go into manual convergence via user menu and pull red to the left and blue to the right which will leave green in the center. Then tweak your focus POTs to get a nice tight light. When finished, exit and press 0 to discard. Then go back in manual convergence and fine tune the actual convergence since focusing will affect convergence. Also I do NOT recommend focusing blue since it doesn't contribute to the overall focus, you can end up with a dimmer picture, AND it will affect your gray scale calibration (unless you want to rent or buy a colorimeter and adjust the gray scale yourself anyway).

Mr Bob

04-10-04, 05:24 PM

Echo all of the above, except that I always separate the 3 colors diagonally, rather than just side to side or up to down. This lets you see the entire line, both horizontally and vertically. Do it just in the center point of the Hit's array, or on the center crosshair of other brands. Then go to an externally sent in pattern.

The following was written at the same time as the last post, so there might be some overlap between our 2 posts.

Accidentally turning a screen VR while you are reaching for a focus VR is a great way to screw up your grayscale. Be very, very careful.

I would recommend getting a fixed image up there - the circlehatch grid from AVIA, SVGHT, VE or DVE is a good one, making sure it is at an AVERAGE light level, like 50IRE - and focusing on it at the FOCUS VRs while in User mode. Average light level because the light level can affect the electrostatic focusing.

Shine your flashlight from the side to be able to see the labeling on the focus block, and DON'T let yourself get distracted. By ANYTHING. If you find you are getting distracted, back off and take care of the distraction before proceeding again.

If you turn up the Vertical Height pot on the front left side of the master ECB in there - your left, as you face it - close to maximum, you will spread the scanlines - not so much that you can climb between them, but enough that you can see them much more clearly. I recommend focusing on medium light level scanlines for the best focusing possible; and on 480, not 1080, as the 1080's scanlines are a lot harder to see. Good for viewing, bad for focusing.

I would NOT advise electrostatically focusing the blue unless you are getting a lot of highly visible blooming on blue from your regular viewing position, on things like rolling credits. A small bit of defocusing of the blue is allowable, and changing it in any way changes the white balance of your grayscale.

If your whites are extra blue-white already, tho, it would be good to see if you can tighten the blue focus VR up a bit, as if you can, this will take the blue in your whites down, just like altering the blue drive would. If the whites are great already tho - cream white and not blue-white - I would leave the blue focusing alone unless absolutely necessary.

This is all for electrostatic focusing. If you want to know about optical/mechanical focusing, I'll tell you about the Cantilever Technique.

Mr Bob

bigrig

04-10-04, 05:32 PM

Originally posted by Mr Bob
If you want to know about optical/mechanical focusing, I'll tell you about the Cantilever Technique.

Does that involve taking off the screen? These latest Hitachis you don't have to do that, if you take off the control panel you can adjust the CRT lenses from the front with the screen still in place.

Matt

Mr Bob

04-10-04, 05:36 PM

Yes, the CT involves pushing the screen in and pulling it out, and making sure that the absolute best mechanical focus is when the screen is at rest in the center of the throw distance, where it will be sitting when being watched.

Having access for the actual turning of the barrels in their turrets while the screen is in place is always a great thing to have, tho. The Mit's had it for years, and it made things go a lot faster, even when applying the CT.

Mr Bob

57s500rick

04-11-04, 12:02 AM

Thanks for the info Bob. Electrostatic is done. Wasnt off by very much but the advice about the manual converg menu was what I needed. I went ahead and took off the power plate to look at the wingnuts but really wasnt sure if the manual focus was done using the same manual converg screen so I held off. What I do want to ask is once the wing nuts are loosened how do I adjust focus? With a philips head? Just turn the screws on each of lenses located just on top of the wingnuts. Messed just a tiny bit with the red screw and wingnut and did not notice any chance in the red line on the converg screen so I stopped as I didnt want to wack anything out.

Once again thanks for the guidance, it helped a ton.

bigrig

04-11-04, 02:25 AM

Originally posted by 57s500rick
What I do want to ask is once the wing nuts are loosened how do I adjust focus? With a philips head? Just turn the screws on each of lenses located just on top of the wingnuts.

Nah, once you loosen the wingnuts, you move the shaft they're attached to to the left or right.

Matt

Lee Heytow

04-11-04, 09:26 AM

So, you move the wingnut itself back and forth once it is loose rather than grabbing the lens barrel?

Mr Bob

04-11-04, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by 57s500rick
Thanks for the info Bob. Electrostatic is done. Wasnt off by very much but the advice about the manual converg menu was what I needed. I went ahead and took off the power plate to look at the wingnuts but really wasnt sure if the manual focus was done using the same manual converg screen so I held off. What I do want to ask is once the wing nuts are loosened how do I adjust focus? With a philips head? Just turn the screws on each of lenses located just on top of the wingnuts. Messed just a tiny bit with the red screw and wingnut and did not notice any chance in the red line on the converg screen so I stopped as I didnt want to wack anything out.

Once again thanks for the guidance, it helped a ton.

First of all, DON'T move ANYTHING before you carefully and with as thin a line as possible, mark where your barrel is within your turret on each lens, turning-wise. You'll need to know EXACTLY where you started on each lens before you begin the manual focusing procedure.

I simply use a black Sharpie pen - even tho it is black on black, it is still visible with the light shining on it from the correct angle. Some use a bit of White-out, otherwise known as Liquid Paper, which is available either at the end of its small brush-in-cap or in pencil applicator form.

It is extremely important to know where you started, because doing the manual/optical focusing requires really TINY movements of the lens barrel, within the fixed lens turret. So you need to mark it where these 2 will be moving against each other. I used to mark it at the wingnut's rubber washer, but its washer can move also in terms of turning itself around the shaft as you move the wingnut to move the lens, and it was not a stable way of marking it. Find a place where it will be obvious, movable part vs. non-movable part, on each lens.

Forget about the Philips screwhead. It is just in there as a Maypole for the wingnut to dance around. Leave it alone.

And before you move ANYTHING except the screen - before even TOUCHING the lenses, before even BREATHING close to them - do the CT testing. Could be that each of your lenses is PRECISELY where it should be, and you will only make things worse by moving it. The Cantilever Technique test, which I came up with thru necessity - you've heard of necssity being the mother of invention - on my 60" Mit VS-6017 many years ago, is the only way I know of - and/or have ever heard of, before or since - to KNOW you are properly in focus before ever touching anything having to do with the lenses, assuring you that NOTHING will - or even can - get screwed up in the process.

If this is true - if after the CT test you find that each of your lenses is already properly focused - then DON'T MOVE THEM. Whatever changes in the lens barrels within their turrets are performed, it will DE-SIZE your picture on that particular color's image, making it either bigger or smaller, depending on the direction of the changes made - while leaving the SIZE of your other color's images alone. Meaning that since there are no sizing parameters on a Hitachi or Tosh for each of the individual colors like there are on the Mits and the Pios, you will then have your work cut out for you in terms of convergence. Which would not have been necessitated if you had left well enough alone, at the lenses.

That's why EXPERIMENTING with the mechanical focus by turning the lens barrels within their turrets - esp. without any backup of knowing PRECISELY where you started, but even with or without that - should be avoided at all costs. The Cantilever Technique will allow you to do that.

Next installment/post will include details, but this is enough for now, since you may be chomping at the bit to do it, on this fine Easter holiday...

Stay tuned -

Mr Bob

Vidcan

04-11-04, 02:32 PM

Can someone please help me. I own a 57x500 and two weeks ago I noticed it getting a yellow tint all of a sudden in all the whites. I decided to investigate more and went into DCAM convergence and when re-initializing I get and "over flow" error. I then went inside the TV and pressed the sky blue button thinking it would fix the error but that didn't help. I also tried zeroing out the convergence but even that didn't do anything. I researched on another web site and discovered that it could be from 3 factors;

Overscan being too low. I adjusted overscan around the edges to 5-6% and still get the over flow message.

It also says check sensor placement but I don't know what sensor to check.

The third solution is Conv. amp. gain check *1 (check resistor values only).
That's a bit too technical for me and I don't know what it would mean.

If someone has any idea I'd really appreciate it. The only option now is to call a Technician but I'm afraid they might void my warranty for playing with alll the service options on the TV.

Victor

Mr Bob

04-11-04, 02:37 PM

Rather than writing things out from scratch, here's some info that I wrote a couple of years ago on another board, about the Cantilever Technique. Nothing has really changed much since then, and I still believe it is the best possible way to mechanically focus a projection-type bigscreen, no matter what the format:

The Cantilever Technique is where the mechanical focus of an individual gun is checked/doublechecked by moving the screen in and out, towards then away from the mirror/center of the TV, rather than checking focus by moving the lens itself. On an RPTV I use a couch pillow or a clean towel to do the pushing in of the plastic screen. It is best to have any glarescreen OFF the unit, but not impossible to do even with a glarescreen still on. Just a little more difficult.

This can also be done on a FPTV if the center of the screen is movable, such as with a motorized descending flexible screen, unless it is attached tightly or the backside is unavailable to your hands, in which case you may only be able to move the screen inward and not outward. You may not be able to check a stiffened flat screen this way at all, except in one direction only with a piece of white paper. In either case, DON'T USE YOUR FINGERS. We don't want fingergrease marks up there on your pristine, allwhite FP screen, nor on your translucent RP lenticular screen.

This allows for very minute amounts of alteration at the lenses IN BETWEEN the doublechecks.

With normal focusing techniques the lenses have to be moved quite a bit to see any change at all, at the fixed screen. In this scenario, the lenses STAY FIXED while the focus is being checked by moving the SCREEN instead. Then that lens moved as needed, then checked again.

Colors obviously need to be showing independently - isolated or separated - for these tests.

I find that the 50IRE AVIA Circlehatch grid has the finest lines to use for this purpose - literally - esp. when the vertical height has been widened temporarily, to stretch their scanlines even farther apart from each other.

Always mark the starting point on each lens - match both barrel and turret with the same fine, straight line - with a fine line from a Sharpie pen or white marker - like maybe White-out, aka Liquid Paper - before altering position. Start with 1/16" movements, winding up with super-tiny1/64" movements.

Observe which way you are rotating your lens barrel, each time. If the screen on an RPTV focusses better when you are pulling it OUT, then the barrel needs to come OUT just a little bit, usually by UNscrewing it, in a counterclockwise direction.

The OPPOSITE is true in FPTV scenarios. This is because OUT towards you is the opposite direction when there is a mirror involved and/or in a rear projection situation, vs. when there is not/when it is a front pj situation.

Bottom line, direction of movement of the lens towards or away FROM THE SCREEN determines which direction to go. When the focusing improves when pulling the screen AWAY from the lens, the lens should be brought farther away from the CRT face and thus closer to the screen.

The middle of your screen is perfectly focussed when moving the screen outward and inward causes the focus to go out exactly the same amount in each direction, coming back to perfect focus when at rest. When perfectly balanced while at rest in its regular viewing position, your optical focus can't get any tighter.

If the center is now in and yet one or another of the sides is still out, you'll have to look for and test for Scheimpflug error, which is also correctable. This is the actual angle of the CRT face vs. the screen itself, since none of these angles is EVER totally parallel, CRT face vs. viewscreen, on any kind of projection device.

Mr Bob

Here's something I just wrote as a thumbnail description at another board, just for some healthy redundancy:

The Cantilever Technique is about getting the out-of-focusness equivalent when you move the screen forward and back from the mirror, such that it is in perfect focus when at rest. On an RPTV it involves undoing the screen either at top or bottom, so that it can be moved outward; and then lightly pressing in with a pillow or something, to move the screen inward; and then tweaking the barrel in the turret till it precisely balances exactly where it goes out of focus in each direction, towards vs. away from the mirror - in vs. out.

When it is precisely balanced in its out-of-focusness, in vs. out, you know the throw distance is precisely, EXACTLY where it should be when at rest - balanced, at the midpoint between the 2 opposing ranges of out-of-focusness.

This can be done on any screen that is movable. Hanging FPTV screens, RPTVs, etc. The only screens it won't work very will with would be fixed screens. In that case you can really only do one direction - the forward direction - by taking a piece of white paper and replicating the action of moving the screen outward towards the pj.

One last redundancy:

I still like the Cantilever Technique, where you pivot the screen on the top, then pull out an inch or so at the bottom, and then press in in the center with a clean towel or pillow about 3/4", and observing to see that the perfect focus point is exactly balanced between the inner and the outer distances.

When the focus point is exactly balanced, you will start to lose focus about half an inch in, and then you will lose it again half an inch out, from the centerpoint where the screen will land when just sitting there being watched.

When those 2 distances where you start to lose focus are identical - the inner vs. the outer, the push vs. the pull - then you know your throw distance, which is the distance from lens to screen, is perfect.

Always amend that by looking at the edges and make sure that if you have any non equality between the right and the left sides vs. the middle in terms of mechanical focus, that you either play with the Scheimpflug - the angle at which your lens hits your CRT face - or equalize that error by averaging it out, across the screen.

Which can still be very telling, if the image goes to better focus as you move the paper away from the screen, towards the pj.

Mr Bob

Mr Bob

04-11-04, 03:00 PM

Originally posted by Vidcan
Can someone please help me. I own a 57x500 and two weeks ago I noticed it getting a yellow tint all of a sudden in all the whites.

Why on Earth did you go into the convergence mode to try to fix a yellow tint in the whites???

I decided to investigate more and went into DCAM convergence and when re-initializing I get and "over flow" error.

When you say "re-initialize" - a word that absolutely fills me with terror, dread and forboding - I hope you did not trigger the 3x3, because it instantly vaporizes ALL factory convergence work done to your unit.

I then went inside the TV and pressed the sky blue button thinking it would fix the error but that didn't help. I also tried zeroing out the convergence but even that didn't do anything. I researched on another web site and discovered that it could be from 3 factors;

Overscan being too low. I adjusted overscan around the edges to 5-6% and still get the over flow message.

It also says check sensor placement but I don't know what sensor to check.

The third solution is Conv. amp. gain check *1 (check resistor values only).
That's a bit too technical for me and I don't know what it would mean.

If someone has any idea I'd really appreciate it. The only option now is to call a Technician but I'm afraid they might void my warranty for playing with alll the service options on the TV.

Victor

DUH! Yeah, just a tad...

DO NOT CALL IN WARRANTY ASSISTANCE ON THIS PROBLEM.

This is the type of thing that caused the major manufacturers to make critically important registers DISAPPEAR from the great service menus of the past. This included the R-YR etc. color decoder registers in the Mits's, for eliminating their factory-installed red push. It also included the color islolation registers in their Video Chroma menu that allowed for realignment of the decoder while in the same menu. (Fortunately for those reading this thread, both of these sets of registers still exist in the Hitachis.) It also included the great Designer Menu of the older Tosh HDreadys.

All gone. All because of warranty claims on situations like this, which among them cost the manufacturers millions of dollars remedying things that never shoulda happened.

You broke it, you bought it. PAY FOR IT!!! You owe them to NOT have to come in and bail you out, with warranty service. It costs them money, money they don't OWE.

I hope we can help you outa this, and of course we will try, but let this be a message to everyone out there who depends on us on these forums for calibration assistance: We in the industry do not support the use of indiscriminant experimentation on highly sophisticated electronic devices. These things are rife with landmines even when you are doing everything RIGHT!

If you venture into this realm, against all factory advice, KNOW you are taking the life and the efficacy of your display unit in your OWN hands. It's on YOU. ALL of it. If you fail in your DIY'er attempts at this stuff, your entire warranty - inlcuding things totally unrelated to what you are experimenting with - could go up in smoke.

If you break it, be willing to pay for it. Otherwise let a pro do it ALL.

Mr Bob

Vidcan

04-11-04, 04:05 PM

Bob,

I thought it might have been a grayscal problem at first but my grayscale was dead on. Adding Blue Drv didn't fix the problem. I thought maybe that one of the guns was misaligned causing the yellow color. That's why I went into DCAM to investigate. Everything was perfect though. I just touched up the convergence very slightly and when reinitializing that was when I first got the over flow error. I read on HomeTheater Spot that zeroing out convergence might fix the problem but it didn't. Then I rechecked my color settings with AVIA but that wasn't it either.

I am pretty knowledgeable with TVs and I wasn't indiscrimanetly playing with settings. All the tweaks I've done to my TV are pretty standard in these forums.

I did not reinitalize the 3 x 3 setting at first. Last night after a few days of getting no where I did though. My overscan is OK so I really don't have any idea what the problem could possibly be. I will be buying a convergence jig next week for the geometry any way so I'm not too worried about the convergence right now.

Any possible help would be really appreciated.

Victor

Mr Bob

04-11-04, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by Vidcan
[B]Bob,

I thought it might have been a grayscal problem at first but my grayscale was dead on. Adding Blue Drv didn't fix the problem. I thought maybe that one of the guns was misaligned causing the yellow color. That's why I went into DCAM to investigate. Everything was perfect though. I just touched up the convergence very slightly and when reinitializing that was when I first got the over flow error.

I am familiar with memorizing convergence changes once you've done some trimup, but re-initializing? That sounds like starting over.

I read on HomeTheater Spot that zeroing out convergence might fix the problem but it didn't.

The Mits's have H and V numbers for every point, which makes centering them fairly straightforward. Do the Hit's? Don't recall...

Are you sure you still have all your blue image? Yellow in an RGB scenario is lack of blue.

Mr Bob

Vidcan

04-11-04, 04:42 PM

Hi,
I absolutely do have all my blue. I adjusted the blue DRVs in sm but all it did was give a very bluish tint to the low ires while leaving the whites still with the yellow.

Hit's have H and V positioning is that what you mean? You can move the image horizontally and vertically.

The Service manual says to check
1 "sensor position"
2 Adjustment check (H/V size, centering) or
3 " Conv. amp. gain check *1 (check resistor values only)."

#2 I take it means to check whether your overscan is too low. My AVIA disc now says overscan is about 5-6% all around the edges.

#1 and #3 I have no idea what they mean.

Victor

gambrelw

04-11-04, 06:02 PM

Can someone please help me. I own a 57x500 and two weeks ago I noticed it getting a yellow tint all of a sudden in all the whites. I decided to investigate more and went into DCAM convergence and when re-initializing I get and "over flow" error. I then went inside the TV and pressed the sky blue button thinking it would fix the error but that didn't help. I also tried zeroing out the convergence but even that didn't do anything. I researched on another web site and discovered that it could be from 3 factors;

Zeroing out convergence alone won't fix the problem. Did you adjust the overscan pots (while zeroed out) to obtain the proper voltage by measuring distance between the green lines? To be followed by rebuilding geometry with a template.

I absolutely do have all my blue. I adjusted the blue DRVs in sm but all it did was give a very bluish tint to the low ires while leaving the whites still with the yellow.

Did you reduce Blue CUT to remove the blue in the low IREs?

Bill

Vidcan

04-11-04, 06:40 PM

Gambrelw
I'm not familiar with the overscan pots. Do you think you could tell me what/where they are and how to adjust them. I zeroed out convergence but then I'm not able to measure the distance because zeroing it out cause the lines to be extremely distorted and separated from each other.

The overscan pots sounds like a promising solution hopefully.

As for the blue cuts, yes I have reduced it after my experiment and my grayscale is pretty close to perfect gray. When I pull up the AVIA gray ramps the 0-80ires are pretty good, but at 100 there is a noticeable yellowing going on.

Thanks so much.

Victor

gambrelw

04-11-04, 08:44 PM

I need to know a little more about what you have done. One mistake people make is adjusting the H/V size pots (overscan pots) on the Circuit board to control overscan. In many cases, this will stress the DCU (digital convergence unit) causing and overflow error. So, I use templates to correct geometry on the set. You zero out convergence, set H/V size voltage and build geometry with a template. This is the safest way on the Hitachi.

Of course, I don't know everything you have done to your set so it is a little difficult for me to assess your problem. When you go into DCAM, do you save the convergence before re-initializing magic focus?

As far as a yellow whites. It is an iterative process between Drives and Cuts. You will reduce Red and Green Drives @100IRE and then reduce Blue Cut to remove excess blue created @20IRE by playing with R/G drives. You will have to go back and forth several times. I hope you have written everything down.

Bill

Vidcan

04-11-04, 09:03 PM

I have not actually touched the overscan pots physically on the circuit board. I have been continually adjusting the convergence over the last month in trying to fine tune it.

The Service manual does say to check the H/V size and centering as part of the solution. I don't know how I could do that. What I have done is take the edge most lines down to increase overscan to about 6% thinking that the overscan was causing the "over flow" error. That hasn't helped.

When I'm in DCAM I do save the convergence with the PIP button before re-initializing.

On another board it says in order to set the correct voltage you need to zero out convergence and then measure the distances but this is impossible because the convergence is so off and there is a lot of bowing on the lines towards the center of the screen.

Victor

gambrelw

04-11-04, 09:10 PM

Vidcan,

Send me a PM and we can discuss this without cluttering up the thread.

Bill

JayJervey

04-11-04, 11:48 PM

Originally posted by Vidcan
Hi,
I absolutely do have all my blue. I adjusted the blue DRVs in sm but all it did was give a very bluish tint to the low ires while leaving the whites still with the yellow.

Hit's have H and V positioning is that what you mean? You can move the image horizontally and vertically.

The Service manual says to check
1 "sensor position"
2 Adjustment check (H/V size, centering) or
3 " Conv. amp. gain check *1 (check resistor values only)."

#2 I take it means to check whether your overscan is too low. My AVIA disc now says overscan is about 5-6% all around the edges.

#1 and #3 I have no idea what they mean.

Victor

There is no blue DRV setting in the Hitachi SM. You need to slightly defocus blue with the electrostatic focus POT to add blue to your whites (blue focus is used for blue DRV and is stated as such in the Service Manual in the White Balance adjustment procedure). The blue CUT in the service menu will predominately affect your low IREs below 40 -- not your whites.

gambrelw

04-11-04, 11:57 PM

JayJervey,

Altering Green and Red Drive is equivalent to altering a non-existent Blue Drive per say. I wouldn't rely on service manuals to tell me how to deal with grayscale.

Bill

57s500rick

04-12-04, 01:11 AM

Yipe:)! Glad I stopped when I did. As I said I loosened the wingnut on the red but I backed off at that point. I think I may leave the manual focus for my ISF calibration as I dont want to push my luck, just want to get the picture looking decent until I can have it done by a pro. Just so I make sure I didnt slightly move the red lense, is there a test I can do in DVE (once the damn thing gets here) to double check. Picture really does look a bit better with the electrostatic focus and a few tweaks suggested on this site that I did in the service menu. My greens are a bit strong but I think once I go through the DVE and make some additional color adjustments that problem will go away. Thanks for the post on the method for manaul focus but I think that may be just a bit beyond my skills:)

Thanks again Bob.

JayJervey

04-12-04, 01:35 AM

Originally posted by gambrelw
JayJervey,

Altering Green and Red Drive is equivalent to altering a non-existent Blue Drive per say. I wouldn't rely on service manuals to tell me how to deal with grayscale.

Bill

Bill,

Well, in fact blue focus does act as a blue DRV -- I used it that way when I calibrated my grayscale with my $200 colorimeter (no kidding -- a SpyderPro with Optical software actually works). In fact, I had a tough time getting a reasonably linear D65/IRE plot until I used very mild blue defocus to control the blue in my high IREs. So in this case the manual was right. On the other hand, it wants you to dial in the grayscale using 10,800K/High which I found to be tough using the Spyder -- D65/Standard was easier (but still no trivial task).

I'm one of those guys Bob's referring to that got in over his head by turning a screen POT instead of a focus POT. Bye, bye grayscale. After weeks of struggling I finally got things under control and it's actually calibrated and looking great.

Regards,
Jay

Mr Bob

04-12-04, 05:21 AM

Originally posted by Vidcan
[B]Hi,
I absolutely do have all my blue. I adjusted the blue DRVs in sm but all it did was give a very bluish tint to the low ires while leaving the whites still with the yellow.

Adjusting the drives vs. the cuts, you will find that the drives and cuts are interactive. Adjusting the drive on one color will either directly or inversely - depending on brand - affect the opposite of that same color. Adjusting drive will not only affect the brights of that color, but also will affect the darks of that same color, either directly or inversely. Not nearly as much as it will affect the whites - but there will be an effect, and it has to be observed, factored in and dealt with.

If you increased the red drive and somehow then found too much red in the darks, you would have to then go to the red CUToff and reduce it to compensate. Cutoff is what MOSTLY determines how your darks look, and drives are MOSTLY what determines how your bright whites look. Yet they are still interactive with each other and need continuous rebalancing as you go along.

Also, you should have your overall contrast at halfmast whenever you are setting grayscale. It should not be at full tilt boogie in the SM while you are aligning the grayscale, because if you are a videophile you don't watch it at full tilt boogie - we call it Torch Mode - so the grayscale you would be viewing on test patterns at a high light level in SM would not be accurate when viewing regular video material in User. They must match up.

The grayscale is also markedly non-linear at high viewing light levels, which is another reason videophiles don't watch it that brightly on CRT type displays. Hence again, the term Torch Mode. Even the best and most totally coherent and correct grayscale pattern, on a display set too high, can be a very colorful pattern. And totally useless for grayscale alignment.

Blue also drops off noticeably, the higher you go into the higher light levels, and as such even when your contrast has been taken down to about half normal in SM, it is still not good to be using 100IRE patterns, or the sections of patterns that are at 100IRE. 80IRE is the highest you should go.

If you have a drastic rolloff of blue in your brightest whites, you probably are watching your video material at too high a contrast level. Videophiles watch their video material at about half of factory set maximum contrast levels and control their room lighting to match, allowing their eyes to adjust accordingly - which happens very quickly and stays that way for the duration of whatever is watched. Unless you are pulling an allnighter...

This keeps their grayscale linear and the image a lot tighter in its structure.

A modest amount of blue rolloff - yellowing - at the highest of light levels is to be expected when viewing grayscale test patterns even with contrast at halfmast. Hence the advice of not using 100IRE test material for grayscale, but rather using nothing higher than 80IRE.

Bill said it, and I'll say it again - don't trust a service manual to tell you anything about how to set grayscale. Esp. a Hitachi manual, where the only number even MENTIONED is D10,800K!

Correct, smoothly aligned grayscale is no easy animal to tame. And that is SUCH an incredible understatement, on my part...

Mr Bob

Mr Bob

04-12-04, 05:37 AM

Originally posted by 57s500rick
Just so I make sure I didnt slightly move the red lense, is there a test I can do in DVE (once the damn thing gets here) to double check.

Just separate out your red image diagonally, and do the Cantilever Technique. Mechanical focus is not affected by the light level, so the advice to keep the light level average does not apply there.

You can use the center of the manual convergence grid for the optical red, to doublecheck it, once its lines are separated from those of the green and blue.

Mr Bob

gambrelw

04-12-04, 10:12 AM

Jay,

I am not saying that focus does not affect light output for a CRT. I am saying that you shouldn't use it for grayscale calibration. You should correctly focus your CRTs and then correct grayscale with Drives and CUTs.

Bill

JayJervey

04-12-04, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by gambrelw
Jay,

I am not saying that focus does not affect light output for a CRT. I am saying that you shouldn't use it for grayscale calibration. You should correctly focus your CRTs and then correct grayscale with Drives and CUTs.

Bill

Bill,

Ok. But a super-tight blue focus does not add much to the sharpness of your picture. Certainly if you have it completely out of focus it will be a mess. But I found that blue defocusing can be helpful in 2 ways: a) brightning up a somewhat dull picture and b) giving some control to blue in higher IREs for grayscale. There is a limit to how much blue defocusing you want to do (it's very slight), but I have found it very useful in getting a brilliant sparkling picture. There is some art to this science and blue defocusing I think is one of those arts.

Regards,
Jay

gambrelw

04-12-04, 12:01 PM

Jay,

I have been defocusing the blue on the hitachi for a couple years now, not because of grayscale or luminance output but because of a problem with the purple hue around white. I have my own tricks for doing it correctly.

Bill

Mr Bob

04-12-04, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by gambrelw
Jay,

I have been defocusing the blue on the hitachi for a couple years now, not because of grayscale or luminance output but because of a problem with the purple hue around white. I have my own tricks for doing it correctly.

Bill

Great observation, Bill. I didn't know that.

Jay -

I have been giving out advice about exactly how to defocus blue for years, part of that being the observation that blue is a "fill" color rather than a "structure" color, as red and green are. Which is close to what you said in your top line.

I have been tapering it off because in the last year or 2, Chuck Williams has made the observation that the newer CRTs don't need the blue defocused anymore, on pretty much all RPTVs these days, as these days they are a much stronger breed of CRT than those of before.

But your observations make sense, and I like them. I will keep advising people to not touch their blue focus just to tighten it, but only if absolutely necessary, and will make exceptions and continue to coach them in that fine art if they want to perform the special blue defocusing efforts to realize the bennies you mentioned.

My main recommendation on blue defocusing comes from the fact that it takes some of the pressure off the blue drive, which can then be set lower, and still provide the same amount of blue in the higher IREs.

I think you could add that to your list of the bennies of blue defocusing, along with Bill's comments above. On really old units, you HAVE to defocus the blue, because the blue drive simply won't be enough at that kind of age, even maxed out. Your whites will still remain dingy at full blue drive, unless and until you defocus that blue electrostatically as well.

Tricks of the trade, tricks of the trade...

Mr Bob

JayJervey

04-12-04, 03:55 PM

Originally posted by gambrelw
Jay,

I have been defocusing the blue on the hitachi for a couple years now, not because of grayscale or luminance output but because of a problem with the purple hue around white. I have my own tricks for doing it correctly.

Bill

Bill,

Yes, the purple hue can be annoying -- particularly with color temp on High and boosted contrast. When defocusing blue I've tried to keep a happy balance between the pros and cons of purple blooming -- again it's that phase of tuning that's almost an indescribable art. Care to share some of those tricks?

Mr. Bob,

A lot of my success with using blue focus as a tuning tool comes from your previous posts a few weeks ago on the subject -- namely, that blue is more of a fill color and less of a structure color. Thank you for leading me in the right direction.

Regards --
Jay

supercoltsfan

04-13-04, 02:01 AM

As a new 65S500 owner I have a few questions so thought this must be the thread to ask them!:confused: I just replaced a Tosh. 65HX83 for the infamous white line issue. Although I only had the Tosh for a week, and except for the white line, it had really incredible PQ with only a quick run through VE to set contrast etc. However I just couldn't live with the line so I sent it back. Now, I have the Hitachi in place with the exact same inputs (Samsung SIR-TS360 tuner for HD and Samsung HD 931 DVD, both thru DVI connector) and so far I am not quite as happy with the PQ on the Hit as I was with the Tosh. Whenever I turn the contrast down to a reasonable level (30s) the picture appears somewhat "Hazy"... Also, if I turn the sharpness down (as I have on my previous TVs) , the picture becomes soft, and slightly blurry. Only if I turn Black Enhancement "ON" and sharpness up to around 30 does the picture start to look OK, but is then somewhat grainy. Overall, it just appears soft, grainy, and washed out. The Tosh was super smooth and sharp with deep blacks (damn white line!) These two TVs were my top two choices after a lot of research, I really wouldn't know where to go from here. I do plan on having it calibrated but I would like to get to an acceptable level first, so I can have some confidence it is worth keeping. ANY suggestions are much appreciated!:)

Mr Bob

04-13-04, 04:32 AM

Whenever I turn the contrast down to a reasonable level (30s) the picture appears somewhat "Hazy"...

The Contrast and Brightness is interactive on many brands, not so much on others. If you turn your Contrast down, you may have to turn down your Brightness to compensate.

Bottom line, brightness should be set so that in dark scenes you can see detail in dark areas, and this can be different setting while watching in daylight than it will be under nighttime conditions. Many calibrators, upon request, work out contrast and brightness settings for owners for each of those 2 viewing conditions.

Lower than that and you will feel eyestrain as you are trying - and failing - to make out those details, and higher than that and you will get haziness. Try to replicate the look and feel of 35mm film, whose dark areas are NEVER true black, since thin photographic 35mm film is not capable of totally impeding the arclamp's incredible power, in a movie theater, yet it SEEMS to be totally black since we are totally accustomed to it. Check that out next time you go to the mall theater. Lots of people are not aware of that.

Also, if I turn the sharpness down (as I have on my previous TVs) , the picture becomes soft, and slightly blurry. Only if I turn Black Enhancement "ON" and sharpness up to around 30 does the picture start to look OK, but is then somewhat grainy.

I have never been a fan of blanketly turning the Sharpness all the way down, and neither is one of the entities I work with, Runco.

On today's Sharpness bargraphs, the lower half is video dulling, for grainy pictures; the upper half is video enhancement, which adds false edges and which, like SVM, makes the pic look better only if you are sitting way far away from it.

On most RPTV units the midpoint of the Sharpness bargraph is the spot where both invasive tactics are out of circuit the most. On the newer Tosh's it is more like 35%, where it used to be 50%. I'll let Hitachi owners themselves tell you where it should be for the Hitachi's, but all the way to the left is NOT it.

Mr Bob

Paul Clancy

04-13-04, 08:46 AM

Sharpness on hitachis has always been higher than tosh or others. 45 is a common setting and correct on mine. Below that introduces blurring and above artifacting. Settings for cont/bright on mine are 25/50 and differ slightly based on source. Also look at the statg10 setting in sm for gamma (shadow detail) ...6 works best for me.

minorthr

04-13-04, 10:09 AM

Just got our 65s700 last night. I spent about 30 minutes doing some quick basic calibration and then we watched Matrix revolution. It looked really good and the wife was really impressed. So far I'm thrilled even with the little bit of calibration I did.

Michigan Golfer

04-13-04, 11:23 AM

I just got my 57s500 running with the Samsung 360 HD tuner and my Pioneer 563a DVD player.

I did some simple adjustments - using some of the settings provided by others for the S500 series. Also did the Magic Focus thing too. I haven't had much time do run through my own Avia test or do anything else. The day/night mode feature is very nice.

Tested Finding Nemo in the DVD player - phenomenal picture. I can't wait to watch others.

Hooked up a crappy indoor UHF antenna to the S360 (in the basement on the floor next to the tv), and was able to lock in 4 channels. Leno was coming on at the time, and HOLY MACKANOLY!!!! What an awesome high-def picture!

Going to be changing out my round dish on the roof with the oval dish and getting the sat service with the HD package activated this week. Looking forward to the Sopranos in HD - yum.

plm

04-13-04, 12:01 PM

Just a simple question: Is greyscale the major factor affecting details in black? I have my 57S500 with protective screen removed, "duvetyne" plus lens hood. But the black level is not good enough yet.

Thanks in advance,
plm.

Mr Bob

04-13-04, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by plm
Just a simple question: Is greyscale the major factor affecting details in black? I have my 57S500 with protective screen removed, "duvetyne" plus lens hood. But the black level is not good enough yet.

Thanks in advance,
plm.

What do you mean not good enough yet? Lack of shadow detail? That would be optics being dirty and needing professional cleaning. Too much red or blue or green in the darks? THAT would be grayscale.

You might want to read some of my comments on the last page about this. I just made some corrections and added some new stuff, also, if you have already read it.

If you ever want to reread/find/scope out something Bill or I or any other calibrator has said on one of these ultra-long threads, I believe you can do a search on the writer, for within the thread.

Or on one of the great non-calibrator contributors, here, also. Such as:

Paul -

Nice advice on where to get to the gamma! Didn't know that, will be printing it out for my onlocation archives.

Mr Bob

gambrelw

04-13-04, 01:37 PM

I found the gamma setting early last year. Gamma is poor on the hitachi out of box. Setting to 06 or 07 will give you a gamma between 2.1 and 2.4, depending on your white/black level settings.

Mr Bob

04-13-04, 02:02 PM

Thanks, Bill, I'm going to print that out also.

plm

04-14-04, 09:01 AM

Bob and Bill,

After I set the STATG10 to 06, I got a better shadow details. I could even turn down my brightness two clicks.

Thanks for your help!
plm.

chloedog

04-14-04, 09:40 AM

I have a Hitachi 51S700 ....

I accidently activated DCAM and now my original convergence information is lost .... Magic Focus will not bring back the convergence correctly - it works, but when I look at the picture it is out of convergence and manual convergence does not do a satisfactory job.

I recently purchased an One-For-All 6in1 remote which allows one to add advanced codes to keys on the remote using a 3 digit hex number. Each number corresponds to a function on the original remote - there are some that are undocumented - I found one.

Apparently 254 performs a DCAM, as evidence when I saw the words Initialize: N and a bunch of convergence boxes appear (for about 30 seconds.) The screen went blank afterwards, then green dots appeared evenly spaced.

Now my convergence is messed up. After finding the PDF for the service manual, I was able to figure out how to perform manual adjustment which helps some. I even figured out how to save the settings using pip-mode. The problem is that I cannot seem to get the convergence to the point where magic focus can perform the way it used to. I discovered the fact that one must do pip-mode twice to save the settings and then hit mute to return to the adjustment mode, check everything, then hit pip-mode, then surf to perform convergence initialization.

My first question - Why did I wipe out my original settings when I accidently entered this mode in the first place?

Second question - I am new to this (I understand basics of convergence and setting the red and blue - I know not to mess with the green) - what is the purpose of saving the parameters before doing the surf (does this set an initial convergence which magic focus then works from?) Also, I found out that if I fail to perform the pip-mode (save) and surf (reinitialize) then magic focus shows static mode ....

Please give me convergencve setting suggestions (I am concerned that I was able to enter this mode without pressing the DCAM button referenced in the manual ....)

Thanks for your help
-chloedog

Mr Bob

04-14-04, 10:48 AM

Originally posted by chloedog
I discovered the fact that one must do pip-mode twice to save the settings and then hit mute to return to the adjustment mode, check everything, then hit pip-mode, then surf to perform convergence initialization.

My first question - Why did I wipe out my original settings when I accidently entered this mode in the first place?

Second question - I am new to this (I understand basics of convergence and setting the red and blue - I know not to mess with the green) - what is the purpose of saving the parameters before doing the surf (does this set an initial convergence which magic focus then works from?) Also, I found out that if I fail to perform the pip-mode (save) and surf (reinitialize) then magic focus shows static mode ....

Please give me convergencve setting suggestions (I am concerned that I was able to enter this mode without pressing the DCAM button referenced in the manual ....)

Thanks for your help
-chloedog

If you did the complete 3x3 protocol - which you can't fully implement unless you do the set turn-off then hold a certain button down while you turn it on again thing - you wiped out the factory settings.

There are 3 different modes in there for convergence settings, the 3rd of which allows the most precise tweaking, the second of which allows for overall areas to be done to get things close, and the first of which - the 3x3 - starts EVERYTHING COMPLETELY OVER. I have never done the first one, because I saw the warnings in the service manual about it. So I can't help you from experience. But I can tell you that anybody who does the 3x3 thing will be sorry, unless they are inherently masochistic or have LOADS of time on their hands and LOVE to do lots of unnecessary work.

I don't know of a convergence re-inititialization other than the 3x3. There is the Magic Focus re-initialization, where whatever you have memorized into the Read to ROM will be programmed into the MF, using the sensors around the edge of the screen. Ideally, this will need to be done several times before the MF will start to come back with lots of high precision successfully programmed into it.

But this is one reason you should be very careful of using the H and V sizing pots on the board. If you take in the overscan via these small VRs too much - to such an extent that the MF sensors at the edges and corners of your screen are no longer being hit by the lights sent out on the screen from the automated MF program - the MF program can't do its job, either in User or in service mode.

Whenever you paint yourself into a corner, I would advise turning off the unit and then unplugging it for a few minutes, then plug it back in and start over again. Many times, that way you can save something bad that you did automatically and inadvertently, from becoming permanent.

It will probably also get you out of its automatically winding you up in Static Mode.

Mr Bob

JayJervey

04-14-04, 10:49 AM

Originally posted by chloedog
I have a Hitachi 51S700 ....

I accidently activated DCAM and now my original convergence information is lost .... Magic Focus will not bring back the convergence correctly - it works, but when I look at the picture it is out of convergence and manual convergence does not do a satisfactory job.....

-chloedog

Take this with a grain of salt since I don't normally believe salesman about anything techincal. A while back a CC guy told me that Hitachi Magic Focus drifts way out of calibration after about a year and becomes Magic Un-Focus. Manual conevergence is your only resort (and actually my preferred method anyway). Why do you say "manual convergence does not do a satisfactory job"? It does a perfect job for me. Magic Focus is what does a lousy job and has done a lousy job since I got my TV. How long have you had the TV? You need a few hundred hours on the TV in order for the electronics to stabilize so that your convergence will hold for an extended period.

Regards,
Jay

Mr Bob

04-14-04, 11:00 AM

Originally posted by JayJervey
Take this with a grain of salt since I don't normally believe salesman about anything techincal. A while back a CC guy told me that Hitachi Magic Focus drifts way out of calibration after about a year and becomes Magic Un-Focus. Manual conevergence is your only resort (and actually my preferred method anyway). Why do you say "manual convergence does not do a satisfactory job"? It does a perfect job for me. Magic Focus is what does a lousy job and has done a lousy job since I got my TV. How long have you had the TV? You need a few hundred hours on the TV in order for the electronics to stabilize so that your convergence will hold for an extended period.

Regards,
Jay

I think this falls within the regular "tune-up" these RPTVs need every so often. In general for RPTVs I usually say recalibration every 2 years with the optics cleaning needing to be done to a professional grade level every year without fail - but in this case, I think the Magic Focus needs to be done/re-initialized every year, preferably after fine tuning and memorization of the service menu convergence, and running that whole scenario thru several times until it comes back with fewer and fewer differences each time you hit the Read to ROM commands and come back to a regular picture.

In this case, I think he decimated his original factory values, and as such put it so far out that even the manual focus couldn't help it.

But let's wait and hear about that from him...

Mr Bob

Marc Alexander

04-14-04, 11:06 AM

I haven't found Magic Focus to drift...but it is only as good as its initialization (usually...not so great from the factory). Manual convergence is still better in every way...except convenience.

Mr Bob

04-14-04, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by Marc Alexander
I haven't found Magic Focus to drift...but it is only as good as its initialization (usually...not so great from the factory). Manual convergence is still better in every way...except convenience.

Again, several passes are necessary on the MF initialization to get it to even come close to starting to really EFFECTIVELY memorize what was done in the convergence part, once the Read to ROM has been done, EACH time. It's like there seems to be an electronic bottleneck in there, somewhere in the memorization process. This seems to be true of both the Read to ROM and the MF.

I think the memory in there only allows for a small part of any changes to be memorized at any one time, so little by little the MF finally achieves a continuing stability, in matching up to the actual SM convergence changes.

Kinda like how a trickle charge is so much different from a quick charge.

Mr Bob

gambrelw

04-14-04, 11:17 AM

My first question - Why did I wipe out my original settings when I accidently entered this mode in the first place?

Don't know. You shouldn't be able to wipe out your setting unless you have saved the data to rom.

Second question - I am new to this (I understand basics of convergence and setting the red and blue - I know not to mess with the green) - what is the purpose of saving the parameters before doing the surf (does this set an initial convergence which magic focus then works from?) Also, I found out that if I fail to perform the pip-mode (save) and surf (reinitialize) then magic focus shows static mode ....

In theory, green is the base and shouldn't be touched but I wouldn't rely on that to be true. The fact is that green can be incorrect (not just red and blue). When building geometry on the hitachi, you do start with green and then correct red and blue. But, when doing convergence on a set that has bad geometry accross the board, you have to fix all colors, including green.

It sounds like something got hosed. My recommendation is to start from scratch. Buy a template, zero convergence as Mr Bob stated above, and rebuild geometry with the template. You match green to the template and then match red and blue to green.

If you need a template and further instructions, let me know.

Bill

Mr Bob

04-14-04, 11:25 AM

And a vellum template is only for the green. Once you have created a new green 'template' image using the vellum template you'll get from Bill, remove it and use the new green image as its own template after that, for converging the red and blue to it.

Mr Bob

chloedog

04-14-04, 11:54 AM

Thanks for the quick responses on my questions concerning dcam and my Hit 51s700.

Sounds like what I did was activate dcam with some obscure remote control code (accidently).

From what you have stated, I can verify that I did NOT enter 3x3 mode (I assume this would show the whole grid but only allow me to jump to 9 locations?)

Somehow it looks like I corrupted the mf data. From what Mr. Bob said, I should be able to return to dcam mode, make necessary adjustments to blue and red, then save and reinitialize mf (not convergence like I mentioned originally - my fault, wrong terminology.)

To do a better job, I should obtain the vellum overlay and adjust the green to this overlay, then perform the blue and red.

I noticed there were several other modes available using the menu button (cross hairs with brackets, brackets without cross hairs, green/yellow grid -> some with actual video input displayed ....)

Thanks again for the advice.

-Chloedog

chloedog

04-15-04, 09:01 AM

Thanks Mr. Bob for your help with my convergence issues.

I was able to perform the steps you recommended (still need to obtain the vellum grid ..... I can see where this would help with the outer edges especially) and was able to produce a decent result which was successfully saved in the magic focus rom (I did perform this )several times as you recommended. The results even stick in the user magic focus settings (works in both automatic mode - did not find it necessary to make changes in user manual mode (verified everything was OK) since I was able to do a good job in the dcam mode.

One note: Subjectively, the picture now looks more like it did when the set was new (I noticed with time the picture quality got better with use ....) I did make sure all of my user settings were correct (using AVIA) Contrast 21, brightness 60, color 46, sharpness 20, tint 1 click to left of center. Also used AVIA 16x9 grid when doing convergence in dcam as a check (could toggle cycling through menu botton.)

What does the phase button do in dcam (documented but without a description in the service manual)? When pressing it, the center of the screen distorts (evenly).

The remote code I discovered does not appear to be documented anywhere - are you aware of anyone using a remote to enter dcam mode (I never had to gain access to the interior of the rptv.)?

For whatever it is worth, I used code 254 (which I could map to a key on the remote if I choose) on an One For All remote (model number) URC 6131 and used manufacturer code 145 for Hitachi TVs (sets basic functionality) and then pressed the setup key followed by the numbers 2,5,4 which placed the TV in dcam mode. This may be useful for persons wanting to perform dcam without dissassembley of their set.

Once I put some time on my rptv, I will look for an ISF calibrator in my area (I purchased the Hitachi in December, but didn't really use it until mid-January)

:)chloedog

Mr Bob

04-15-04, 09:25 AM

Originally posted by chloedog

I was able to perform the steps you recommended (still need to obtain the vellum grid .....

I never use a vellum grid myself - tried one on a Philips once, special ordered - found it did not have the needed overscan parameters, had to do it all over again WITHOUT it to size it correctly, and never went back. I prefer to use the AVIA Letterbox Enhanced 50IRE Circlehatch grid, which when followed precisely, nets consistently incredible results.

For HD, I ALWAYS formfit the HD image to the RPTV/FPTV involved, then totally redo the geometry of the green image - usually to the pattern from my Accupel, and not necessarily. Once the sizing on HD has been done, the correct geometry can also be obtained by eye, using both the internal grid - which is not always complete - and onscreen HD images. It's helpful to have gradually moving images, like up and down and diagonal camera pans, for getting rid of speedbumps. HD PBS travelogs are especially helpful, on this.

On FPTVs with 4x3 screens, some math has to be done to find the correct vertical sizing, once the horizontal sizing has been done with the proper overscan.

What does the phase button do in dcam (documented but without a description in the service manual)? When pressing it, the center of the screen distorts (evenly).

Sorry, not up on the individual keys off the top of my head. What kind of distortion is it? (Of all the dozens of kinds it could be...)

Bill?

Mr Bob

Mr Bob

04-15-04, 09:48 AM

Do you have the PDF service manual?

I had it on the IBM laptop that disappeared a few months ago, downloaded from a helpful client's disc, and didn't think to export it here to my home PC, so I don't have it anymore. Last few Hitachis I have done, the customer had it available already, for me, and on some I have not needed it at all.

But it would be helpful if I could download it and have it handy on location, on my new Dell laptop. Both of my computers have plenty of hard drive and super-quick connections, so that would not be a limiting factor.

Mr Bob

bigrig

04-15-04, 10:23 AM

Originally posted by chloedog
What does the phase button do in dcam (documented but without a description in the service manual)? When pressing it, the center of the screen distorts (evenly).

I'm not sure, but the manual says to use the PHOTO (Phase) button in section 2.12.2, Magic Focus Setup.

Originally posted by chloedog
For whatever it is worth, I used code 254 (which I could map to a key on the remote if I choose) on an One For All remote (model number) URC 6131 and used manufacturer code 145 for Hitachi TVs (sets basic functionality) and then pressed the setup key followed by the numbers 2,5,4 which placed the TV in dcam mode. This may be useful for persons wanting to perform dcam without dissassembley of their set.

Do you mean if Magic Focus won't work? If MF works, you just stop it before it's done, and then hit the INFO button to enter DCAM. See this thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=273639 for lots of good info.

Mr.Bob, I'll send you a PM.

Matt

chloedog

04-15-04, 10:38 AM

Matt stated:

"Do you mean if Magic Focus won't work? If MF works, you just stop it before it's done, and then hit the INFO button to enter DCAM. See this thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/show...threadid=273639 for lots of good info."

I did read this thread beforehand and tried what was stated but magic focus did not stop after pressing the mf button a second time - it continued until complete .... that is why I used the remote trick mentioned above - it was repeatable and worked reguardless of the state of mf .... maybe that is how my settings got wiped out in the first place (using undocumented way I mentioned in my previous post)?

-chloedog

gambrelw

04-15-04, 01:06 PM

What does the phase button do in dcam (documented but without a description in the service manual)? When pressing it, the center of the screen distorts (evenly).

The phase mode button gets you to a screen which doesn't do anything by itself. You will need to perform an additional step to get into the phase adjustment mode. On modern day Hitachi's, you have to get to DCU phase data settings to alter phase data. On old models, you use actually adjusted phase in grid mode.

Once you get to the phase data settings, you use the data values for setting the horizontal/vertical phase to center of the screen. I don't touch them unless I am running into a strange problem in DCAM, which has happened a couple times. When checking the values, they didn't match factory settings so I had to modify them and things worked fine.

To do a better job, I should obtain the vellum overlay and adjust the green to this overlay, then perform the blue and red.

I prefer mylar. Vellum isn't as durable. On the hitachi, going much lower than service manual specs will create more problems. The template for the hitachi is as good as you are going to get. On other sets, I have to do some calculating and measuring when building CAD files to achieve the desired overscan.

Bill

chloedog

04-15-04, 08:50 PM

Originally posted by chloedog
Matt stated:

"Do you mean if Magic Focus won't work? If MF works, you just stop it before it's done, and then hit the INFO button to enter DCAM. See this thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/show...threadid=273639 for lots of good info."

I did read this thread beforehand and tried what was stated but magic focus did not stop after pressing the mf button a second time - it continued until complete .... that is why I used the remote trick mentioned above - it was repeatable and worked reguardless of the state of mf .... maybe that is how my settings got wiped out in the first place (using undocumented way I mentioned in my previous post)?

-chloedog

Matt - you are correct - I went back and tried this tonight (mainly because when I turned on the set I noticed the convergence was off somewhat) - I am wondering why it drifted so much from last night .... mostly on the right side of the screen. Nothing is on the top or sides of the TV .... it sits in my basement.

I will use your method of dcam entry to reset the areas that are off tonight.

Ledzep77

04-15-04, 09:10 PM

I have an s500 that is about 2 months old. I'm looking for an ISF calibration within the next few months. I'm located in North Central Illinois. PM me.

handcyclist

04-15-04, 10:48 PM

It is awesome, the picture is great. I have a 1996 Ultravision that I just sold and the guy is picking it up on Saturday. Does anybody know if its ok to lay these tvs down when transporting them? The guy has a minivan and I dont think it is going to fit sitting upright so we were planning on laying it on its side. Hopefully its ok, otherwise I thiink the guy is going to have to borrow a full size van or a pickup truck.

Out of the box my new tv looked pretty good, had to make some adjustments. I think in a bit I will get an ISF calibrator at my house to go through the set and get it looking extra good.

Mr Bob

04-15-04, 10:55 PM

No problem transporting these on their sides. I did that for a shop for several years before I became qualified to actually do the repairs in the home from then on. On the side is a great way to transport it.

Have no idea what that will do to the pic, of course.

Here's something I wrote a few years ago about moving RPTVs in moving trucks, you might want to apply it to your van:

To guard against roadshock, I always recommend buying half a dozen unbuilt boxes from Uhaul and put your TV on top of them, tying it down because you will be raising the center of gravity, and cushioning the edges where the ropes might be going, so you don't chafe the finish of the unit. Use 2 sets, one for each side, if it is an extremely long RPTV, like a 73".

12 layers of triple corrugated cardboard - which is what Uhaul uses in the boxes they sell - do wonders for roadshock. Keep them in good, resellable condition, and Uhaul will buy them back at the other end when they find you didn't need them after all, since none of the boxes had been built and taped together into built format.

You might also want to very carefully and delicately - so as not to change any of their positions - do a thin line of Elmer's onto the bottoms of all 6 trimpots in your focus block. Not too much - you don't want the glue to penetrate and make it so they can never be altered again - just enough to immobilize them during the trek. Sony has been doing this for many years, tho they use a softer white glue, and put it onto the top of each of the 6 focus block controls - again, not to penetrate, but just to immobilize those controls for the journey. If you apply it to the bottom of your trimpots with a small flat-edge screwdriver, there will be no chance of deeper penetration.

I believe that if you do this and move it very slowly and gradually anytime you're moving it at all, like it was a Ming vase - ie, don't try and aim for every crack in the pavement at ramming speed when you roll your TV out to the truck - any precision which you have instilled into your unit, or had instilled there by a calibrator, will stay intact.

Mr Bob

gambrelw

04-15-04, 11:00 PM

Out of the box my new tv looked pretty good, had to make some adjustments. I think in a bit I will get an ISF calibrator at my house to go through the set and get it looking extra good.

handcyclist,

Give Gregg Loewen a call. His is one of the best and lives in your region. www.lionav.com

Bill

Phod

04-15-04, 11:08 PM

s500 owners help!

Getting the TV in tomorrow and I want to get the best DVD player for the television. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg but recommendations at any level ($200-400 range and beyond) are certainly welcome.

Please advise! I keep seeing people say progressive scan won't do much if the TV does it better, how is the Hitachi in this regard?

I just want a great DVD picture :) I don't need a lot of bells and whistles on the DVD player. No 5 disc changers, etc.

Help me fellow s500 owners!

handcyclist

04-15-04, 11:13 PM

Thanks Bob, that is great, I was worried if it had to stay sitting straight up it would kill the sale as all the guy has is a minivan. Not too bad, I got $405.00 for the set and it is a 50 incher ultravision 1996. Apreciate all the info bob.

Thanks Bill, Do you know where greg is from? I live in near newport rhode island. I had contacted Bob Lafrance as I hear he is great, but he lives a long ways from here in mass. I was thinking about contacting Jim Doolittle as he is only about a hour from here and was highly recommended by Bob Lafrance.

This forum is great. I am thrilled with my new ultravison purchase. My 1996 had been a great set, but the hdtv sure is nice. TV's have come a long ways in the last 8 years. Apreciate all the info, thanks.

I would say the main thing that bothers me on the set is that bright blue neon lite on the power switch, I am thinking about covering it wiht a black piece of tape, when the lights are out in the room and you are watching a good movie it is distracting. Suprised Hitachi put such a bright light for the power button.

The Fan noise from the hdtv box is livable as my kitchen is not far from my living room and my fridge makes a bit more noise than the fan anyhow, but I can see why some people are complaining about it though.

gambrelw

04-15-04, 11:17 PM

handcyclist,

Gregg is in Maine, but he travels a lot (and I mean a lot). He probably does more calibrations than anyone in the country. I would give him a call. He knows your set very well.

Bill

Phod

04-15-04, 11:19 PM

gambrelw

help me :)

Mr Bob

04-15-04, 11:21 PM

Jim Doolittle is one of the best also. He works directly with ISF, IN their trainings, as one of the instructors. I took a course offered by him after the ISF I first did - along with a separate one by Jim Burns - about the fine points of aligning FPTVs. Didn't think I had anything to learn, of course...

As promised, I came away with some nice little tidbits I had been overlooking, and didn't even know I had been overlooking...

Gregg gave me some fine pointers about the Pannys at CES in Vegas, and is the resident calibrator of the Home Theater Forum.

Both of those guys are the greatest, and either will get you where you want to be.

Mr Bob

gambrelw

04-15-04, 11:29 PM

Phod, I will send you a PM on the DVD player subject.

Bill

Phod

04-15-04, 11:30 PM

Thanks very much :)

Mr Bob

04-15-04, 11:33 PM

Originally posted by handcyclist
Thanks Bob, that is great, I was worried if it had to stay sitting straight up it would kill the sale as all the guy has is a minivan. Not too bad, I got $405.00 for the set and it is a 50 incher ultravision 1996. Apreciate all the info bob.

Wish I could get my hands on it. You have no idea how incredible I can make an 8 year old RPTV look!

It was how I cut my teeth, before the HDreadys came out and I started working on primarily new ones. After repairing older units, I would customarily say something like, "Now that it works again, how good would you like it to look?" They'd say, "Whattya mean?" I'd say, "Like, as in better than new?"

From then on I had their undivided attention.

The Before and After difference on an 8 year old set is even more striking than on a new one. And better than new looking is completely accurate and feasible, as long as it has not been run in Torch Mode all those years, and has not been permitted to have fixed images and/or black/gray bars run on it for extended periods.

I know the evolution is advancing at a breakneck pace, and many of the wealthier videophiles will be replacing equipment regularly. But for those of us who treasure good equipment, no matter what the age of that equipment, the fact still remains that properly cared for - no screenburn, no Torch Mode, and under regular, average viewing timeline parameters of several hours a day use - and well maintained - regularly cleaned and calibrated, as in cleaned to professional grade every year and re-calibrated every 2 years - ANY RPTV has an easy chance of looking better than new for the entire length of all that time, for the first 10 years of its lifespan.

I have deep-cleaned and calibrated - AND BEEN DIRECTED TO REPAIR, mind you! - 18 year old Mits RPTVs, and know whereof I speak. The end results on a repaired, cleaned and calibrated curve-screened self-contained FPTV like that kind of older Mit, are some of the most dramatic.

Mr Bob

rman65

04-18-04, 10:38 AM

Originally posted by Phod
s500 owners help!

Getting the TV in tomorrow and I want to get the best DVD player for the television. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg but recommendations at any level ($200-400 range and beyond) are certainly welcome.

Please advise! I keep seeing people say progressive scan won't do much if the TV does it better, how is the Hitachi in this regard?

I just want a great DVD picture :) I don't need a lot of bells and whistles on the DVD player. No 5 disc changers, etc.

Help me fellow s500 owners!

Hey Phod,

You'd think the DVD would be a no-brainer after figuring out the TV right? Wrong!!! - I took 3 months to settle on the 57S500. Then the DVD problem hit me too.

I spent a fair bit of time hunting around - almost went Pioneer 563, was looking for one of the older Panny's (as of last week, there's a display model RP-62 at the Brick in Ottawa East for $CAD 99, in case anyone's interested).

Then I looked at Momitsu, Kiss, and others - built in Ethernet, streaming audio/video, SACD, DVD-A, etc., but they keep moving the release dates.

Hmm, networked? streaming? perhaps I should go HTPC? Server in the basement maybe - I have a few old PC's at my disposal ...

So one night I was playing Halo on the XBOX, and - DOH!!! - it hit me. I have my HTPC right there! Off to the parts shop - 120GB HD @ 1$/Gig, Modchip and drive installed for $90 (all $ are Canadian by the way). $40 for the XBOX HD output pack @ RadioShack + $20 for an optical cable.

So, $CAD 270 later, I have a region-free DVD player that does 1080i, with all my music on it, that I can FTP into at will from my laptop to transfer whatever, and is going to be software upgradeable for the forseeable future.

As an aside, I did the bias light thing last week ($25 for the tube at the aquarium outlet), btw - incredible difference!

Just my thoughts - was hoping to give something back, as this Forum - and many of the people on it - have really helped me on my HT adventure.

Cheers, and best of luck w/the DVD.

btw, if someone has a PDF of the S500 SM, a PM would really be appreciated.

r.

handcyclist

04-18-04, 02:40 PM

I have what I consider a great DVD Player, a philips 963sa but it is not working well with my hitachi 51700s at all. I have played with all the settings on it quite a bit and still cannot get a very good picture out of it on my hitachi. I have found I have to turn down the sharpness on the hitachi and the philips and put the color settings on the tv up to high to get the best picture which still is not very good. Even my old Laser disc player (bought in 1985) has a better picture than the Philips.

Does anyone have any experience with the new hd player made by samsung that uses the DVI output, I believe it is model 931? I am thinking about trying out one of those as I can get one for a couple hundred bucks. Any suggestions?

handcyclist

04-18-04, 02:44 PM

I bought a 51700s about a week ago and am thrilled with it. I have a question regarding whether or not I should use a line conditioner on the power input cord? In my house I have a sump pump that cycles on and off every half hour or so and a Jacuzzi pump that cycles and of course the refridgerator going on and off. Every time these appliances cycle I see the lights dim just a bit. I am wondering if the power supply in the tv is good enough to smooth out these peaks and valleys or should I consider a line conditioner (a couple hundred bucks) to smooth out the voltage input. I am thinking about long term survival of my TV. I would hate to have the TV develop a permanent flicker or something. Thank You.

injaneer

04-18-04, 09:36 PM

Ok I finally have a picture of my setup that I wanted to share with all of you.

Chris

JData

04-19-04, 01:53 AM

Originally posted by injaneer
Ok I finally have a picture of my setup that I wanted to share with all of you.

Chris

Hey Injaneer!

I am planning to do the same thing! :)

What size set to you have? Do you have the measurements handy? I'd like to compare mine to yours.

injaneer

04-19-04, 08:48 AM

That is a 51" hitachi. I am trying to remeber the measurements... I will take actualls tonight and post them for you. but I basically left 1/2 on top for tv to clear and enough room for my fluance speakers to sit on both sides. Of course the top has enought room for the molding before I get to the top shelf.

chris

noplay

04-19-04, 10:08 AM

Sports on 51S500
People here may have seen other posts from me around. I have a 50 GWIII, and really don't like hockey or football on it. I don't know if this is a symptom of the TV or HDTV.

I heard from some that this is an LCD issue, and that CRTs do a much better job with motion and sports.

I'm considering trading in the GWIII for the 51S500, I would definitely have a certified technician come out and calibrate the set. The GWIII is amazing for HD reception, baseball and tennis and such, I love the set, it just doesn't seem to do the things I like the most very well.

Question is, are there any motion artificats with this television when viewing hockey or football? I can't fathom dropping 2 or 3 bills on a TV and not be able to watch sports on it.

Does anyone here watch football and/or hockey regularly on their S500 or S700? I'm looking for some honest opinions here from hockey and/or football fans.

Thanks for your help

bigrig

04-19-04, 10:25 AM

Re: Sports on 51S500

Fast motion on a HDTV broadcast can certainly become pixelated if there's not enough bandwidth. I was watching PBS last night, they had a shot where they panned with a bird flying in front of trees, it looked all pixelated and awful! PBS here broadcasts 2 channels, so that divides the bandwidth.

I only saw 2 football games on my set last season, but they looked great, I noticed no pixelation. This was on CBS, who only has one channel. I didn't see any MNF games, ABC here has 3 channels on their frequency. :(

I guess your best bet is trying to preview at a store, ESPN is having hockey games in HD recently.

Matt
Matt

JData

04-19-04, 11:59 AM

Originally posted by injaneer
That is a 51" hitachi. I am trying to remeber the measurements... I will take actualls tonight and post them for you. but I basically left 1/2 on top for tv to clear and enough room for my fluance speakers to sit on both sides. Of course the top has enought room for the molding before I get to the top shelf.

chris

Thank you Injaneer.

oxothuk

04-19-04, 12:15 PM

Originally posted by bigrig
Re: Sports on 51S500

Fast motion on a HDTV broadcast can certainly become pixelated if there's not enough bandwidth. I was watching PBS last night, they had a shot where they panned with a bird flying in front of trees, it looked all pixelated and awful! PBS here broadcasts 2 channels, so that divides the bandwidth.

I only saw 2 football games on my set last season, but they looked great, I noticed no pixelation. This was on CBS, who only has one channel. I didn't see any MNF games, ABC here has 3 channels on their frequency. :(

I guess your best bet is trying to preview at a store, ESPN is having hockey games in HD recently.

Matt
Matt If the PBS show you were watching was Nature's "Land of Falling Lakes", then that was widescreen SD, not HD.

s4shawn

04-19-04, 01:28 PM

RE: Sports on 51S500
I noticed the pixelation (in stores) on many of the LCD TVs I considered before buying the S700. I am a big fan of hockey and watch it whenever I can...I have not noticed the pixelation on my set during HD hockey, football or tennis. I have sometimes picked it up on other programming like dancing during a concert, but I'm not sure if that was true HD or not.

bigrig

04-19-04, 01:46 PM

Originally posted by oxothuk
If the PBS show you were watching was Nature's "Land of Falling Lakes", then that was widescreen SD, not HD.

Yeah, that's the one. It was being broadcast as a 1080i digital signal. It looked great for the most part, except for fast motion it would get all pixelated. So I guess it doesn't have to be "true" HD to get the problem, just a digital signal.

Matt

oxothuk

04-19-04, 02:43 PM

Originally posted by bigrig
So I guess it doesn't have to be "true" HD to get the problem, just a digital signal. Well I would put it differently. I think you are a lot more likely to see this kind of pixellation on programs which were originally captured on SD cameras than on true HD productions. The fact that your local station (and mine too) upconverts the program to 1080i for broadcast is not going to correct problems which come from the original source. And if you watched the same scene on analog broadcast I suspect you would notice a loss of clarity in the "flying bird", analogous to the pixellation on the digital broadcast.

noplay

04-19-04, 03:07 PM

Originally posted by s4shawn
RE: Sports on 51S500
I noticed the pixelation (in stores) on many of the LCD TVs I considered before buying the S700. I am a big fan of hockey and watch it whenever I can...I have not noticed the pixelation on my set during HD hockey, football or tennis. I have sometimes picked it up on other programming like dancing during a concert, but I'm not sure if that was true HD or not.

Thanks for the replies.

Perhaps we are talking about the same thing, I wouldn't call it pixelation on hockey or soccer, rather blurring. At the standard camera distance off the ice or field, when there is motion (fast or slow), the players move from a fiine, vivid detail to being somewhat of a blur, jerseys and all kinda mesh together. When they zoom in on play, all of a sudden the picture is vivid and alive again, then the camera returns to it's "normal" distance, and it's blurry again, almost like someone smudged out the players.

Perhaps this is the same thing, and it could be Sony trying to clean up pixelation or what have you.

Thanks again, I have a feeling I will be spending sometime in front of the S500 in the near future.

bigrig

04-19-04, 03:29 PM

Originally posted by oxothuk
And if you watched the same scene on analog broadcast I suspect you would notice a loss of clarity in the "flying bird", analogous to the pixellation on the digital broadcast.

I don't know, I think the flying bird would stay nice and sharp while the camera pans with it, and the leaves behind it would have motion blur.

The digital broadcast, I guess the MPEG encoders or whatever they are lost the scene entirely, the bird and everything else became pixelated.

Matt

logicTrAp

04-19-04, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by noplay
At the standard camera distance off the ice or field, when there is motion (fast or slow), the players move from a fiine, vivid detail to being somewhat of a blur, jerseys and all kinda mesh together.
noplay, I can't say I watch a lot of hockey, but I have watched a bit recently on my 51S500 and don't notice any of the effects you're talking about - Bruins on HD on NESN look excellent, and the picture seems crisp even when there's action.

I do know that people who play a lot of action-heavy computer games (quake, etc) have historically not liked LCDs due to their response not being as fast, so I could imagine that there could be similar problems here...

Mr Bob

04-19-04, 08:21 PM

Injaneer -

Looks great!

However, the spkrs are right up against the unit. This may not change the pic, but it will affect your abillity to experience the "breathiness" aspects of the soundfield. The one to your right - R ch - will send you both the direct audio on R ch AND the reflected audio, while the one on the left will not. This alone is a bit of a mismatch to begin with.

It also constricts your spacial listening area, your sound panorama. To really expenience the vastness of some of the 5.1 audio, it is really good to make sure the front stereo speakers form a triangle, with you at the head of it, to form a peacock-feather pattern of listening spaciality between the R and L speakers, which will of course include the center channel. Not necessarily a triangle with all sides the same dimensions - a little narrower than that - but one which will allow expansiveness among all the channels.

Some audiophiles keep playing with this type of thing well into the night, over and over again. I wouldn't go that far...

But a speaker needs room to breathe, around it. Some speakers even have rounded edges at the sides and t/b, to allow for that breathiness, which can be affected by the way the sound disperses at the edge of the spkr boxes. Many are placed on stands just so they won't "couple" to the floor, or to sides of walls, because doing so can form node points of higher and lower response, depending on how higher and lower the freq's are. Esp. on bass.

I would extend out the left side if you could, to make a little bit more room for the speakers to be farther apart and have some room to breathe, around them. And I'd put sound-deadening material on the stairway next to the R spkr, to deaden the reflected sounds from the R ch.

Other than that, tho, it looks stunning! Much better than my living room looks. I wouldn't even want to send in a pic of mine! It is totally utilitarian, and very UNpretty. Luckily, I don't entertain much. Yours is VERY pretty, and tight, and concise. Looks nice.

Mr Bob

injaneer

04-19-04, 11:09 PM

bob,

thanks for the great comments. Yes I would love to be able to expand these speakers further apart. however I am not able to. I did what I could to squeze enough room for floor standing. I intentionaly left room above and below the speaker to allow some breathing room. I built the speaker stands below the speakers and intentionally left a gap between the legs. However I may look into some dampening material and experiment with that. I have not thought about that as of yet.

Again thanks

chris

plm

04-20-04, 11:59 AM

I am a little bit confused after reading all the posts about centering the screen. What should I use to adjust the horizontal position and size?

1) overscan pot
2) settings in SM
3) DCAM

Mine is right now off to the left by half an inch.

Thanks,
plm

JData

04-20-04, 12:16 PM

Which screen mode? 4:3 or 16:9?

injaneer

04-20-04, 12:32 PM

Jdata,

I left you a PM.

chris

Mr Bob

04-20-04, 12:45 PM

Originally posted by plm
I am a little bit confused after reading all the posts about centering the screen. What should I use to adjust the horizontal position and size?

1) overscan pot
2) settings in SM
3) DCAM

Mine is right now off to the left by half an inch.

Thanks,
plm

You'll need all of the above if you change the sizing any, by way of taking in the overscan. Doing so will mess up the geometry and convergence, which will all have to be redone.

If you just want to recenter and leave sizing alone, you can get away with just the H and V positioning registers in the SM. Door #2. If you then - or at any time - want to tighten up the convergence, you'll need Door #3.

Stay away from Door #1 - the H and V pots/overscan pots - unless you are ready for the full meal deal. If you are ready and then play with them, remember that setting them too tightly, such that there is not ENOUGH overscan - will make it so that your magic focus perimeter sensors will not be properly bombarded with the differing colored lights sent out to them from the auto program for MF, during the MF initialization process. Nor will the sensors receive the proper info during a normal MF alignment, in User/viewer mode.

A certain amount of overscan beyond what is visible on the screen is necessary for proper operation of the MF.

AND STAY AWAY FROM THE 3X3. On the Mits and Tosh's it is the Reset - E2 reset on the Mits's, and QA02 reset on the Tosh's. On the Philips/Marantz's stay away from anything that says Default.

On the Hitachi's, you will instantly vaporize all the factory's convergence work if you follow the protocol that activates the 3x3. You don't need to do that. Unless your coarse registers on the Mit are way off, or the points on any of these brands - including Mit - are way off center, working with convergence and geometry already close is much preferable to starting completely over.

Mr Bob

JData

04-20-04, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by injaneer
Jdata,

I left you a PM.

chris

Received. I replied to you this AM.

plm

04-20-04, 02:00 PM

Mr. Bob,

This is exactly what I need to know.

Thanks again,
plm.

bigrig

04-20-04, 02:04 PM

Mr Bob -

Can't you reduce the overscan with the DCAM, by moving the outer lines in more?

I received this impression from one of Bill Gambrel's posts.

Matt

gambrelw

04-20-04, 02:43 PM

Yes, you can set overscan with DCAM mode and that is the prefered way on the Hitachi (with a template). Adusting the pots can and has caused problems with peoples sets. If the voltage is beyond operating tolerance, that in it of itself will cause MF to not function. Also, if you go too far under 5% horizontally, you will begin to see distortion (bending tips) on the red.

Bill

bigrig

04-20-04, 03:07 PM

Yeah, thanks Bill.

So you have your own custom template that you set the geometry to?

Could you tell me how it differs from the factory template for the 51S500? (attached)

Thanks!

Matt

gambrelw

04-20-04, 03:16 PM

I only have a custom for the 57". The other sizes are equivalent to the factory specs though I can easily modify them to create whatever overscan I desire. I go through a lot of them since people want to keep them after I finish geometry on their set. So the local print shop keeps the files and I just request more copies of the ones I want and they deliver them to me.

Bill

handcyclist

04-22-04, 04:12 AM

I am getting the Voom Satallite service hooked up on friday. Am I better off having them connect my s700 via the DVI or the components?

Also is there anyone who has tried a Samsung hd931 dvd with this tv yet? I understand with that player you have to use the DVI so maybe I will have to connect my converter to the component input. Thanx.

JayJervey

04-23-04, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by handcyclist
I am getting the Voom Satallite service hooked up on friday. Am I better off having them connect my s700 via the DVI or the components?

I switched back and forth between component and DVI several times on my HD settop before finally settling on DVI. But to get DVI right I had to boost my Color setting by 10-15% and set my Black Enhancement to Middle. Plus I had to do a careful manual focus/convergence to get the improved HD detail from DVI. And use a good cable -- even DVI cables must be high quality even though it's "just" digital data -- the EMI/RFI generated by a cheap cable can affect your HD video on an analog RPTV.

Your mileage may vary of course. Try both inputs and let your eyes decide.

Regards --

Jay

handcyclist

04-24-04, 12:33 AM

Thanks Jay, What a nightmare of a day. I ended up taking the day off from work to be here for the Voom install. Turns out they never showed up, called them, turns out the installers dont have the receivers, nice of them to tell me. Anyhow, I got totally p.o'd and told them to forget about the install as I started doing research on the net and a lot of people are having these install problems with Voom.

So I took the HD 200 from my bedroom tv and put it on the Hitachi in the living room, went down to cc and bought a Hughes hd hlt box and used the dvi cable from it for the hd 200 on the hitachi. What a difference over the non hd box, unreal. Very sharp picture. Then I used the s-video cable that was going to the old direct tv box and connected that in place of the component inputs on my 963sa philips dvd and this allows me to use the Auto movie setting on the Hitachi. Again, huge difference, now the DVD looks a lot better. The project is finally complete and I am very happy with the results. The last thing I may do is remove the glare screen, but I will wait awhile to do that.

Now to tackle the Samsung in the Bedroom and install the new Hughes box, hopefully it will work as good as the Sony HD200 does. I am pretty impressed with the HD 200 after seeing the results on the Hitachi today, it is a great receiver.

What I have really learned from all this is GiGo, Garbage in Garbage out. The Hitachi is so accurate that it shows any imperfections in the incoming signal. Incoming signal is very important for sure.

Rastaman

04-24-04, 05:06 PM

Handcyclist:
I agree with you about the Hitachi S700. You will notice a big difference if you remove the glare screen. Virtually no reflection and brighter picture so you can lower down your contrast and lengthen the life of your screen even longer. It is not easy. I had the whole nine yards done, removal of glare screen, complete calibration by an ISF certified tech and even duvetine/black inside lining to cut down reflections. Costly, but worth it. One thing I am experiencing is an audio/picture sync lag when using the Hitachi's own receiver, through an OTA. Have you ever experienced this or has anyone else. What about the fan noise? Has anyone done anything to cut down the noise level?

handcyclist

04-24-04, 06:02 PM

I get the same thing with the lip sync when using the ota tuner. Not a problme now that I am using the sony. Also the fan noise can be a little annoying, seems like it has got louder, not sure what can be done about it. At this point I am sorry I just did not go with the 500 moder with no hd tuner. I learned after I had ordered the 700 already about the fan noise problem. I also leaned I could have got the s500 for about the same price new as my s700 refurb from sears with a 10 percent markdown off CC's $1859 price. Oh well, too late now I guess.

I really like the hd picture the Sony hd 200 box gives. I just put a hughes box in place of the sony in my bedroom set last night and I had to change all the settings on the picture of my Samsung as the pq is totally different on the Hughes box, not as good as the Sony, even though I was told they were the same box, I dont believe they are at this point even though they look the same.

I will probabley eventually get an ISF tech in here to go through the Hitachi and remove the screen. Sounds like it is worth it. How much did you pay to get all this done including the duvetine? Thanks.

Rastaman

04-24-04, 06:49 PM

I am sure when I go to an external receiver like the Sony, I will not have the audio/pic sync problem. I have a regular E* receiver and do not experience any audio lag. I am waiting for the E* HDTV receiver (811) either for the "problems" to get fixed or the price to go down considerably. I am seeing just too many grievances on line. In addition I have been told by E* for the waiting period to be more than 8 weeks for the 811. What gives? This is strange for a receiver that came out last year. Anyway, D has more choices in receivers such as your beloved Sony. I guess I am digressing.
I had Gregg Loewen of Lion Audio Video Consultants (201-232-3380)calibrate my set on his trip to Southern California. He travels all over the place and is one of the best out there. Calibrations for DVD are different than for HDTV. Most important, unless gray level calibration is don correctly (usually the most difficult for many do-it-yourselfers) the color does not come out right, which, I confess, it was a revelation for me. The TV looked "good" before but it was set too bright to compensate for the glare, colors were over saturated, blacks were a bit indistinct and most of all grays were tinted. With certain DVD's it looked fantastic. But with broadcast SDTV or HDTV, it is different. That is when I learned from Gregg that techs like him calibrate separately for each input. I don't want to reveal what I paid here, but will say it is more than half a g. Give him a call and find out when he will be touring your area. Good luck

seadoo

04-25-04, 07:29 PM

I have 65S700. After reading many posts that described my high voltage lead when TV is first turn I finally got the local repair service to agree that the problem was with the green tube high voltage lead. They came out to repair it. Not good when they said this is the first one of these we have seen. After switching it out they went into manual convergence and then tried to store their settings and got an "OVERFLOW" error. They said they had never seen that and would have to research and they would be back. Anybody know what is going on since these two don't seem to know. I had a pretty decent picture to begin with but decide to get this high voltage lead taken care of while it was still under warranty.

Goat Magic

04-26-04, 10:35 PM

As a soon to be papa of a 51s700, I am really excited and anxious about entering this world of HD. I have lurked through this forum (especially this owners group) in the last 2 weeks and already feel lost. I am impressed by the genuine helpfulness that everybody shows each other in regards to the questions and problems that come up.

I will be using an HD Comcast box with a Momitsu V880 DVD player and an Onkyo HT-S760 HTIB in order to really piss of my neighbors (I live in an apartment!). I also have an XBOX to complete my sloth-like lifestyle.

Questions:
1) I have read about adjusting the convergence using different sources (Finding Nemo? Avia?). How will I know if my tv needs out of the box adjustments. I'm worried about screwing things up if it isn't needed or tweaking something that needs correction and then screwing things up because I have no clue on what I'm doing.

2) What connections (DVI, component, S video, etc) work best with the above hardware? I don't even know what connects to what for the best picture and audio presentation. Once everything comes in, I may be back later for help.

3) With my Comcast HD box, will I need the OTA antennae to pick up the local HD stations? My Current digital comcast offers HD premium channels but haven't looked for FOX, ABC, CBS.

Thanks for any help you can pass along.

- Goat

P.S. Is there anyone in the DFW area in this group? I may have to move in if I get evicted from my place! Kidding....I am just wondering of reputable repair companies, ISF calibrators, etc.

handcyclist

04-27-04, 02:43 AM

Hi Goat, thats the same set I just got, It has a great picture. Where are you getting it from? I got mine from uecweb. My main regret is not getting the s500 instead of the s700. The fan that cools the hd box is kind of noisy and as it turns out I am not even making use of the built in decoder anyhow as I am using a sony direct tv box for both over the air and sat. You may want to think about going with the 500 if its not too late that is if you can get the local hd channels through your cable, might want to check it out. if you had to you could always add a ota box for a couple hundred bucks without the noise the built in unit makes on the 700.

There are instructions on this forum how to get into the manual convergence grid, you pretty much press the magic focus button and then while its doing its thing you press it again and then I believe hit the input button which brings you to the convergence grid. I did not even bother doing a manual convergence on my set as it looks real good as it is after a few minor adjustments. My main complaint on my set was "Red Push" turned out it was pretty easy to get rid of in my situation, all I did was went into the service menu and took the red drive and the red limit down 8 clicks. That was the only thing tweaking I did to my set other than the usaul user menu things like knocking contrast down to 30 percent, color 25 percent and brightness 41 percent and the tint 2 clicks to the left.

I found for my satallite box that the DVI works best, gives a couple hundred extra lines of resolution over the component inputs. Hopefully your cable box has a DVI output as this is the way to go. As for my DVD I surprisingly found the S Video to work best due to the fact that I have progressive scan DVD player and the component output looked worse. I think there might be some kind of conflict in the upscaling in the tv with progressive scan vs interlaced. One of these days I am going to try out my other dvd player which has a switch on it to turn off the progressive scan, I'll bet I get a get a real good picture using the component inputs this way. Problem is my other player does not have the five channel rca output as I dont have dolby digital amp only a 6 channel direct.

Definetely check out you cable service to see if they offer locals, if so I would think twice about getting the 700 as the fan noise is very annoying, not sure what they were thinking when they went with this design.

Good luck.

Rastaman

04-29-04, 02:27 AM

Goat :

Welcome to the world of Hitachi HDTV. You will love the pic quality. You can do some preliminary adjustments using your own judgment. Then you can use such tools as Video Essentials, AVIA to go further. One of the first things you should do is look at the contrast setting as soon as you have the TV in your room. It is usually turned up too high, much too high. Read the manual and excellent comments in this forum by professional calibrators and gurus like Mark Alexander, Gambrelw, Injaneer and others who post regularly here. I myself have learned a lot from these people. Thank you guys.
As to your cable questions, that should not be a problem. One of cables forte (I can speak only about Comcast which is in my area) is the availability of local HDTV programming. While Satellite provides CBS only, cable's line up includes ABC, NBC and PBS. In addition, in some cities they carry FOX, ESPN and of course theothe premium channels. If the DVI connection is activated in your area, you should use that for your cable.
The story for DVD is a bit more complicated. I have read in this and other forums that the progressive input is not so good as the interlaced. I have tried both using an older Sony DVD player and the much admired Denon 2900. I did not find the non-progressive input tp be better. This may be that the upscaling chip in the Denon is supposed to be extremely good. So may be with DVD players with older chips and mediocre scaling, the Hitachi's own virtual HD scaler (to 1080P!) may perform better. Judge for yourself.
Handcyclist finding that his SVideo connection was better than the component took me by surprise. I have always found with this and my previous TV, the component to be of better quality. With Handcylist gear and setup it may well be. Nothing is written in stone anyway.
Finally, the fan noise. That dreaded fan noise. I will add my warning to Handcyclist. I would go further than that. When I bought my 57S700, I thought having an integrated receiver will save me money. Sure I am using an OTA antenna, but soon when we get all the local channels through cable (now) and satellite (soon), there will not be for an OTA. Which means the integrated receiver really does not need to be used. I have to find a way around the noisy fan problem, which makes watching quiet programs on the S700 frustrating. Unless your room's ambient db level is high to begin with, I advise against getting the S700.
:)

plm

04-29-04, 09:14 AM

How does beam shape and alignment affect the sharpness of the picture? Rocking the green electronic focus back and forth causes the green dot defocussing in a elliptical shape. Is it a concern ?

Thanks,
plm.

minorthr

04-29-04, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by handcyclist
Definetely check out you cable service to see if they offer locals, if so I would think twice about getting the 700 as the fan noise is very annoying, not sure what they were thinking when they went with this design.

I have read a couple posts about this. I have had my 65S700 for about 3 weeks and have not noticed fan noise at all. Was this something that Hitachi went back and fixed?

Allroy

04-30-04, 10:14 AM

first of all i want to thank you all for posting problems, sucesses...etc. i just bought my hitachi 57s700 and received it yesterday. the problem i have and am not sure if it is or not but i have no option to use any of the 4:3 modes while watching non HD programs. i only have 16:9 standard and zoom and the 16:9 standard cuts off quite a bit on the top and bottom while watching non hd programs. i have all zoom modes while watching dvd's. i have the tv connected via the DVI from the back of the cable box and the dvd is connected via cv. any help would be very appreciated. thanks

bigrig

04-30-04, 10:57 AM

See page 27 of your manual. 720p and 1080i inputs only have 16:9 aspect options. I dunno why.

Matt

Allroy

04-30-04, 11:18 AM

i saw that page but it didnt give me any answers. why would i only have a 16:9 choice while watching 'normal' non hd tv. i guess thats why im confused. thanks for replying

Mr Bob

04-30-04, 12:20 PM

Originally posted by Allroy
i saw that page but it didnt give me any answers. why would i only have a 16:9 choice while watching 'normal' non hd tv. i guess thats why im confused. thanks for replying

"'normal' non hd tv" can be in 4x3 but still be arriving in 1080i, upconverted form its original 480i to 1080i. Are you on the HD versions of the cable channels? If so, your TV will probably lock out of aspect ratio control, on your part, anything that arrives from the cable box as an HD scanrate - meaning 720p or 1080i. Or 480p also, is my guess, tho they are making them more and more adept at allowing user changing of aspect ratio control in more and more non-480i scanrates. 480i has always had User aspect ratio control.

Is your DVDP set for progressive?

This is all directly scanrate related, no matter what inputs you are using.

What does "DVD is connected via cv" mean?

Mr Bob

Allroy

04-30-04, 01:10 PM

i am definitely not on the hd versions of those channels. since all hd stations are in the 1800's in my area. dvd player is set for progressive...

What does "DVD is connected via cv" mean?
-meaning via component video

thanks for replying

bigrig

04-30-04, 01:42 PM

Your cable box probably has different settings for output format. Try to find one that will "pass-through" the resolution of the programming.

Matt

Allroy

04-30-04, 02:29 PM

i will check the cable box but i dont remember there being any settings for output format. thanks

Mr Bob

04-30-04, 02:54 PM

If it's a Comcast box, I can help you on that.

Allroy

04-30-04, 03:10 PM

i have a time warner box...3250HD i believe.

bigrig

04-30-04, 03:22 PM

I found this thread on your box - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=346428

It looks like you want the "Upconvert 1" output option. 480i and 480p are output as 480p, and 720p and 1080i are output as 1080i.

Matt

Allroy

04-30-04, 05:39 PM

well...i watching cable using the video 1 input with the DVI instead of antenna 3. i figured out the problem playing around with PIP. thanks to all who responded. my buyers remorse is slowly fading :D

plm

04-30-04, 06:32 PM

Mr. Bob,

No matter how hard I adjusted the optical and electronic green focus, I could never get the green dot as small and sharp as the red one. Is it worth the effort to adjust the beam form and alignment to fine tune the beam size? Will it void my extended warranty?

Thanks,
plm.

Mr Bob

05-01-04, 11:29 AM

Originally posted by plm
Mr. Bob,

No matter how hard I adjusted the optical and electronic green focus, I could never get the green dot as small and sharp as the red one. Is it worth the effort to adjust the beam form and alignment to fine tune the beam size? Will it void my extended warranty?

Thanks,
plm.

The purpose of astigmatism alignment is to make the hor and vert components of the elec focus symmetrical to each other. This makes the beam be as small as it can be, when a dot.

However, other things could be causing the dot not to be the best it can be. Like both types of focusing, Scheimpflug considerations...

Have you tried the Cantilever Technique, on the optical/mechanical focusing?

I have always found the red and green to be ID when it comes to these kinds of alignment. Green should be every bit as small as red, when a dot. Blue not, of course, it has its own series of considerations.

As far as fiddling around in there, I doubt any competent tech called in an an ESP basis would try to get your warranty cancelled without evidence of serious dereliction of duty on the part of the fiddler. However, that said, they do know what to look for if somebody is truly incompetent.

As long as you actually know what you are doing, and don't do silly things while you are in there - like breaking the neck of a CRT off while trying to force something - you probably won't have any trouble with warranty status.

JSYK, the typical way of securing the magnet rings for centering and astigmatism, after they have been reset, is either caulking compound, or Elmer's or any other white glue dripped on lightly, so as not to thoroughly penetrate between the rings, but just to hold them in place under vibrating circumstances, like during a move. I have seen dried transparent white glue used on the magnet rings of many RPTVs as factory equipment, straight OOB.

Magnet rings should ALWAYS be marked carefully with a marking pen before alterations from factory settings with a very thin but visible line, covering going from the unmoving parts to the moving parts and back to the unmoving parts. Such a line might be visible to a tech, but would be there even if the magnets were never moved, and indicates to the tech that whoever had moved them had done his homework, AND his due diligence. It allows him to go back to the factory settings, which is all the should be required for dismissal of warranty cancellation considerations, if he is a talented and competent tech. Any tech who would invalidate a warranty just because there was a line there indicating factory OOB status would be a real chicken-****, IMHO. Who knows, somebody at the factory could have come along behind somebody else and changed things a bit before it left the factory, OR possibly even a tech in the field, in either case while still under warranty. That's how a competent field tech would do it, tho at the assembly line they probably wouldn't mark it at all, in either case.

He certainly doesn't know that that is NOT the case, unless somebody tells him...

Once he sees the line, even if it's in a different position from factory status, he should just shut up and keep workin', if he's worth his salt...

Mr Bob

Authorized Field Service Repair Tech for Runco and Mitsubishi
Freelance field service repair tech for all other brands.

Rastaman

05-01-04, 05:58 PM

Mr. Bob; Injaneer, Marc Alexander, Gambrelw:

1. Is there anything in the ISF menu that can be tweaked to sync the audio with the picture when using OTA through Antenna C? I have a 57S700. Could it simply be a defect in the receiver?

2. Has anyone of you guys or others on this forum come up with a fix for the internal receiver "noisy" fan on the S700 models. Is there a way to disable it since I am going to get an external HD box from Comcast next week? Or is the fan there for the entire processing chassis of the TV, in which case it should not be disabled. And those of you who say you do not hear any high pitched noise from the fan, please spare me your comments. I would not post this if I did not hear it and if it was not irritating. Of course if ambient noise in the room is significant to start with, then it may not be an issue.
3. Has anyone of you guys recorded on the JVC DVHS HDTV recorders from the 1394 output of the S700 while it is fed a signal, say from an HDTV broadcast from HBO or Showtime? How about when its input is from a DVD player. I know one can not record from a DVD player because of the encryption. If the 1394 is a straight pass-through from, say a split (one going to the TV for processing, and the other to the 1394), then I can understand how the encryption is still retained. But if it is after the fact (having being processed by the TV) how does it get encrypted again. While we are on this subject; why did Hitachi make the 1394 a one way communication? I have alway heard and known that 1394 was designed for two way communication. I would have loved to "input" DV tapes directly into the S700. I would have loved to see the difference. Has anyone done that?

Thanks

Mr Bob

05-02-04, 04:55 PM

Mislipsync'ing on HD is a known digital/audio flaw in the HD ointment, and found quite regularly. I don't know of any way around it, on anybody's system.

I once heard a different pitch in the music between the HD version and the SD version of CSI, when both were playing simultaneously. The actual real timing of the episode, however, was unaffected.

You tell me.

Mr Bob

Larry_Licht

05-02-04, 07:06 PM

More problems with my 50V500. The Light engine was replaced last week and now I was watching a Movie and aftera bout 2 hours the Temp light came on and the light source shut down. Has anyone had this problem? Is it time to demand a replacment TV from Sears?
Larry:confused:

Martian

05-03-04, 12:49 AM

Hi. I just got the 51S500 as an open boxed model from CC for $1399.. anyway, Im a newb to RPTVs so bare with me.. I am currently a cox digital cable subscriber and the best I can get is 4:3 expanded and it still shows black bars on top and bottom about and inch or so.. I would then have to use zoom mode but that would cut off alot of the bottom.. also, when I watch 16:9 DVDs, is it suppose to keep the black bars on top and bottom as well? I would use 16:9 zoom1.. how do I adjust these to fit perfectly on both 4:9 (my cable) and 16:9 (my widescreen dvds).. I still need to get a hd cable tuner from cox and then change my stupid playstation dvd player to a progressive scan... help!

*edit* nevermind, Im stupid.. it was just a certain show that was showing on a specific channel that had its aspect ratio setup that way.. I changed the channel and it fills up the entire screen on 4:3 expanded.. and I just read about black bars are normal on widescreen dvds.. which type of widescreen dvds will fit the 16:9 tv perfectly without any zoom or expanded mode?? or there isn't any?

seadoo

05-03-04, 07:04 AM

I have my 65S700 hooked up OTA to local channels. NBC Signal Strength (SS) =~90, CBS~60, ABC~70, FOX~40. I actually am using an RCA 1250 table top antenna with a 45DB Att. (Walmart $30) I was amazed how much that improved the signal (about 30 units).

I rarely can see FOX. CBS cuts in and out some nights and is good some nights. When it cuts out I can see SS jumping all over the place.

1. How are these ss for receiving?
2. Why does the ss on CBS jump around some nights and not others?
3. Can I get more amp. if I used a rooftop with an amp. ? How much attentuation can I reasonably apply?

owr084

05-03-04, 08:06 AM

You'll probably get a better response if you ask your questions in the Local HDTV Info and Reception Forum (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=45) There will most likely be a thread for your location or you can pose a generic antenna question...

RBB

Originally posted by seadoo
I have my 65S700 hooked up OTA to local channels. NBC Signal Strength (SS) =~90, CBS~60, ABC~70, FOX~40. I actually am using an RCA 1250 table top antenna with a 45DB Att. (Walmart $30) I was amazed how much that improved the signal (about 30 units).

I rarely can see FOX. CBS cuts in and out some nights and is good some nights. When it cuts out I can see SS jumping all over the place.

1. How are these ss for receiving?
2. Why does the ss on CBS jump around some nights and not others?
3. Can I get more amp. if I used a rooftop with an amp. ? How much attentuation can I reasonably apply?

Marc Alexander

05-03-04, 03:35 PM

Originally posted by Martian
which type of widescreen dvds will fit the 16:9 tv perfectly without any zoom or expanded mode?? or there isn't any? http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=332900

Marc Alexander

05-03-04, 03:42 PM

Originally posted by Rastaman
Mr. Bob; Injaneer, Marc Alexander, Gambrelw:
1. Some newer receivers (like my Yamaha RX-V1400) have a time-correction function which can resync audio. However, it only delays audio and cannot correct audio which is delayed from the video.

2. I have never seen a 700 series outside of the showroom

3. The 1394 recording to DVHS only works on HD programs received via the internal OTA tuner. None of the other inputs are recordable. See the HDTV Recorders forums for more info on recording and firewire.

Mr Bob

05-03-04, 04:28 PM

Originally posted by Larry_Licht
More problems with my 50V500. The Light engine was replaced last week and now I was watching a Movie and aftera bout 2 hours the Temp light came on and the light source shut down. Has anyone had this problem? Is it time to demand a replacment TV from Sears?
Larry:confused:

You are on a CRT thread, not a DLP thread. CRT units don't use light engines like DLPs do.

I think you will get a better response if you try this thread, which is devoted to internal reflections on the Samsung DLP RPTV:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3734539#post3734539

Mr Bob

05-03-04, 04:39 PM

Originally posted by seadoo
I have my 65S700 hooked up OTA to local channels. NBC Signal Strength (SS) =~90, CBS~60, ABC~70, FOX~40. I actually am using an RCA 1250 table top antenna with a 45DB Att. (Walmart $30) I was amazed how much that improved the signal (about 30 units).

I rarely can see FOX. CBS cuts in and out some nights and is good some nights. When it cuts out I can see SS jumping all over the place.

1. How are these ss for receiving?
2. Why does the ss on CBS jump around some nights and not others?
3. Can I get more amp. if I used a rooftop with an amp. ? How much attentuation can I reasonably apply?

You're using a tabletop antenna with a 45db attenuator???

I don't think so. You must be using it with an amp, or internally amplified, unless you live right on top of the sending antenna.

I am in San Lorenzo, about 25-30 miles away from the huge Twin Peaks Tower in SF which is where most of the big channels come from in the Bay Area.

I tried that tabletop thing with my system, and no matter what antenna I tried, and no matter how good the amplification, it was always sketchy, with pixellation all over the place. Great - even fascinating, I would think - if you were stoned, but not very good for regular viewing...

Even tho I have a direct line of sight on it and it is totally visible from my roof, I still needed a roof antenna to get it right.

I went down to RS and got one of their $100 antennas for half price on one of their sales, mounted it, and even without amplification, using only RG-59 coax, all of a sudden had too much signal! Had herringbone running thru the pix.

Fortunately I needed a splitter and had several runs to make, so the overkill went away once that was all hooked up. Had 4 runs to do, so I doubled a twin splitter, resulting in every run being attenuated by 3.5db. Perfect.

I definitely recommend roof antenna for OTA HD, unless you can make amplified tabletop work in your area. The tabletop units I had were just driving me nuts! This included trying one of those thick bar amplified antennas, which did no better, no matter which direction it was pointed.

I know of a $400 Terk if you are really far away, but for my distance a simple 10' roof antenna, properly aimed, works like gangbusters.

Mr Bob

seadoo

05-04-04, 07:03 AM

Mr. Bob:

Sorry meant to say amplifier. Yes I am using an RCA 1250 and it made a big difference although I had to orient it just right. I already have a channel master antenna without an amplifer and the RCA does better than it. I was hesitant in climbing up on roof but the pixilation on CBS might make me try it. I have a RS 15-2507 which claims 30 db ampl. I cant reach the cable attachment point on the antenna since it is too difficult to get to so I was thinking of cutting the wire about 3 feet from antenna end adding the preamp. If in the end I dont do better I can splice in back and remove preamp since I do use it for the rest of the tvs in my house. Hopefully I wont lose too much signal if I have to resplice.

Mr Bob

05-04-04, 08:39 AM

Originally posted by seadoo
Mr. Bob:
If in the end I dont do better I can splice in back and remove preamp since I do use it for the rest of the tvs in my house. Hopefully I wont lose too much signal if I have to resplice.

Splice in back? You mean in back of the house? Back of the antenna? Back of the fireplace? Back of the wall?

Not another typo, I hope, tho splicing "IT" back and remove preamp would make a whole lot more sense...

If it is another typo, may I recommend proofreading your copy from now on? It allows this process on these boards to go a whole lot easier on everybody. PLEASE. My brain is already overworked enough as it is...

You shouldn't lose any db's by just splicing in a joiner barrel in there, in place of the preamp. Shouldn't attenuate anything at all.

Mr Bob

seadoo

05-04-04, 11:29 AM

When I cut the line to put the preamp in and then remove it if it doesnt do me any good I will have to splice the two ends together using a coupler so that I have my original connection back. That is what I meant by splice.

oxothuk

05-04-04, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by seadoo
Mr. Bob:

I cant reach the cable attachment point on the antenna since it is too difficult to get to so I was thinking of cutting the wire about 3 feet from antenna end adding the preamp. If in the end I dont do better I can splice in back and remove preamp since I do use it for the rest of the tvs in my house. Instead of cutting the cable you have now, why not just make a 3 foot extension cable? Disconnect your cable from the antenna and plug it in to the preamp. Then plug one end of this extension to the other connection on your preamp and then other end of the extension to the antenna. You will need to do something similar on the cable end near the TV, which is where the power supply for the preamp will go.

This way if the preamp doesn't help you can restore your original configuration without having added any connectors/splices.

slick1ru2

05-04-04, 12:42 PM

Hit the red button under the flap under the door in the bottom right of the front until just the top line is lit. That upconverts even the SD channels to 1080i and it looks much better then the morphing Hirachi's upconversion.

Mr Bob

05-04-04, 01:10 PM

Seadoo -

If in the end I dont do better I can splice in back and remove preamp since I do use it for the rest of the tvs in my house.

The operative word I was looking at was IN, not SPLICE. IN should be IT. SPLICE IT BACK. You have SPLICE IN BACK.

Please look it over again and see if you find the typo this time.

oxothuk - Originally posted by oxothuk
Instead of cutting the cable you have now, why not just make a 3 foot extension cable? Disconnect your cable from the antenna and plug it in to the preamp. Then plug one end of this extension to the other connection on your preamp and then other end of the extension to the antenna. You will need to do something similar on the cable end near the TV, which is where the power supply for the preamp will go.

This way if the preamp doesn't help you can restore your original configuration without having added any connectors/splices.

The reason Seadoo was not doing that seems to be because his antenna may be in a very precarious position on his roof, with the end of the coax being dangerously hard to get at. I would agree that a splice may be in order, tho the ideal condition would be what you are suggesting.

When and if you do a splice, it would be very good to waterproof it. Caulking compound is messy, but very effective in keeping the rain from seeping in over the years. Tape will not be very good except in very very dry climates, for the same reason - unless you use scads of it, to really shelter the connection and make it impervious/impenetrable to the rain.

Mr Bob

seadoo

05-04-04, 03:25 PM

Mr. Bob:

You got the situation right. I can't reach where I need to disconnect from antenna. In order to reach it I would have to remove the antenna from its mount. While I want HD tv I am not sure I want it bad enough to stand on a high pitch slippery metal roof, with a 6 pole with an antenna at the end, blowing in the wind. I actually started to do that and scared the s.... out of myself and said no way. I guess I could fork over several hundred $ to let someone else chance it. Thanks

Mr Bob

05-04-04, 03:37 PM

Just do the splice, and do it very thoroughly and professionally. No need to be risking life and limb, here. You won't lose anything by doing the splice, as long as it is done right. Cable installers do it all the time, whenever necessary.

plm

05-06-04, 04:54 PM

Mr. Bob,

I adjusted the optical focus of the green gun last night. There was a very thin dark red ring surrounding the green dot when the green dot was smallest. Is it a concern?

Thanks,
plm.

Mr Bob

05-06-04, 05:47 PM

Did you have total isolation on the green?

Even if so, I still wouldn't worry about it. There are often corolary colors associated with focusing that erupt when you're close to the screen and your eyes are really zooming in on something, which don't show up in normal viewing.

Get the green dot as small as it can be, and you'll be all right.

Gotta tellya, tho, I always use a circlehatch grid for general focusing, and always at medium light level, like 50IRE. I only use dots for astigmatism realignment.

The amount of light hitting your screen affects elec. focusing. Too much or too little, and you won't be at the same level in a test pattern as you would be while viewing video material. Circlehatch grid keeps a nice medium light level up there, whereas the dot pattern may be exceptionally dark in comparison.

Convergence is also affected by the amount of light hitting the screen. The best pattern I know of for absolute best convergence on final pass is the AVIA Resolution pattern, which has lots of strong gray in it.

Mr Bob

Marc Alexander

05-06-04, 06:44 PM

I would defocus green to get rid of the ring. This sounds similar to the purple abberation Bill found when focusing blue.

Originally posted by gambrelw
If you focus tightly and look at the dot crosshatch pattern, you will notice a strong purple hue around the bright blue lines. The only way to get rid of it is a slight defocus. Depending on how bad the particular set is, it can really be visible in the picture around white lettering or dark objects. If you can tighten blue without an adverse affect on the picture, then tighten it as much as you can.

Bill

plm

05-06-04, 07:12 PM

Mr. Bob

I isolated the green by covering the red and blue using double duvetyne. I also realigned the astigmatism to a pretty good circular dot shape (it was quite way off from factory) based on your advice. Part of the thin dark red ring disappeared if I looked at it sideway. Same as what you said, I didn’t see the red ring in normal watching. But in general, after adjusting the beam form, beam alignment, electronic focus, optical focus and convergence, the PQ is a lot better than before.

Again, Thanks a lot! Your professional advice to me so far is very valuable and useful.

plm.

dofunny

05-07-04, 12:24 AM

PQ. . .good picture, good color, right format. . . =Happy Camper.

Yep, I got the 65S500 to replace my lightening damaged Mitsu 73903. I never thought it would match the 9"CRT's. . .and maybe it is a little short but I'm getting older and the Hlooks good to me. Of course I tuned in the the forum and tried to digest the plethora of information pertaining to tuning my new set. I ordered the discs for the tune up and was prepared to call in the cavelry to help me get it set up just right.

I started playing with the user settings, checked the Component for cable vs. DVI for Sat and combinations thereof. . .and no matter what I did, Whenever I went from HD 1080i over to a cable 480i, the colors weren't right, the format was wrong and it was not looking good foe the Hit to remain in my home for long.

I decided to re-check all the set-up parameters. I have the Hughes HD Receiver (and really like everything about it) and a Mitsu 6030 Progressive DVD.

I decided to go strictly with the DVI cable from the receiver to the monitor and directly from the DVD via Component. I was looking through the menu of the Hughes and found an obscure setting called DVI "expand." Let me tell ya folks, this setting made the whole setup a family. . .everything started talking to each other in a kind and understanding way. (dramatic prose)

The 1080i format was, to say the least, magnificent! When I changed to HGTV, the receiver and TV undersatood that it was 480i and said OK, here;s your color and format and viola. . .a really great picture shown. Same thing when I switched to ESPN and ABC. . .oh, 720P. . .here ya go! Both pieces understand what they're supposed to do without trying to upscale, convert, manipulate, use this scaler or that scaler, etc., etc.

This became the simplest thing. . .like a light bulb turned on. Now I can concentrate on the focus, day/night levels, etc. So far, I'm pretty happy just turning down the day contrast to 50-ish (I'll make sure to never leave static images or tickers on teh screen and ALWAYS display images on the full screen.)

The only bad thing about the setup is that whenever I switch channels from 480i to 720p or 1080i material, the TV has to talk to the receiver and the screen goes off for a few while they decide what to display. . .it's ok given the result.

Am I against upconverting. . .no. Can I see a great difference. . .not really. I was concerned about the 480p from the DVD. I might be able to tell SOME difference in the clarity, but I think I'll stay with the native format because the result is so great. . .

Well, that's my story and I'm stickin to it. Good luck and a word of advice. Make sure you don't have any "cockpit trouble" (wrong settings) between pieces of equipment. The may work with the wrong settings but you will chase your tail trying to figure out why things aren't as good "as they were on my old TV!

DOFUNNY

PolkThug

05-07-04, 11:14 AM

Congrats dofunny! Sounds like you went through the same steps that most of us went through (trying to get all the settings correct). Also, keep in mind that Hitachis keep different settings for each input, so make sure to turn the contrast down on all the inputs.

Have fun!
PolkThug

Martian

05-07-04, 10:48 PM

Hi. I purchased my first new rptv 51S500 and I bought it because it stood out in the store (not realizing they were in factory turned up settings) but then I read here that everybody lowers their settings over 50% down and turn off all enhancements in risk of burn in and shorter life and to keep pictures stretched to prevent burn-in... so does that mean I should watch dvds in widescreen zoomed?? or just standard?

Second question is, how high can my settings be on the safe side and how much does it shorten its life (in years or months) if hitachi built all those enhancements to be used.. Im currently using regular cable and awaiting my hd cable install tomorrow so Im excited to see the big change from regular cable.. only dvds look great of course..

So I understand that its better to feed the TV a good signal and the tv will handle it instead of trying to tweak the tv too hard to fix the poor signal..It just feels that the PQ is darker than what I would prefer it to be.. only bright sports appear "bright" but I guess this is more of a dark natural look to the picture quality of both dvd and cable?

Should I need a hired tech to calibrate the set after 90days??

Any advice appreciated.. Thanks..

dofunny

05-07-04, 11:27 PM

I had a Mitsu 73903 before I got my Hit 65s500 Tuesday. I'm having some adjustment anxiety like many folks do. It's hard to make everything look great. . .and it may be an unachievable goal.

The mitsu was burned on the sides and bottom after a couple of years because I did two things. 1. I watched a lot of 4:3 with the grey bars on the sides (90% or my viewing). Always keep the screen filled with picture! I left the set tuned to CNBC a lot. Avoid all fixed images including stock tickers. I believe if you avoid these two things by simply changing your viewing habits, you will have the set burn-free for years.

The issue of quality images is a never ending compromise. Some channels will look great and others won't. I am starting to avoid the ones that are bad and thinking about putting the good channels in my "favorites" list.

I have also found that I like the set a little criper and brighter that our videophiles friends on the AVS Forum so I keep the contrast on the 60-70 range. If I'm gonna watch this thing its got to be acceptible to me. (I think a videophile image is really the way the director intended you to see it adn I try a little harder on HD and DVD's to lower the contrast (night settings for me) If, for some unknown reason, it TV burns fron 60-70 contrast adn no fixed images, tickers or bars, then I'll pass it on to the kids or donate it to the church. Life's too short.

If you become a videophile, you could pay to have and ISF tech come and adjust the set for "optimum" viewing. . .but you can probably get it pretty close by yourself. The HD content will look good and so will DVD's so you just have to find acceptable picture settings for the SD cable channels (the good ones). IF you get things screwed up in the user menu for day settings and night settings for each input, you can always reset that input and try again. Avoid the dogg channels or watch them on a direct view Sony! Find what pleases you.

Keep us posted, as will I.
dofunny

Paul Clancy

05-08-04, 09:09 AM

Martian,
here's what I'd suggest...setup night mode for your dvd player with contrast about 25-35, then brightness using the thx pattern and instructions (on star wars2, monstors inc etc)or pluge on Ve or avia. Brightness could come out 50-60 and that's fine. Use this setup for light controlled(some room lighting is actually good) dvd viewing. For day mode turn the contrast up some (5clicks).
This should keep you in a safe range. DVD viewing is, for me, an attempt to faithfully represent the best movie theater reproduction and directors vision...not how the movie would look on a 27 inch sony in a sun drenched room...therefore I watch OAR...origonal aspect ratio...meaning black bars are good....no zooming or cropping. If your contrast is not cranked up then your tubes will have a long zero burn in life ...even with black bars.
BTW if you're finding dark parts of the picture are too dark adjust gamma in service menu with the statg10 setting ...up the setting to 06. This increases shadow detail and is discussed earlier in this thread. For someone who watches in a bright sunny enviroment most of the time I'd think another technology like lcd/dlp may be better.

slick1ru2

05-09-04, 08:07 AM

Had something weird happen yesterday. Was watching TV and an artifact showed up. It looked like two white dots, one larger then the other, sitting on top of each other. They were slightly right of center on the screen. I thought it was a bad satellite feed on that station, looked kinda like some pixels dropping out, but after changing to several channels it stayed there. I then turned the TV off and on and they were gone. Any ideas?

Martian

05-09-04, 10:27 PM

Originally posted by slick1ru2
Had something weird happen yesterday. Was watching TV and an artifact showed up. It looked like two white dots, one larger then the other, sitting on top of each other. They were slightly right of center on the screen. I thought it was a bad satellite feed on that station, looked kinda like some pixels dropping out, but after changing to several channels it stayed there. I then turned the TV off and on and they were gone. Any ideas?

I think I experienced the same thing two days ago.. It was showing JEOPARDY and whenever it came to the ALL BLUE SCREEN with the jeopardy question in white, there would be like two white spots randomly spotted on the blue.. I changed the channel and they disappeared.. I was hoping this was not a color problem... and hopefully it was the feed.. any advise?

slick1ru2

05-11-04, 07:02 AM

The white dot came back yesterday. Same spot. This time I experimented around. It was only on my DVI feed from Voom. I tried my OTAs on Ant C and Vid3 where I have D* and it wasn't there. I tried changing channels on Voom and it was still there. The only way I can clear it was by turning the TV off and on. This set is about 5-6 weeks old. I haven't called service yet, because it isn't happening enough to be reproducible.

Martian

05-14-04, 12:02 PM

OK.. thanks for the replies.. Currently, I have my contrast down to 38-40 and my brightness at 60.. color at 50, sharpness either 40-50.. and I currently have all my enhancements off and color is standard.. Is it recommended to leave all these enhancements off?? Do these contribute to burn in?? I would like to turn them on to at least both LOW (for Black and Edge) and set color to high?? or is this a bad idea?? Thanks..

handcyclist

05-16-04, 03:47 AM

Question, I know this has been complained about before by people here on this forum but the fan noise from my 700 is driving me nuts. I am currently using an external hd box and not even using the internal ota tuner. Is there anyway of unpluging that board to turn the fan off and disable the tuner? I am getting desperate here, I feel like jamming a screwdriver in the fan at this point. Other than this problem the set is great, picture has surpassed my expectations.

wsm

05-16-04, 04:10 PM

65S500 - tomorrow's the big day!

Well, I've been following this thread for several months and have read a lot of good info. I had my choice narrowed down to the S500 series, either 57" or 65", several weeks ago. Had to dispose of an old entertainment center first and then order a new one which was delivered yesterday morning. After making a few quick measurements, I decided on the 65". Before heading to the local CC, I checked the CC and Sears websites and found that Sears had a special on the 65s500 - $300 off plus a $100 mail-in rebate. I called CC (where I've been doing most of my looking the last several months) and they agreed to meet the Sears price, minus 10% of the difference. They wouldn't honor the rebate but did offer free delivery which Sears didn't, so I think I did OK on the price. Luckily, CC had one in town at another store. It's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow.

So, thanks to everyone for all the good advice and helpful info. I'm sure you'll see a few more posts from me as I try to do some limited tweaking. Eventually, I plan to have a local ISF guy (AVS member imageQuest) come over and calibrate it for me.

Scott

Paul Clancy

05-16-04, 06:28 PM

Good call...once properly focused, converged and otherwise dialed in theres not a better crtrp set (beats tosh/sony hands down ..equals mits but for less $$). SD and dvd look great but get an hd box (or dvhs)asap for a real treat. Almost 9 months with mine and I thank myself everytime I watch it.

wsm

05-16-04, 10:01 PM

question for 65s500 or 65s700 owners:

My 65s500 is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. My question for those who already own one is how well does it roll on a carpeted floor? I had planned on having the delivery guys leave it away from the wall so that I could do the hookups after they had gone. However, if it won't roll on carpet without help from a couple of NFL linebackers, then I'll just have them put it in place against the wall and then move one of the cabinet towers to run the cables. More trouble for me but I've already moved the towers around some so at least I know that it can be done. Thanks for any help you can offer on this.

owr084

05-17-04, 08:26 AM

I have no problem rolling mine around on the carpet (~ half inch high). The only snag in the delivery of my 65S700 was that it could not make the turn at the top of the stairs into the loft. But I did my homework and knew that the directions and tool for splitting the cabinet in two was taped to the back of the set. It comes apart quite easily.

RBB

Originally posted by wsm
question for 65s500 or 65s700 owners:

My 65s500 is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. My question for those who already own one is how well does it roll on a carpeted floor? I had planned on having the delivery guys leave it away from the wall so that I could do the hookups after they had gone. However, if it won't roll on carpet without help from a couple of NFL linebackers, then I'll just have them put it in place against the wall and then move one of the cabinet towers to run the cables. More trouble for me but I've already moved the towers around some so at least I know that it can be done. Thanks for any help you can offer on this.

wsm

05-17-04, 08:58 AM

Thanks, RBB. That's good to know. Thankfully, I don't have an upstairs to deal with. In fact the family room is straight through the front door past a short entry hall. Should be a piece of cake getting it in. :)

Originally posted by owr084
I have no problem rolling mine around on the carpet (~ half inch high). The only snag in the delivery of my 65S700 was that it could not make the turn at the top of the stairs into the loft. But I did my homework and knew that the directions and tool for splitting the cabinet in two was taped to the back of the set. It comes apart quite easily.

RBB

Allroy

05-18-04, 09:38 AM

does anybody have any experiences with ISF calibrators in the albany NY area? there is one in my area that i know of which is Hippo's. has anybody used them in the past? thanks.

Mr Bob

05-18-04, 12:33 PM

For Hitachi, as for all CRT based RPTVs, you need a fullscale, fullservice calibrator who is not only capable of the grayscale colorations aspects, but also image structural elements like focusing, geometry - eliminating overscan and correcting all the flaws that come out of the woodwork in response to that - convergence, etc.

ISF also does not teach how to realign a color decoder, and the Hitachis have some of the most sizzling realignment registers available. They can be tuned for absolutely linear color decoding response - and the results are absolutely stunning, every time I do one - but only by somebody who has lots more training/skills than ISF offers.

Most ISF agents have been trained only on the grayscale and color/tint aspects of a calibration. CRT RPTVs need it all.

Try looking up Avical, if you are in the Northeast area of the country, and be prepared to fly somebody in if necessary. Fullscale/fullservice CRT-adept RPTV calibrators are still few and far between.

But they absolutely kick ass.

Mr Bob

wsm

05-20-04, 11:27 PM

65S500 first impressions -

CC delivered the new Hit about noon on Monday (17th). Before they left, we hooked up the cable box via the DVI cable. As I suspected, the SD channels were not that great but were watchable. Our cable company just started offering HD at the beginning of the year and are still working out the kinks and trying to license more HD channels. Right now, we have 4: local NBC affiliate, Discover HD theater, ESPN and Showtime.

Well, my first impression on these channels was WOW, awesome! And this was out of the box! The only adjustment I've made so far is to change the day/night setting to "night" and to leave it there. When I have time, I'll read the manual and probably make some more adjustments but just basic stuff. I'll leave the "pro" adjustments to an ISF calibrator.

I plan to put some snapshots of my set up on the "Let's see some pics" thread when I can find some time but not this week. My older daughter is graduating from high school Saturday and this week has been crazy around there! I haven't even had time to watch a DVD on the Hit yet!

Paul Clancy

05-21-04, 08:15 AM

Simple:
Get contrast at 30-40, brightness 50-55, sharp 40-45, color 40-45. Edge Enhance off, Black enhance off. Auto movie mode on. Press majic focus.
Harder:
Then later learn how to do dcam convergence to touch up convergence and geometry. When you get confident look into manual/electrostatic focus and service menu tweaking for gamma, gcut to get rid of greenish blacks and get a tune up disk like avia to dial it in further. Then sd, dvd and hd will all look great.
Back to Simple:
OR hire a reputable calibrator and let him do this and much more including greyscale (the key to proper color). Once you see crt rp set like these dialed in you really wonder what the fuss about dlp/lcd is. Glad you're enjoying. My ONLY disappointment is hd dvd is taking so long to appear...but man will it be sweet on this set when it does.

Mr Bob

05-21-04, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by Paul Clancy

OR hire a reputable calibrator and let him do this and much more including greyscale (the key to proper color).

Very true.

But don't forget color decoding realignment - the other key to proper color.

You need both done superlatively, to really get the impact these RPTVs can deliver. Full suspension of disbelief, as if you had your own personal 35mm film projector in your living room, and the print was an original.

Once you see crt rp set like these dialed in you really wonder what the fuss about dlp/lcd is.

You got it.

Try the North by Northwest DVD once you have had all this done and see what even a 30 year old Cary Grant movie can look like.

Mr Bob

philbin

05-21-04, 07:18 PM

obviously there are some great deals to be had on s500/s700 series. I myself own a 51s500 and absolutely love this CRT. Two words of advice for those that really want to see these models really perform "professional calibration"

Mr Bob

05-22-04, 01:47 AM

Just so you know, I am presently in Las Vegas, and would love to do some calibrations before I leave. I am scheduled to come back home to the SF Bay Area Monday night, but am willing to stay over for a few more days here in Vegas if anybody in this area wants a cal.

Mr Bob

grouper

05-22-04, 12:06 PM

hopefully i can get an answer here. ive read almost all the posts and my head is spinning. I'm wanting to purchase a hitachi 57 inch and i'm not sure if i should go with the 500s or 500f and from what i read the 700 has a noisy fan. with $$$ not being the problem which one has the better picture and more bang for the buck. the saleman is trying to sell me a 57T600 but i see nothing in the forum about them. are they
a old model?
from what a cc saleman told me 500s is the newest, i just want one with a great picture.
any help would be appreciated

grouper

05-22-04, 01:20 PM

never mind i called hitachi and got all my questions answered. 57T600 is like the 57S700 except it has a 40 watt built in speaker system as the 700 runs 23 watt.

500's don't have the built in hdtv tuner, 700's do

T600 is a limited edition model

and the models with the letter X in them have the best picture quality but no built in hdtv tuner.
dude said if your after the best picture buy x model.
so i'm going with T600

Phod

05-23-04, 12:41 PM

I had my 57S500 for a little over a month. Enjoyed it a bunch, very happy with the picture. But then it developed a problem. I started noticing that the screen was flickering. I could detect slight to sometimes more than slight changes in brightness and occasionally hue. During day viewing it wasn't that noticeable but night viewing it was irritating.

I used the S500's color decoding to check each color gun. Both red and blue were flicker free but turn on just green and I could see the flicker.

Had the city advantage plan with CC and they are replacing the TV today. Haven't read of this issue with the Hit anywhere so I'm sure it's a fluke. I saw some Sony's had a similar problem but couldn't find any other details with Hitachis.

wsm

05-23-04, 11:14 PM

A word about SD on my new 65S500 - Since my cable company has only 4 HD channels so far, most of my cable tv viewing on the new set is in SD. At first, I was doing what seemed logical - using the cable company's box (connected to the Hit via DVI) to view all the channels. The SD channels are pretty fuzzy and, even accounting for the fact that it's a much larger picture, look pretty bad compared to the other sets in the house (direct view CRTs).

Later, when I hooked up the VCR (a Sony), I split the incoming cable feed and ran the extra signal into the VCR and out to the antenna A input on the 65s500. I also had the VCR video out (composite) feeding into the Hit on vid3.

The interesting part is this - whether I view the SD channels via the cable box or the straight through feed to antenna "A" (using the Hit's NTSC tuner), the channels are fuzzy. However, when I use the VCR's tuner, feeding that to the Hit through Vid3 (composite video), then the SD channels look much better - even better than the direct-view CRTs.

Does that mean that the cable box and the Hit have crappy ntsc tuners and that the Sony has a better tuner? Or could it be bad cables, connectors or some other external problem? Any ideas or opinions?

Mr Bob

05-24-04, 04:01 AM

Originally posted by wsm

Does that mean that the cable box and the Hit have crappy ntsc tuners and that the Sony has a better tuner? Or could it be bad cables, connectors or some other external problem? Any ideas or opinions?

I don't think the various types of conns or the quality of the cables used would cause the kind of slop you are describing. Of course, you must doublecheck that the coax ends are all solidly installed and still completely intact, and that the coax is all RG-6 everywhere, esp. on the runs in question. RG-59 will causes some channels to be markedly worse than others, depending on the actual channel frequencies (not the channel numbers).

All else being equal, I think the Sony's tuner is simply stomping on the others.

Sony HDreadys also have killer de-interlacer/line doublers.

Mr Bob

iSSues

05-24-04, 06:37 AM

I am thinking about getting the 51s500 and wanted to know is 8 feet to close to this set? What do you guys view at?

Michigan Golfer

05-24-04, 09:44 AM

I have the 57S500 and my eyes are about 10 feet from the screen. When I first had it delivered, I thought it was too big, but now, after about 8 weeks, it is perfect - it really provides the cinematic experience. A 65 inch set would have been too big, and if I would have purchase the 51 inch set, I know I would have wanted the 57 inch set. Thank god I bought the 57 inch set.

I think your 51 inch set will be fine for 8 feet. Enjoy.

PolkThug

05-24-04, 11:43 AM

wsm,

I've heard of people doing similar things with success. Run DVI from cable box to "video1" and run composite from the cable box to a different input. So when you watch SD, switch your TV to the "inferior" input. I still need to try this myself.

Regards,
PolkThug

Allroy

05-24-04, 01:24 PM

that is how my setup is. the funny thing is that last night for the NBA playoffs i was playing around with the settings and when i switched it to vid:1 which is my DVI input the game filled up the whole screen and looked amazing. so i will be using that for all HD programs. using ant:a which i have my cable wire hooked up to the screen looked good but had borders on all 4 sides. using my DVI input while watching SD tv the picture is cut off noticably at the bottom and watching SD using ant:a the pic looks much better. still playing around with it and the hours are counting down for my calibration. :D

Mr Bob

05-24-04, 02:22 PM

Originally posted by iSSues
I am thinking about getting the 51s500 and wanted to know is 8 feet to close to this set? What do you guys view at?

My criterion for a superlative calibration as far as image structure goes is that afterwards you can sit 8' back from a fully calibrated 65" and be in heaven. This fully captures how it feels at the truly big screens at the mall.

Look at my website and you will see one done that way - my own, which is where I sit during all viewing - 8' back, eyes to screen. The pic was actually shot at 6', on tripod.

Extrapolate as needed, for your RPTV's size...

Mr Bob

Phod

05-24-04, 03:25 PM

How long should one wait before getting professional ISF calibration? As I said in my previous post, my Hitachi had a green gun problem after a month. I'm glad I didn't spend hundreds of dollars on ISF calibration only to have a problem with the TV.

btw good site Mr Bob

Marc Alexander

05-24-04, 05:06 PM

How long before ISF? 100 hours minimum...I recommend waiting 90 days.

Phod

05-24-04, 05:10 PM

Thanks for the reply. I'll target 90 days.

Mr Bob

05-24-04, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by Phod
How long should one wait before getting professional ISF calibration? As I said in my previous post, my Hitachi had a green gun problem after a month. I'm glad I didn't spend hundreds of dollars on ISF calibration only to have a problem with the TV.

btw good site Mr Bob

Thanks!

100 hours is what I call the "drift period", during which the convergence continues to "burn in", and the electronics, which run ungodly hot in the convergence sections of RPTVs, settle in. The convergence, no matter how well done, will continue to drift off a ways at each point during this period. This is true of all CRT based RPTVs.

After this period has been achieved, the convergence will stay stable for longer and longer periods.

Whenever I do a cal, it is always the owner's option as to whether they want to wait the requisite 100 hours or not. I am glad to do it right outa the box, then come back after the 100 hours and redo it again for no charge. The only charge is an additional travelcharge, to cover my time on the road.

This is what I had to do on my 65" Panny, the one on the cover of the website. OOB it was absolutely terrible! I couldn't stand watching it. Within an hour I had already started tearing into it.

Drift is also affected by how far off from zero every point is. The farther off they are, the more they will drift, so it is always best to get most of the work done via the Coarse controls before depending on the Fine - Point - controls to take over and really deliver the super-precise convergence we are all after.

Unfortunately, the Hitachis don't have any Coarse registers for red and blue, and I am not exactly sure they have them for green, either. But the above advice about that does apply to other brands.

The great part about the newer Hits is that the convergence can now be done on the actual incoming image itself, whereas before you had to do it on its internal grid, which never delivered absolute precision after the memorization process.

On the new models we can dial that sucker in completely!

Remember, the Hitachi mem process only does a little with each pass, and if you have done a lot of convergence correction, you will have to give it several passes before the picture it comes back with is ID to the picture you sent in for memorization, after your corrections.

Mr Bob