I received a couple of days ago my SpyderTV and I started playing with it and the excellent rader's Excel file.

With my Panasonic display (model in thread title) I have, probably, too many options at my disposal and I've got some doubts regarding what is what, basically. Even more so because of the apparent overlap of some settings in both regular and service menu.

The Panasonic has, in its regular menu, the following settings:

Contrast - Brightness- Colour - Tint - Sharpness (for these I don't need info).

In the regular menu advanced settings we find:

Black Extension - Shall I play with it or not?
Input level - Again, what is this?
W/B High Red - I *suppose* this is Red Drive (the manual defines it as "adjusts the white balance for light red areas).
W/B High Blue - The same for blue
W/B Low Red - "Adjusts the white balance for dark red areas". Is this Red Cut?
W/B Low Blue - Same as above, for blue
Gamma - Where I have S Curve, 2.0, 2.2 and 2.5 options. I chose 2.2.

In the service menu there are even more settings. Here we find, clearly labeled:

Panel W/B Adj.
Red Drive - Green Drive - Blue Drive
All Drive
Red Cut off - Green Cut off - Blue Cut off
All Cut off

Chroma Control
R-Y Axis Angle
B-Y Axis Angle (these two are for me a total mistery)
Sub Tint
Sub Color

Sub Adjust
Sub Bright
Sub Contrast (what the heck are these supposed to be?)

So far I have acted on the main menu brightess and contrast settings for the basic calibration and on the main menu advance settings W/B High Red, W/B High Blue, W/B Low Red and W/B Low Blue for trying to calibrate the grayscale.

Is this correct? Should I be using directly the service menu settings for grayscale (they appear to have direct control on Green, which is lacking from the main menu)?
Should I be using the All Drive and All Cut off service menu settings instead of the main menu Brightness and Contrast?
Should I take advantage of the Sub Tint and Sub Color settings in the service menu, given that the Panny doesn't allow you to regulate Color and Tint when you input a PC signal (as is the case from my Lumagen HDP)?

Entirely too many questions, probably. Bear in mind that, had I lived in the States, I wouldn't have hesitated hiring an ISF calibrator... but, alas, in Italy they are totally non existant. :(

Thanks in advance to whomever will help me to shed some light on all these doubts.

PS
I will try my best to stay away from the fact that both the Lumagen and my Pioneer DVD-747 DVD player have each their own settings too...

Greetings

R-Y and B-Y are the color decoder controls for red and Green. Use the red filter and the green filters when changing these items.

Sub brightness and contrast are the master controls that determine the overall levels. Typically ... you set the use controls for these two things at 0 and set these instead. This makes the default positions in the user menu easier to remember.

Regards

R-Y and B-Y are the color decoder controls for red and Green. Use the red filter and the green filters when changing these items.Hmm... I admit my ignorance. Is anybody able to tell me if these two settings need to be touched when using rader's spreadsheet?Sub brightness and contrast are the master controls that determine the overall levels. Typically ... you set the use controls for these two things at 0 and set these instead. This makes the default positions in the user menu easier to remember.This makes sense. Thank you. :)

Greetings

If you trust a spreadsheet rather than doing the tweak yourself ... then you may as well accept other people's grayscale numbers as being correct for your TV.

Optimize it yourself ... don't rely on someone else's experience.

Takes all of 60 sec.

Regards

If you trust a spreadsheet rather than doing the tweak yourself ... then you may as well accept other people's grayscale numbers as being correct for your TV.

Optimize it yourself ... don't rely on someone else's experience.

Takes all of 60 sec.??? I honestly don't understand what you are implying. I'm using a spreadsheet to calculate gamma and deviation from D65. Things I can't do just by eyesight (if it is possible to do it I'm definitely not able to).

Furthermore, are you saying you don't use any computer aided equipment in your calibrations?

You adjust the colour decoder controls by eye....not with software or sensors. First, adjust colour and tint in the usual manner. Next, while showing colour bars on the screen, look through the red filter, and adjust R-Y so that the image looks as uniformly red as possible. Then, use the green filter and adjust B-Y the same way. Afterwards, recheck colour and tint.

In a perfect world, there would also be gain controls for the colour decoder. If you find the pure red or green bar is brighter than the pure white bar when looking through the matching filter, there's nothing you can do about that.

In terms of the colour decoder, gain controls are like a Colour control, and axis controls are like a Tint control, but only for that one colour channel.

Greetings

As John G said.

Color decoder stuff has nothing to do with grayscale or gamma. Use the color filters there ... that is what they are there for ... when you cannot isolate colors on the TV display electronically.

Gamma ... instrumentation
Grayscale ... instrumentation
color decoder ... no instrumentation ... just filters.
Color gamut alignment ... instrumentation

Regards

Could you tell me what patterns should I use from Avia (or DVE) to adjust the two parameters JohnnyG mentioned?

Greetings

Smpte color bar pattern.

Regards

You can isolate the colours with the Panasonic. Just keep going right in the chroma control part ad you should come to isolate options....switch off what you want then go back adn adjust.....then come back and turn them all on when you are finished

Gordon

You can isolate the colours with the Panasonic. Just keep going right in the chroma control part ad you should come to isolate options....switch off what you want then go back adn adjust.....then come back and turn them all on when you are finishedGordon, I currently am using a Lumagen HDP, which I guess you are familiar with (;)).
I've used its awesome 11-point grayscale calibration tool to amazing results, in combination with the SpyderTV xyY measurements (I was really surprised by how easy it became).

Now... is it better to make use of the color isolation feature on the HDP to calibrate the color decoder (adjusting the color and tint values on the scaler) or is it better to use filters and the service menu on the display?

Or, another option, using the color isolation feature but then regulating via the service menu on the display?

Sub brightness and contrast are the master controls that determine the overall levels. Typically ... you set the use controls for these two things at 0 and set these instead. This makes the default positions in the user menu easier to remember.I just wanted to ask: are these the settings to regulate for contrast and brightness?

You seem to imply they are, and as I answered previously, it's very handy to calibrate these and leave the regular settings at zero, for refrence.

But if sub brightness and sub contrast are master controls for brightness and contrast, what about the All Cut and All Drive settings? Shouldn't these be the same thing?

Nothing wrong with using a spreadsheet to model colour temp and gamma as long as its accurately using the desired video transfer function all the spreadsheet does is scale the transfer function within your black and white points.

The All cuts and All gains are the individual RGB cuts and gains ganged together , they will do the same thing as adding or subtracting the same amount of increments to each RGB control. They are different from the contrast and brightness whch set the ends of the intensity range. The "ALL" controls adjust the luminence at another two points (20% and 80% approx).

Incidentally if you adjust the alls the colour temp will shift and you will have to rebalance the individual rgb controls , this is normal behaviour.

You can isolate the colours with the Panasonic. Just keep going right in the chroma control part ad you should come to isolate options....switch off what you want then go back adn adjust.....then come back and turn them all on when you are finished

Gordon

As I'm going through this myself at the moment I've just come across this post. The Gun Off setting in Chroma Control runs from 0-6 and allows you to isolate colours as required.

Tim

With my panasonic I have the same settings. So what are the steps I should do from beginning to end for colour? First set contrast and brightness manually via normal menu with grayscale image? then with the colour scale up start with blue with the blue filter and adjust normal menu colour to match? then for green and red via filters adjust those to match via service menu red and green? within service menu, do i want to adjust rg-drive, rg-cutoff or r-y axis and b-y axis? :)

I still haven't got round to using the service menu as I got VERY close using the advanced user menu settings.

I set the brightness and contrast at the factory settings for cinema mode (recommended by Gordon Fraser), and then used calman (lock out green in the wizard as you can only adjust red and blue - calman will automatically compensate) with a spyder TV to calibrate the greyscale and RGB in about 4 passes. I will get an improvement by using the 11 point adjustment in the scaler to correct the gamma curve and slight hump at the top, but to the naked eye the improvement is awesome.

www.calman.tv - it needs Excel at the moment, but Version 3 is under development as a standalone application, and will be free to all users of version 2.

The attached file is a PDF print of the last iteration. It isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. The more recent version of Calman (2.1 or 2.2) has much improved functionality including either using the PC as a signal generator or auto control of the most common scalers. A full 11 point run takes only a few minutes, and you can go and make tea/get beer from fridge etc while it is going through as it is completely hands off.

You might be able to get some form of colour adjustment just by using the filters but I wouldn't recommend adjusting the cuts and gains with them (I wouldn't know where to start as they only impact at around 30% and 80% of the curve), but the Spyder probe is cheap and works well with plasmas. Calman is also very reasonably priced for the functionality it offers and the support is excellent.

Tim