The Official Sony VPL-VW50 (Pearl) Calibration/Tweak Thread [Text View] - Page 2

gremmy

10-23-06, 02:09 PM

Okay, couple of questions regarding all this service menu chatter. You guys are talking about some specific settings but I would think it's also dependent on your type of screen (gray, white, matte white, etc) and also the screen gain. Those variables along with any changes other than in a dark environment would create different "eye" reactions to the dialing in.

As for the projector, I've watched some great programming in the last day: The Pianist, The Island, some HD-DVDs and baseball.

It all looks pretty much awesome. But now the question is how to address the devil.

Green is the devil. Reading the adjustments in the service menu is like reading Greek. When the default is noted, I'm not clear then what gets changed.

Then again, this machine is heavily rigged with so many variables. So what's the simplest way SOWK to address the green without getting into the heavy lifting?

This past weekend I spent several hours calibrating the 3D gamma settings for levels 2,3, and 4. When I get a chance, I'll try 5 and 6. I had a really big problem on Level 4 -- half the screen was leaning green, the other half nuetral, with a faint pink hue in the middle. I was able to get this pretty uniform, and my sky shots are looking much more natural now.

I will post a more detailed analysis later. I'm out of town in training this week, so won't have much of an opportunity to do this until next week. I honestly don't think there is any way to fix this without some "heavy lifting," to to speak. But I will post my observations, and hopefully they'll be helpful to someone.

volley

10-24-06, 02:36 PM

5. The OOB colors do not look very accurate - at first (reddish skin tones, for example). Once the lamp has settled in with about 80 to 100 hours, the colors will look a LOT better, even without any calibration. Also, this is when the high CR of the unit will become obvious.

Is the general consensus to wait until after 100 hours at least to do the calibrations?

nathan_h

10-24-06, 04:13 PM

Yes.

Googer

10-26-06, 07:34 PM

I calibrated my now well broken-in (~130 hours already! :eek: ) Pearl last night using AccuCal's i1 Pro DCS (umr's software) and my GretagMacbeth EyeOne Pro spectroradiometer. It looked pretty good out-of-the-box to me but it could definitely stand to be improved upon, given the oversaturated colors and the somewhat noneven grayscale performance (it tracked somewhat closely to 6500K across all levels but was only actually really close to the D65 point at high IRE levels).

I can post pre- and post-cal tristim, grayscale, and gamma charts if people really want but there's not much to see beyond a quickie description of them - precalibration looks just like virtually every other Pearl's results I've seen to this point - green is somewhat shifted towards yellow and is moderately oversaturated, red is a bit magenta and moderately oversaturated, and yellow is moderately oversaturated. Blue, magenta, and cyan are all already pretty close OOTB. Post-calibration, I have all colors almost exactly spot-on to ITU 709. Further, grayscale tracks for the mostpart ridiculously close to D65 (dE <= 2 for 30+ IRE, 4 for 20 IRE, and 8 for 10 IRE), with it skewing a bit red on the low end. Post-calibration gamma is following basically a perfect 2.2222 curve with a fixed iris though is a bit squirrelly with auto iris (note that I don't believe this negatively affects the picture quality in any way though and I'm continuing to use auto 1 personally ;)).

Note that on the RCP settings, I was playing with the position and range values - I'm not sure how different from the defaults they really are but I can describe what I did for setting them given that I can't give numerical values for them. :p First, I brought the range on all colors down to the absolute minimum to make setting the position easier. Then, I centered the position for each color so that test colors at 75 IRE were in the dead-center of the affected range. I did this by going by the greyed-out mode you see when playing with the RCP position and range values. I found that for all of the colors the number of clicks for position with minimum range was in the 20-22 range for it go from one edge of the affected range to the other, so I then moved the position 10 or 11 clicks from one of the edges to center it. After doing this, I then expanded the range back out to maximum for all colors and went on my way setting the RCP color and hue values.

Also remember all these settings are meant to be used together - copying just the grayscale settings without also using the RCP settings will just lead to a worse grayscale than OOTB and you'll still have oversaturated colors (and vice versa - changing RCP values greatly affects the grayscale).

Picture Mode Cinema
Cinema Black Pro
Advanced Iris Auto1, Recommended
Lamp Control Low
Contrast 80
Brightness 52
Color 70
Hue 50
Color Temp Custom 3
Gain
R 5
G -10
B 6
Bias
R 11
G -6
B -16
Sharpness 0
Black Level Adj Off
Gamma Correction Gamma 2

RCP
Red
Color -20
Hue 4
Yellow
Color -20
Hue -5
Green
Color -20
Hue 20
Cyan
Color -19
Hue -3
Blue
Color -20
Hue 23
Magenta
Color -19
Hue 7
Color Space Normal

Some observations about my methodology and other tidbits with this calibration that I noticed:

I made sure my spectroradiometer was measuring the exact same position from my projector throughout to make sure any nonuniformity that exists wouldn't impact the calibration. Specifically, I measured exactly where point 136 in the 3D Gamma settings is, because I noticed that its values are all 0, 0, 0 for levels 1 - 10 in the service menu. :p I do intend on tweaking my 3D Gamma settings down the line to get my uniformity better (not that it's bad though as I can't say I ever notice it except while looking at solid non-textured grayscale fields - I've never noticed tinted ice during hockey games or any nonuniformity while watching something B&W, for example).

I initially noticed that as I was adjusting green and red in RCP that color was being brought down by around 20 to get them close saturation-wise and that the colors, while accurate, looked flat (I know I'm not the first one to note this ;)). I further noticed that bumping up the global Color setting by around 20 (from 50 to 70) kept the primaries somewhat accurate but brought the life back to them that they had lacked - I found this convenient and perhaps not coincidental. :p Some further experimenting and as you can see from my final numbers above, all of the colors all ended up with their color turned down by right around 20 with varying degrees of adjustment to their hue value. Also, I had initially set the colors in RCP then checked out grayscale and found it to be way off (not too surprising). I then got grayscale in line and found my colors were off again (but not by as much as they had been initially). Basically, arriving at the above numbers was an iterative process where I went back and forth between calibrating the colors and grayscale until both were very close. This wasn't as painful as it may sound because the degree of adjustment on each pass was smaller and smaller - I quit with the above settings after 3 passes on both because I was clearly way into diminishing returns (meaning that after setting grayscale for the 3rd time, my colors were all still basically spot-on to ITU 709).

mblank

10-26-06, 07:41 PM

googer - Yes, but ... how does it look? :rolleyes:

Marc

Googer

10-26-06, 07:59 PM

I guess I understated the effect that would have because I already knew before I calibrated it what it should look like if I was going to be able to do a good job on it. :p It looks exactly like you'd expect if you've seen a fully calibrated display - all colors are perfectly natural-looking, none are over- or under-saturated, and whites and grays are perfectly neutral. Dark scene details show perfectly with absolutely no hint of black crush, yet absolute black levels are still extremely strong. What more could one want? :D

romanesq

10-27-06, 10:01 PM

gremmy

10-28-06, 09:53 AM

First, I brought the range on all colors down to the absolute minimum to make setting the position easier. Then, I centered the position for each color so that test colors at 75 IRE were in the dead-center of the affected range. I did this by going by the greyed-out mode you see when playing with the RCP position and range values. I found that for all of the colors the number of clicks for position with minimum range was in the 20-22 range for it go from one edge of the affected range to the other, so I then moved the position 10 or 11 clicks from one of the edges to center it. After doing this, I then expanded the range back out to maximum for all colors and went on my way setting the RCP color and hue values.

For the color red, I found that when I follow your procedure for centering the value, the center ends up 30 clicks from one of the edges, not 10. That's a big difference. What's going on here?

Googer

10-28-06, 10:03 AM

For the color red, I found that when I follow your procedure for centering the value, the center ends up 30 clicks from one of the edges, not 10. That's a big difference. What's going on here?You're saying it's 60 clicks from edge to edge with range at minimum...? Or didn't you reduce the range first? If not, that'd certainly explain it. ;) You can certainly do the centering without bothering to reduce range first - as I said, I only did that to make the centering easier because obviously it'd take less clicks to find out how many clicks covered the minimum range, since I brought the range back up after the centering. :p

gremmy

10-28-06, 10:05 AM

You're saying it's 60 clicks from edge to edge with range at minimum...? Or didn't you reduce the range first? If not, that'd certainly explain it. ;) You can certainly do the centering without bothering to reduce range first - as I said, I only did that to make the centering easier because obviously it'd take less clicks to find out how many clicks covered the minimum range, since I brought the range back up after the centering. :p
No, I did reduce the range first. I'm going to try this out in a few minutes to verify, maybe I was just drunk last night off the happiness of my Cardinals winning the World Series for the first time in 24 years -- I'm going to give your settings a whirl. But I want to understand this first.

Googer

10-28-06, 10:12 AM

I'm still not sure if your settings are screen dependent Googer, but I can say that I'm impressed having plugged them into User 3. I was a season ticket holder to the New Jersey Nets basketball team and they are playing a preseason game tonight at home. Your settings captured the color of the floor absolutely right on target.

Also now that I've plugged in those settings (on my 106" Graywolf) now Cinema shows a real tilt to green that I hadn't even noticed before.

So thanks for the great work and sharing it with us. My only question is how do you see any impact in going from low lamp to high with your settings?

Other than that, much appreciated!My screen is a 16:9 106" BW Carada, which was measuring out as having only an extremely minimal bias on my measured x,y color values (as I'd hope most quality screens do). I calculated the screen's x,y bias 6 or 7 times using i1 Pro DCS, which is done by comparing the x,y value of the light reflected off of the screen with the sensor / software in emission mode to the light coming directly out of the projector with the sensor / software in ambient mode (and the EyeOne Pro 'wearing' its light diffuser). It was averaging out to a bias of essentially 0.0000,0.0000, as the bias measured was always extremely tiny and was essentially random in nature regarding positive or negative values on both axes. :D

Regarding low vs. high lamp, yes there is some minor shift but I haven't taken any formal measurements as low has been plenty bright for my setup. :)

HoustonHoyaFan

10-28-06, 11:13 AM

Googer
IIRC you posted about the 1 pixel granularity convergence controls found in the SXRD RPTV! Any such controls in the Pearl?

Googer

10-28-06, 11:20 AM

Yes I am. :) Unfortunately though, not that I've seen - the Pearl's service menu is much sparser than that of the A2000 (and presumably XBR2) RPTV's. On the bright side, my Pearl's convergence is already very good and I don't think I'd be able to improve upon it even if I could make changes to the panels' offsets. :D

gremmy

10-28-06, 12:44 PM

Googer,

If I minimize the range of a color to its minimum, and then use the position control to move the tiny color wedge to one extreme of the range, it takes exactly 60 clicks to get the wedge from one end of the range to the other. On some of these clicks, the wedge does not appear to move (and on few, its range actually appears to readjust slightly), but the 60 clicks is required on all colors to move the minimized wedge from one side to the other.

So right in the middle is exactly 30 clicks.

I'm really confused about this, since it's not consistent with what you've reported.

Googer

10-28-06, 01:34 PM

Zues

10-29-06, 01:06 AM

Would isf calibration eliminate the purple color tint i seen when I demoed pearl? The bottom bar looked great but top had some purple in it. Anyone NOT see purple with their example on top bar and if so can this be fixed?

Bytehoven

10-29-06, 01:28 AM

Did you remember to remove your sunglasses when you saw the Pearl?

:D

Toe

10-29-06, 01:52 AM

Maybe it is just vision problems in general :confused: , which isf unfortunately can not correct :)

Zues

10-29-06, 02:04 AM

This screenshot of pearl is what i see. Look at the top middle. The pearl i seen looked better than this screenshot, with just enough purple to bother me and it was only on top. If this could be fixed i might buy!!

volley

10-29-06, 08:19 AM

Not all pearls have that.

volley

10-29-06, 08:24 AM

gremmy

10-29-06, 09:30 AM

What you describe in terms of how it moves, etc., visually on the color wheel is perfectly consistent with how it is on mine; the only difference is that your positioning seems to be ~3x as fine as mine is. :p If I was you I would go ahead and center it as you're doing and proceed with copying the other settings as-is and see if you like the results - it's not like you can't undo the settings if you don't like them. ;)

On another note, I haven't done it yet, but I intend on setting another of my RCP setting banks to the SD color space (ITU 601). The only downside if I decide to actually worry about using SD vs. HD colorspaces when I'm actually watching stuff is that I'll also need to set another user grayscale up since, as I already previously said, changing RCP settings messes with grayscale (so my grayscale settings the HD colorspace will be wrong for the SD one). This is treading into PITA territory since I couldn't just change the RCP setting but would also need to remember to change the grayscale setting anytime I switched between SD and HD... :p

One thing I am pretty sure of is that your RGB gain/bias settings will not work for my Pearl. There is simply too much blue being gutted out from the bias, and everything takes on a strange, artificial cast. I'm sure it looks fantastic on your Pearl, but I wonder if yours was calibrated unusually OOTB.

I say this because most of the previous "calibrated" settings that were posted had a few things in common:
1) For Gain, red and blue both increase relative to green, with blue increasing just a little more than red.
2) For Bias, red and blue decrease releative to green, with red decreasing just a little more than blue.

With your RGB gain/bias settings, the "Gain" commonalities remain, but there's a lot more adjustment there than on any of the previous settings, suggesting that your unit may have been further off OOTB. And your Bias settings don't follow the trend at all, with R and B moving by large amounts in opposite directions.

So far, the settings that seem to work the best for me are:

Gain: R:5, G:0, B:6
Bias: R:-3, G:0, B:-1

I used those settings, combined with "Wide" color mode (which GregR says is actually the correct color setting) and then plugged in your RCP and color saturation settings, my picture now looks very, very good. I'll live with these settings for a few days and see if I can find any reason to hate them. :D

One of these days, I guess I'll just have to buy my own testing gear.

Googer

10-29-06, 01:37 PM

One thing I am pretty sure of is that your RGB gain/bias settings will not work for my Pearl. There is simply too much blue being gutted out from the bias, and everything takes on a strange, artificial cast. I'm sure it looks fantastic on your Pearl, but I wonder if yours was calibrated unusually OOTB.

I say this because most of the previous "calibrated" settings that were posted had a few things in common:
1) For Gain, red and blue both increase relative to green, with blue increasing just a little more than red.
2) For Bias, red and blue decrease releative to green, with red decreasing just a little more than blue.

With your RGB gain/bias settings, the "Gain" commonalities remain, but there's a lot more adjustment there than on any of the previous settings, suggesting that your unit may have been further off OOTB. And your Bias settings don't follow the trend at all, with R and B moving by large amounts in opposite directions.

So far, the settings that seem to work the best for me are:

Gain: R:5, G:0, B:6
Bias: R:-3, G:0, B:-1

I used those settings, combined with "Wide" color mode (which GregR says is actually the correct color setting) and then plugged in your RCP and color saturation settings, my picture now looks very, very good. I'll live with these settings for a few days and see if I can find any reason to hate them. :D

One of these days, I guess I'll just have to buy my own testing gear.Don't forget what I said about RCP and grayscale interacting with each other as well - if I change my RCP settings to off or one of the unchanged user settings but use my posted grayscale settings, my grayscale looks awful, and vice versa - my grayscale settings without using the RCP settings looks terrible as well. :p If I adjust just my grayscale without touching the RCP settings, my results are similar to what I've seen for other posted settings... In other words, I don't believe my Pearl is so different from others OOTB, and certainly my colors aren't, as they mirror what I've seen from the tristim charts in reviews almost exactly. :)

mblank

10-29-06, 05:20 PM

Could one of you (or more) recommend calibration hardware/software for basic + greyscale calibration for the Pearl? (My last calibration hardware/software was for my JVC G15U...)

Thanks.

Marc

gremmy

10-29-06, 05:45 PM

Don't forget what I said about RCP and grayscale interacting with each other as well - if I change my RCP settings to off or one of the unchanged user settings but use my posted grayscale settings, my grayscale looks awful, and vice versa - my grayscale settings without using the RCP settings looks terrible as well. :p If I adjust just my grayscale without touching the RCP settings, my results are similar to what I've seen for other posted settings... In other words, I don't believe my Pearl is so different from others OOTB, and certainly my colors aren't, as they mirror what I've seen from the tristim charts in reviews almost exactly. :)

That's a very interesting point about the RCP settings interacting with the grayscale settings. All I can say is that when I plug all of your numbers in exactly as you documented, my picture is out of whack -- people's faces have a strange, anemic purple tint to them. But when I use the grayscale settings posted above, and use your RCP/color settings, my reds are actually "red" for the first time ever and the picture looks very natural. I'm not 100% sure if I'll continue to live with these settings or not (since every set of numbers that I've tried up to this point has ultimately turned me back on to the default Low temp setting), but so far, so good.

I wonder if you can help me understand how the RCP works. My question is this: If you adjust the range/position of a color (red, for example), does that actually shift the red part of the color gamut, or does it simply alter the range of colors that are being adjusted with the "color" and "hue" controls at the bottom of the RCP screen for that color? If it's the latter, what happens to shades of red (for example) that are outside of the selected range?

Googer

10-29-06, 07:54 PM

That's a very interesting point about the RCP settings interacting with the grayscale settings. All I can say is that when I plug all of your numbers in exactly as you documented, my picture is out of whack -- people's faces have a strange, anemic purple tint to them. But when I use the grayscale settings posted above, and use your RCP/color settings, my reds are actually "red" for the first time ever and the picture looks very natural. I'm not 100% sure if I'll continue to live with these settings or not (since every set of numbers that I've tried up to this point has ultimately turned me back on to the default Low temp setting), but so far, so good.

I wonder if you can help me understand how the RCP works. My question is this: If you adjust the range/position of a color (red, for example), does that actually shift the red part of the color gamut, or does it simply alter the range of colors that are being adjusted with the "color" and "hue" controls at the bottom of the RCP screen for that color? If it's the latter, what happens to shades of red (for example) that are outside of the selected range?I believe (but am not positive) that it's the latter, which is why I made sure to maximize the ranges on all 6 colors after making sure the position was centered. Certainly just changing position and range with the color and hue values at 0, I never noticed the picture subjectively changing, which I'd think I would have if the position and range controls had any effect on their own. :p

gremmy

10-29-06, 08:08 PM

Could one of you (or more) recommend calibration hardware/software for basic + greyscale calibration for the Pearl? (My last calibration hardware/software was for my JVC G15U...)

Thanks.

Marc

I thought there was an inexpensive product called "Spider" or something like that. I don't know how good it is. Maybe someone can comment.

sage

10-29-06, 09:09 PM

I thought there was an inexpensive product called "Spider" or something like that. I don't know how good it is. Maybe someone can comment.

I have been told, but not verified for myself, that the Spyder is not accurate with front projectors.

usualsuspects

10-29-06, 09:31 PM

I have a spyder2 pro. Can't say it has been of much use to me. The consensus of opinion on the display calibration forum seems to be that low cost colorimeters are not worth much because they are not accurate. Have to agree. I think if your are serious about calibration, you need a calibrated radiospectrometer and the skills to use it. Not cheap. You can rent them, but you have a limited amount of time to use them. I am considering doing this for my Pearl (when it arrives). Perhaps I can get a good weekend rate, that should give me enough time to get familiar with the hardware/software to do some good.

10-30-06, 01:03 AM

Most inexpensive colorimeters don't work with LCOS projectors in particular because of the polarization involved. If you want to see a demonstration of the effect of this, set up the colorimeter so it is reading the light from the projector and display a white pattern. Take a reading. Now rotate the probe a few degrees in the holder (still facing the projector, rotate about the horizontal axis) and take another reading. You'll get very different results.

Progressive Labs has a colorimter that has filtering to prevent this (I worked with them to resolve this issue).

William

mblank

10-30-06, 01:05 AM

Thanks, William. Is SXRD the same as LCOS for the purpose of this discussion?

Marc

Carled

10-30-06, 02:15 AM

Thanks, William. Is SXRD the same as LCOS for the purpose of this discussion?

Marc
SXRD the same as LCOS for the purposes of all discussions. They're the same thing.

sage

10-30-06, 02:53 AM

Bytehoven

10-30-06, 08:05 AM

Progressive Labs has a colorimter that has filtering to prevent this (I worked with them to resolve this issue).

William

I will 2nd the Progressive Labs gear. Cliff at Progressive is very helpful if you run into any install or operational issues. He is also very willing to help with undrestanding some of the more techincal issues of display calibration.

I have the CA-6X system, but I think Cliff said he has a better probe in the works.

Based on my research, unless you can find a used calibration rig, the Progressive Labs systems was the most affordable. Especially since you can "negotiate" a little bit with Clifff. :)

Buying a used system does come with some risk. The probes are effected my humidity and there is no way to be sure the used probe is properly calibrated. Serious calibrators have their probe calibrate atleast once a year. Maybe more often in very humid climates. It might be possible to have a used probe recalibrated as the new owner, but I would confirm this and factor the recalibration costs into your final shopping decision.

edit: May I also note, with the Progressive Labs hardware, you take direct readings. The programs has color shift offsets for the various screens available.

barrygordon

10-30-06, 01:19 PM

Slightly Off Topic,

Does anyone have a copy of the RS232 port protocol spec for the ruby or can point me to where I can get one?

thanks

Victor

10-30-06, 03:36 PM

Slightly Off Topic,

Does anyone have a copy of the RS232 port protocol spec for the ruby or can point me to where I can get one?

thanksHere it is

barrygordon

10-30-06, 04:47 PM

Sorry Victor, but that zip file won't download. Says it can not be found.

barrygordon

10-30-06, 04:49 PM

OOPS, I said Ruby in the request but I did mean Pearl. They might be the same. In any event, Sony finally got back to me with a part number for the manual and I ordered it from Sony Parts so I am probably okay. Thanks

Victor

10-30-06, 04:58 PM

Do you mean "protocol manual" or "service manual"? Service manual for Pearl has schematics and almost nothing else.

barrygordon

10-30-06, 05:22 PM

I meant protocol manual.

For those interested it is Sony Part #988361501 priced at $10.60 US

scaesare

10-31-06, 09:27 AM

Sorry Victor, but that zip file won't download. Says it can not be found.

Try right-click and "Save As". For some reason direct opening of attachments on this forum is borken for me, but saving works.

gremmy

10-31-06, 11:08 AM

Last week, I promised to write a more detailed post describing my foray into the Pearl's 3D gamma settings, so here goes. Before I proceed, let me clarify that this post is for people without calibration equipment who want to take a crack at adjusting the 3D gamma by eye, with the standard disclaimer that:

1) This is dangerous -- you could screw your projector up this way.
2) Proceed at your own risk.
3) I am just an enthusiast like most of you, not a professional, and my advice should be taken as such.

Okay, now on with the good stuff.

Several weeks ago, you may remember that I took a look at the Pearl's internal gray "level" screens and commented that it would be completely impossible for me to adjust the 3D gamma manually. The biggest reason I was afraid to touch the screens is that they appear to be displayed in some strange color temperature that makes calibration difficult -- that, and the fact that it was hard to tell which of the many "shades" of gray on a particular level I should calibrate toward, and which I should calibrate "away from."

But over the following couple of weeks, I started searching for color discontinuity symptoms on live content. It was *hard* to spot, since my discontinuity is really not bad, but if I searched, I could find a slightly greenish tint in the corners and a few vague pink areas near the center of the screen. At first, I thought the problems were just on high IRE shots, but I soon discovered the problem existed on most IREs, but just happened to be more visible on brighter sky shots.

Okay, so back into the 3D gamma menu I went. This time, I was looking to find the "green corners" (that I had seen on live content) on the Pearl's internal gray screens. And I did find them. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a particularly bad problem on level "4" where half of the screen was tinted green.

The first thing I did was start writing down the existing RGB settings for each "location," but I soon discovered that I did not have the patience for it, so I threw caution to the wind and decided not to write them down. This is DANGEROUS -- don't try this at home, kids.

Anyway, I noticed something curious while looking over Sony's previously existing settings. Sony's calibration process had apparently *chosen* to add green to my corners, which is why they were showing up as green. Several users have posted that green should be set to 0 in most locations by default, but this was certainly *not* true on my unit. I did not know if these green corners were by design, or if it was the result of faulty calibration equipment at Sony. But I was going to try to dial them out.

So I started my 3D gamma calibration down on Level 2. I worked slowly, patiently. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and switched to high bulb mode to make the color differences more visible. Slowly, the color discrepencies on the gray screen became more obvious, but still remained somewhat nebulous -- they were just distinguishable enough to detect a green patch here, a pink patch there. I started by removing the "green push" from the corners. Basically, I just lowered the Green (which was set at 2 in my problem areas) back to 0. If the problem was especially noticeable, I pushed a little blue (one click, sometimes 2) into the picture. I worked on one corner at a time, closed my eyes for a few seconds to refresh my perspective, and then looked at the screen again to judge uniformity. Good, I had made an improvement.

Over the course of the next several days, I went through this slow, tedious process on levels 2 through 6. The higher IREs got very tricky to calibrate because of the whacky color temperature of the screens.

Having calirbrated 2 through 6, I can honestly say that the picture has never been more uniform. Is it perfect? No way. Is it improved? Absolutely. For the first time, sky shots show no visible signs of discoloration.

Here are some tips for those who choose to try calibrating 3D gamma on their own:

1) First, mind the disclaimer, above.

2) Focus your efforts on visible discolorations. For the most part, these screens should appear gray, not green or red, and they certainly shouldn't be leaning green on one half and red on another.

3) You will not get these screens perfect by eye -- you need equipment and training for that. Your focus should be on getting the screens "good enough."

4) Make sure you read the article on 3D gamma calibration that was posted earlier in this thread, along with other on-topic posts within this thread.

5) Take your time. Make changes 1 and 2 clicks at a time. Move the crosshairs off the location you just changed to see if you can see the difference. Verify that your changes are moving you in the correct direction before moving on to a different part of the screen.

6) You are working on uniformity on 2 plains at once -- 1) You want the screen to be a uniform shade of gray, and 2) you want the color uniformity of adjacent "levels" to match in every way except for brightness. You can test this by eyeballing Level 2 (for example) and then Level 3 (for example) to verify that the only difference between them is brightness. If you have a green corner on Level 2, but not on level 3, your problem could actually end up being "more" noticeable in certain shots.

7) Make sure you spend time (a couple of hours, maybe) watching lots of live content after you make your changes *before* you decide if you want to save your changes. Pay attention not only to known problem areas, but to many different types of content, both light and dark, color and B&W.

8) You may notice that making a certain part of the screen more uniform will make a discoloration elsewhere on the screen more visible. Be willing to revisit your calibrations over the next couple of weeks to dial out any new issues that you notice.

9) If you're like me, you will likely be amazed at how sensitive your eyes can become to the minute color differences on a gray screen. This is very helpful during calibration, but try not to obsess. Remember, perfection is not attainable without equipment.

Good luck, and happy hunting.

sage

10-31-06, 12:26 PM

Posted this on a separate thread, but be aware that your gamma / shading settings are modal to your iris settings. If you change iris settings, you may need to redo them.

Zues

10-31-06, 12:55 PM

The green corners go back all the way to the rear,front, projection lcd days. However this was only on a black screen on couldnt be seen on a white screen. I've heard of one person adjusting the panels themselves to improve this before, other than that, never heard of any kind of calibration affecting the corner issues. I diddnt study for any color problems when i demoed pearl but im pretty sure i saw green in the right corner. The lcd's usally have them in two corners and sometimes it spreads into the middle of the screen. Again this was only on black screen, white screen never had no problems with any color like pink or green or blue. Somehow i think this all stems back to the lcd attempts which sony could never perfect, if its possible with rgb panels. Add to the more complicated tech of sxrd and its more of a challenge which seems to add further problems which intrude a white screen. IMO it's a rgb panel problem which sony cant perfect. Unlike dlp which show perfect black screen with all corners looking equal, and no colors on a white screen. However you get beautifal rainbows in dark scenes. Take your pick fence sitters. Some great choices out there :rolleyes: :D

HoustonHoyaFan

10-31-06, 01:08 PM

I've heard of one person adjusting the panels themselves to improve this before, other than that, never heard of any kind of calibration affecting the corner issues.
WM has been performing uniformity adjustments on LCOS for a few years now. Starting with DILAs, and more recently Qualias, Rubies, and now likely Pearls.

He has a very exensive automated system consisting IIRC, of a CCD camera and associated custom software he developed.

For the videophile looking for perfect uniformity, WM is clearly the way to go!

gremmy

10-31-06, 01:10 PM

Posted this on a separate thread, but be aware that your gamma / shading settings are modal to your iris settings. If you change iris settings, you may need to redo them.

Excellent point.

Zues

10-31-06, 01:13 PM

WM has been performing uniformity adjustments on LCOS for a few years now. Starting with DILAs, and more recently Qualias, Rubies, and now likely Pearls.

He has a very exensive automated system consisting IIRC, of a CCD camera and associated custom software he developed.

For the videophile looking for perfect uniformity, WM is clearly the way to go!

I know, if he can improve or perfect all white screen thats a no-brainer. I've heard him say though he cant fix green corner issues.

sage

10-31-06, 01:27 PM

I know, if he can improve or perfect all white screen thats a no-brainer. I've heard him say though he cant fix green corner issues.

The corners don't appear to be green at low IREs -- they appear to be, if anything, slghtly blue (which is probably how my low IRE greyscale is leaning). To be more clear: this is a brightness, not a color uniformity issue.

HoustonHoyaFan

10-31-06, 01:33 PM

I know, if he can improve or perfect all white screen thats a no-brainer. I've heard him say though he cant fix green corner issues.
He has posted that he could not fix the corner brightness issue which is present on some Rubies, and I guess Pearls. Where did he post that corner color uniformity issues could not be addressed?

gremmy

10-31-06, 01:42 PM

He has posted that he could not fix the corner brightness issue which is present on some Rubies, and I guess Pearls. Where did he post that corner color uniformity issues could not be addressed?

Houston, be wary of this cat Zues. In my opinion, he knows full-well the difference between brightness uniformity and color uniformity and he just posts stuff like this to see how many people he can get to bite. This is an educated opinion borne out of experience.

Zues

10-31-06, 01:53 PM

Yes be very wary. Also be extremely wary of any calibration advice from gremmy :rolleyes:

Im pretty sure i've seen someone ask wm about green corner issue, and he replied he couldnt fix it. I have a pretty good memory but if it was a brightness issue i could be mistaken.. If wm can say he can get perfect uniformity on a white AND black screen that would be amazing.

Zues

10-31-06, 02:08 PM

The corners don't appear to be green at low IREs -- they appear to be, if anything, slghtly blue (which is probably how my low IRE greyscale is leaning). To be more clear: this is a brightness, not a color uniformity issue.

Light passes through the color panels which is what i believe is why it's almost impossible not to have some rgb in a all black screen. I could be wrong though.

Victor

10-31-06, 02:20 PM

Last week, I promised to write a more detailed post describing my foray into the Pearl's 3D gamma settings, so here goes.
....Thanks!
Could you describe where 3D gamma table 'zones' located on the screen? Is it 8*8 equally spaced matrix or something different?

gremmy

10-31-06, 02:34 PM

Thanks!
Could you describe where 3D gamma table 'zones' located on the screen? Is it 8*8 equally spaced matrix or something different?

I would have to go home and check to be sure, but operating from memory, I believe there are 12 "levels" -- meaning 12 different screens on which to calibrate various IRE levels. Each screen has lots and lots of "locations". I don't recall an exact number, but for some reason a number in the area of 160 comes to mind. Again, I'd have to check to be sure.

The large number of locations in the grid is one of the reasons that this takes so long. But there's lots of calibration flexibility here.

sage

10-31-06, 02:48 PM

Light passes through the color panels which is what i believe is why it's almost impossible not to have some rgb in a all black screen. I could be wrong though.

Yeah, especially because light does not pass through the LCOS panels...

SOWK

10-31-06, 03:13 PM

Thanks!
Could you describe where 3D gamma table 'zones' located on the screen? Is it 8*8 equally spaced matrix or something different?

12 Shading steps

300 points per shading step

SOWK

10-31-06, 03:15 PM

gremmy

10-31-06, 04:02 PM

12 Shading steps

300 points per shading step

Thanks for the clarification.

gremmy

10-31-06, 04:08 PM

Zues -

It was Brightness only. Not green.

But you are correct, he can't fix it.

The post is in my 3D Gamma thread.

-SOWK

Yes, to my knowledge, there is no known fix for those who suffer from the "bright corners" issue.

Zues, on the off chance that you are sincerely seeking answers, I'll offer this. WM's calibration deals with color continuity -- making sure that the 3D gamma levels are calibrated in such a way that each of these is a single, continuous shade of gray. This eliminates color continuity problems, such as the "green corners" that my Pearl had or the pink blob that another forum member had. It is also most helpful for those suffering from the infamous green blob.

So WM's calibration deals with color continuity. It does not handle the "bright corners" issue -- that's a different thing unrelated to WM's calibration and to color continuity in general.

In theory, it might be possible to change light output in the corners by altering red, green, or blue, but the practicality, impact, and possibility of such a thing are very questionable (more like the wonderings of very tired mind) and probably a misuse of the 3D gamma settings.

millerwill

11-01-06, 05:02 PM

What is the best way to connect a laptop to the Pearl, via HDMI or the Input A "HD-Dsub 15 pin cable"?

nathan_h

11-01-06, 05:16 PM

millerwill

11-01-06, 05:25 PM

To display the laptop's screen, or to adjust the gamma of the Pearl using the Sony software? To display the screen, DVI/HDMI offers more resolutions, including the Pearl native resolution, versus VGA, which doesn't.

Thanks. For displaying the screen. Since I have a cable stb and a dvd player to connect via HDMI, I had thought that I might use Input A for my mac laptop and thus not need an HDMI switch. Actually, I don't use the laptop very often on the 'big screen', so I might just unplug the stb or dvd and use one of those HDMI's whenever I want to connect the mac.

CIR-Engineering

11-01-06, 06:43 PM

To use your own test pattern with the the "Gamma" (field uniformity) function instead of the Pearl generated fields; follow the below instructions.

1) enter service menu
2) select "other" menu
3) navigate to "07 Other/Pattern Enb"
4) change value from "1" to "0"

Now you can supply your own test patterns for "Gamma."

Enjoy

craigr

sage

11-01-06, 06:48 PM

SOWK

11-01-06, 09:38 PM

11-02-06, 06:21 PM

Service menu

Gamma menu

There are 12 full frame steps - with 300 points of correction on each

I count 288 points. 18 rows, 16 columns

11-02-06, 06:22 PM

12 Shading steps

300 points per shading step

Not on this projector I have here. Is yours really that different?

CIR-Engineering

11-02-06, 08:57 PM

I count 288 points. 18 rows, 16 columns
wm

That matches my demo unit here.

craigr

SOWK

11-02-06, 09:11 PM

Not on this projector I have here. Is yours really that different?

I'll check mine again

I may have made a mistake

gregr

11-02-06, 09:38 PM

wm
That matches my demo unit here.

And what I wrote in my review,

"The factory calibration should be improved, because the process is too laborious to be done by professional calibrators in the field (there are 36 adjustments at 288 screen positions)."

mblank

11-02-06, 09:47 PM

12 levels * 3 colors * 288 positions

Marc

sage

11-09-06, 02:07 AM

Okay, for those of you taking settings from other folks units and hoping they'll work, I really advise against it. Of course, I'm sure you know this intellectually, but here's some facts for you:

Using Custom 3, my first Pearl was generally plus green and plus blue at high IREs and plus red and plus blue at low IREs. At 10 IRE it was extremely plus blue -- post calibration, it still trends severely plus -- like .030 CIE points.

My replacement Pearl was much plus red and a little plus blue at high IREs and plus blue and green at low IREs. At 10 at is extremely MINUS blue -- it is almost exactly on the opposite side of the d65 point of my first projector.

The settings used to calibrate the two projectors were WILDLY different. Had I used the settings to fix projector 1 on projector 2, I would have ended up with very, very, very pinky whites and green grays. Eeeuch -- I can't imagine a worse way to have your projector set up! I would have ended up much, much better off using the factory settings.

I'd recommend either learning how to use and purchasing professional calibration tools, or hiring an ISF tech.

Sage

Bytehoven

11-09-06, 02:34 AM

sage

11-09-06, 02:36 AM

Sage...

Sometimes when you make the RGB gain/bias changes in the user +/- section rather than in the service menu, the offsets tend to be closer across various projectors. This of course depends on how well each projector is factory calibrated to whatever color temp standard they have chosen.

But your observations are definitely true when speaking about service mode adjustments. That's why it is beneficial for anyone providing their post-calibration RGB settings, to also provide their factory RGB settings.

However, I agree 100% with your conclusion, there is no subsitute to a custom calibration.

RJ
...

I've done all my calibrations in the user menu. Whats the benefit of using the grayscale calibrations in the service menu?

I am definitely going to try the image director s/w. This unit has more coloration at the bottom of the grayscale than I would like to see.

Oh -- thanks for the referal to Progressive Labs. I'm very happy with my CA-6x. Great price, and consistent, repeatable readings.

Bytehoven

11-09-06, 02:48 AM

oliverlim

11-09-06, 07:12 AM

I am deciding on a mount position. I noted that in reviews that the contrast increases at longthrow? What does that mean actually? meaning for a 100inch screen the position can for instance be from 11 to 15 feet. so u will get better contrast at 15 feet rather then 11 feet? or is it the other way round? However this increase contrast ratio is at the expense of brightness right?

Oliver

Ohlson

11-09-06, 07:45 AM

Yes,higher contrast and lower brightness for the longest throw for a particular sized screen.

sage

11-09-06, 02:02 PM

There is no benefit using the service menu over the user RGB controls, unless you run out of adjustment range with the user controls.

The image director software will allow you to tweak the gamma curve, but I'm not sure if this will address your coloration.

Are you refering to gamma shading error, or a overall color shift on the lower end?

If it's the latter, this is could be a result in your calibration effort. If you clarify that is it an over all color shift away from your color temp 6500 line, then we can talk about how you proceeded in your calibration and see where you could make some changes.

This is color shift at low IREs (below 30) and high IREs (above 80). The shading is pretty good.

My understanding is that the image director allows you to set the gamma curve and gamma curve color components with a lot more fineness than than the gain and bias controls. This will allow me to add and subtract blue where I need (and don't need) it.

To calibrate my grayscale, I used window patterns first. I go iteratively back and forth between 80 and 30, and everything inbetween, with the aim of getting ~75 IRE at d65 and ~30 IRE at d66. I then use field patterns to double check, and then go back to window patterns to re-verify. Rinse and repeat.

I was able to get both 30 and 75 within .001 of the D65 point. However, I am slightly (.005) plus blue between about 40 and 60 IRE. I am minus below below 30 and above 80. In other words, my blue spectral response tails off big time at the high and low ends of the IRE range. I have tried a bunch of different settings that get me to D65 at 30 and 75, but they all end up with a variation of what I describe above.

danam

11-09-06, 02:06 PM

here is what I got off my pearl settings :

IRIS AUTO1 / Gamma3 / User3 / Low lamp mode

Brightness : 52
Contrast : 80

Gain :
R : -12
G : -4
B : 4

Offset :
R : -6
G : -4
B : -4

nathan_h

11-09-06, 02:24 PM

here is what I got off my pearl settings :

Brightness : 52
Contrast : 80

Sorry if I missed it. Other than those settings for Brightness and Contrast (which are almost the factory defaults), what if any settings changes did you make?

danam

11-09-06, 05:37 PM

doh I forgot to write down RGB values :D my bad !
I'll post them asap ;) sorry about that.

sage

11-10-06, 02:53 AM

Connecting to the Pearl... who's used the image director s/w to do this?

I picked up a USB to serial adapter, but I can't get my laptop to connect. I tried all the com ports. Should this be a null modem connection? The help file says DB-9 (Reverse) which seems like it MIGHT mean that.

Bytehoven

11-10-06, 06:46 AM

This is color shift at low IREs (below 30) and high IREs (above 80). The shading is pretty good.

1st) Keep in mind there are inherent probe reading errors as you attempt to take readings below 30 IRE. Many of us dial in 30 IRE and do not worry about the tracking below. Some folks calibrate at 20 IRE, but you must be careful to not allow this approach to affect your overall grayscale tracking. Try to be objective and determine if you can really see any color shifts in the lower IRE values, opposed to what the calibration software is telling you. Know what I mean?

2nd) Start with taking readings on a 100 IRE full field pattern. Deternine if it's RED or BLUE your projector lamp runs out of 1st. Once you know which color gets maxed out 1st, drop that color back a couple of clicks and then dial in 6500 at 100 IRE. Calibrating at 80 IRE without consideration for a primary color running out of headroom at higher IRE values is a common mistake. Focus on dialing in the high end 1st, changing the RGB gains, leaving the RGB Bias settings at their factory default. Once you start tweaking the low end, make small changes, frequently checking your higher IRE calibration. I have found the greatest range of adjustment is usually required on the RGB Gains, with smaller tweaks being required to the RGB Biases.

3rd) If the pearl is like other Sony projectors as far as the Gamma track programing, you might consider selecting the factory Gamma 2 setting and calibrating. I found the factory Gamma 2 setting on the HS-51 and 51A provided a nearly flat gamma track post calibration in the 2.2/2.3 range, with just a tad of drift at the very bottom and top. The Image Director software was not able to provide enough control to really address this last little bit of tracking error correction, rather it can be used to create aesthetically pleasing alternate gamma tracks for various programming types.

Now that you have your own gear and can play around, you might consider an alternate calibration approach which works very well on the 51A. The approach is raising the master contrast setting above 80 and then calibrating from 30-100 IRE. This approach definitely provides a flatter grayscale response curve on the 51A, especially in regard to some of the "auto iris video processing" Sony uses to extend/push white levels in scenes with low average luminance values. Sony no doubt is doing things a little differently with the Pearl than they did with the 51A and Ruby, but it might be worth checking out to see if you do gain some overall grayscale tracking linearity. If you do try this alternative, you will probably have to move into the service mode for your RGB Gain/Bias adjustments, because the USER RGB controls will run out of adjustment room. Again, you will want to start with a 100 IRE full field pattern, and find your primary saturation/clipping points, and then calibrate.

RJ
...

barrygordon

11-10-06, 07:15 AM

The RS232 protocol document says the cable is a crossover or reverse cable DB9-DB9.
Pin 5 to Pin 5,
Pin 2 to Pin 3,
Pin 3 to Pin 2
port setting is 38400,n,8,1
no flow control

lovingdvd

11-10-06, 08:34 AM

I saw the description of what controls to use to try and balance the color uniformity in all the different positions. However I did not see a description of how this should be done. Did I miss it? For example, what type of readings to you take with your light meter? Are you guys basically just adjusting GRAYSCALE separately for each position and moving your light meters around the screen? Or are you adjusting the luminance in each screen position (and if so using what measurements as the basis)?

Also FWIW it sounds like the Ruby calibrates much more evenly than the Pearl. On a number of occasions I've dialed in 10-100 IRE at D65 with a dE of 0-3 while also getting 5 IRE to a dE of 8.

Victor

11-10-06, 10:59 AM

sage

11-10-06, 03:54 PM

1st) Keep in mind there are inherent probe reading errors as you attempt to take readings below 30 IRE. Many of us dial in 30 IRE and do not worry about the tracking below. Some folks calibrate at 20 IRE, but you must be careful to not allow this approach to affect your overall grayscale tracking. Try to be objective and determine if you can really see any color shifts in the lower IRE values, opposed to what the calibration software is telling you. Know what I mean?

2nd) Start with taking readings on a 100 IRE full field pattern. Deternine if it's RED or BLUE your projector lamp runs out of 1st. Once you know which color gets maxed out 1st, drop that color back a couple of clicks and then dial in 6500 at 100 IRE. Calibrating at 80 IRE without consideration for a primary color running out of headroom at higher IRE values is a common mistake. Focus on dialing in the high end 1st, changing the RGB gains, leaving the RGB Bias settings at their factory default. Once you start tweaking the low end, make small changes, frequently checking your higher IRE calibration. I have found the greatest range of adjustment is usually required on the RGB Gains, with smaller tweaks being required to the RGB Biases.

3rd) If the pearl is like other Sony projectors as far as the Gamma track programing, you might consider selecting the factory Gamma 2 setting and calibrating. I found the factory Gamma 2 setting on the HS-51 and 51A provided a nearly flat gamma track post calibration in the 2.2/2.3 range, with just a tad of drift at the very bottom and top. The Image Director software was not able to provide enough control to really address this last little bit of tracking error correction, rather it can be used to create aesthetically pleasing alternate gamma tracks for various programming types.

Now that you have your own gear and can play around, you might consider an alternate calibration approach which works very well on the 51A. The approach is raising the master contrast setting above 80 and then calibrating from 30-100 IRE. This approach definitely provides a flatter grayscale response curve on the 51A, especially in regard to some of the "auto iris video processing" Sony uses to extend/push white levels in scenes with low average luminance values. Sony no doubt is doing things a little differently with the Pearl than they did with the 51A and Ruby, but it might be worth checking out to see if you do gain some overall grayscale tracking linearity. If you do try this alternative, you will probably have to move into the service mode for your RGB Gain/Bias adjustments, because the USER RGB controls will run out of adjustment room. Again, you will want to start with a 100 IRE full field pattern, and find your primary saturation/clipping points, and then calibrate.

RJ
...

Thanks -- this is good advice, and I will play around with this, as well as the ID s/w.

Reg. the low IRE settings, I don't trust them very much, but in both cases they confirmed what my eye clearly saw -- a strong drift towards plus blue (deep blue grays) in one case and minus blue in another case (i.e. yelllowish dark grays, particularly objectionable).

The I.D. s/w look isn't as flexible as I would like, as it won't create sophisticated curves, but I should be able to fudge it a bit to track closer to D65 accross the range.

sage

11-10-06, 03:57 PM

It should be a null modem cable. Baud rate should be set to 38400, parity - even

Awesome. Just scrounged and found a null modem adapter. Not sure where the USB --> Serial adapter hides its settings, however.

barrygordon

11-10-06, 06:00 PM

A USB to serial adapter should just look like a com port. So it should show up as one. If it does not then I would think something is wrong. You might want to take a look at the UNTESTED utility program I wrote for the Pearl. It can be found at www.the-gordons.net. I am interested in feedback from someone as to whether it works.

sage

11-11-06, 03:43 AM

Thanks -- this is good advice, and I will play around with this, as well as the ID s/w.

Reg. the low IRE settings, I don't trust them very much, but in both cases they confirmed what my eye clearly saw -- a strong drift towards plus blue (deep blue grays) in one case and minus blue in another case (i.e. yelllowish dark grays, particularly objectionable).

The I.D. s/w look isn't as flexible as I would like, as it won't create sophisticated curves, but I should be able to fudge it a bit to track closer to D65 accross the range.

Null modem adapter worked like a charm on the first try. Dunno why they didn't just say 'null modem'?

The image director tool doesn't allow you to create complex curves, however, it added enough flexibility in adjust individual primary intensity that I was able to dial in my grayscale much more accurately. Very tiny adjustments on the curve translate to large biases in the grayscale, but it's easy to get the hang of.

That said, with a bit of experimenting, it was pretty easy to adjust. I'm now within an error of .001 at 30 and 40 IRE. At 50 IRE I have an error of about .003 towarads green. (I think I can fix this by changing the curve type in the image director, although it's on the very edge of perception). I'm then under .001 from 60 to 90 IRE. At 100 IRE I'm about +.003 blue. I can't measure very accurately at 20 IRE, but my measurements seem to average at about + .005 to +.010 towards blue (it's enough to make the 10 IRE pattern look 'blue' so I don't really care).

I actually impressed myself with how closely I got this. Watched the HD DVD of Backdraft, it just looked terrific. The many dark / contrasty scenes kept really neutral and accurate looking colors even as they dipped towards black. It looked terrific. (Other than the red fringing around white on black objects due to the less-than-stellar convergence of this unit. Sigh. I wish I could just buy 5 and return 4...).

Sage

mike_digital

11-11-06, 06:08 PM

hi all,

some people here were talking about "DDE" and "NR" setting for their pearls.
especially the dde function sounds interesting...

then i looked at my menue and there were none of the above menue entries where they should be ! normally, dde and nr are located between "sharpness" and "black level adj." but.....nada :eek: :confused:
so, what could be the reason for this ? older firmware ? (got mine on 31st of octobre. so i'm sure i got one of the first units here in europe...)

greetz,

mike

danam

11-11-06, 06:24 PM

the DDE option appears only on certain circumstances, like HDMI input selected and 1080i60/50 I think but not sure.

mike_digital

11-11-06, 06:40 PM

hi again,

@danam

would be a good point !

--> i have a vantage-hd (via hdmi) between my pearl and the rest of my equipment. that may be the reason...?

cheers,

mike

danam

11-11-06, 06:44 PM

I remember seeing the DDE option not showing up but can't think of why !?
right now I'm heading to bed, almost 1 am here.
I'll try to check it out tomorrow ! (need to check couple other things for another french message boards fellas-pearl-owners)

Victor

11-13-06, 11:25 AM

DDE options appear only when input with interlaced signal is selected

RobZ

11-13-06, 11:14 PM

Victor

11-13-06, 11:29 PM

What is the best image to use for checking panel alignment on the Pearl being that 1080 DVE or similar have not been released yet? How long prior should the projector run prior to checking the panel alignment?
Any image with thin white lines will do the job. The best are images in native 1080p/i format. Pearl menu is one of them. I don't think alignment will change over reasonable period of time.

Digital2004

11-15-06, 07:40 AM

hi
what settings do you have to maximize the brigthness with good CRatio ?
thanks
dynamic-auto1-c:90 b:60 lamp: full ?

Digital2004

11-15-06, 07:41 AM

question : can a more powerful lamp be installed in the PEARL ?.... :)
without damaging circuits, panels, etc

audioguy

11-15-06, 08:00 AM

Has any one done an A/B of the Pearl with and without a processor -- specifically the Crystalio II but any would be helpful. Subjectively, what percent improvement (if any) did you notice?

CIR-Engineering

11-15-06, 04:59 PM

Has any one done an A/B of the Pearl with and without a processor -- specifically the Crystalio II but any would be helpful. Subjectively, what percent improvement (if any) did you notice?
I have had a demo Pearl here that I've been working with for about two weeks. The first week was without a video processor, the second has been with a Lumagen HDQ. The scaler in the Pearl isn't great and I think the Lumagen really helps. Especially with IVTC and 48Hz for film based sources.

criagr

Digital2004

11-15-06, 06:13 PM

Anyone noticed sometimes weird faces colors, especially light actors' faces ? as if the tint wasnt constant.

any idea ?

nathan_h

11-15-06, 06:35 PM

Does this happen in certain parts of the screen and not others? Could be the so-called gamma shading non-uniformity that some people are talking about?

Victor

11-15-06, 06:38 PM

Anyone noticed sometimes weird faces colors, especially light actors' faces ? as if the tint wasnt constant.

any idea ?Pearl out of box "calibration" is pretty bad. After setting grey scale and primaries where they suppose to be flesh tones look much better. Also I noticed that flesh tones have much more variety then on my direct view.

Digital2004

11-15-06, 06:51 PM

i have to do further tests. probably linked to color shading/ gamma...

note: I also say that LCOS/DILA dont have the same depth-colors "snap" of DLP. (though DLP has dithering etc).

CIR-Engineering

11-16-06, 11:40 AM

Anyone noticed sometimes weird faces colors, especially light actors' faces ? as if the tint wasnt constant.

any idea ?
This has to do with the out of box calibration and is not a direct symptom of field uniformity error (though field uniformity can aggravate the issue). The awkward flesh tones can be fixed up pretty nicely if you have the right calibrator do the work, though you can not make the Pearl ever be technically correct.

A Lumagen video processor has certain functions that will dramatically help with this situation (and others) as well. I have spent the better part of the last two weeks perfecting my skills on the Pearl and Pearl plus Lumagen combo. The difference at this point is 100% better then out of box.

That being said, on the Pearl there are always going to be some situations where something doesn't look quite right. It's more a matter of balancing things out and making it look its best most of the time. The Pearl (nor the Ruby) are capable of achieving a technically correct image. They can be excellent looking projectors, just not always perfect.

craigr

usualsuspects

11-16-06, 12:00 PM

I have spent the better part of the last two weeks perfecting my skills on the Pearl and Pearl plus Lumagen combo. The difference at this point is 100% better then out of box.

I have the Pearl + Lumagen HDQ combo. I got my Pearl a week ago today, and other than setting the black and white levels and output resolution on the HDQ I have not done any real calibration yet. I am staring to be bothered by the less than ideal out of the box Pearl settings, would you be so kind as to share the major calibration changes you made? I know each Pearl is different, and everyone has a different setup, but hopefully it will point me in the right direction. Thanks!

Oh, I have the Spyder 2 Pro and will attempt to use that for some calibration, but I did not have too much luck using it on my old projector.

CIR-Engineering

11-16-06, 12:19 PM

Pearl out of box "calibration" is pretty bad. After setting grey scale and primaries where they suppose to be flesh tones look much better. Also I noticed that flesh tones have much more variety then on my direct view.
No.

I agree that reducing dE will improve the situation, but there is no way to fix the primaries. You can make the primaries and secondary fall within the proper x and y locations in the color gamut, but their brightness is still not correct. You are not really fixing the primaries.

The RCP function in the Pearl is only allowing one to reduce the luminosity of a given color; it does not actually move the coordinates in three dimensional space. When you "correct" a color with RCP you are only reducing the brightness of said color.

Furthermore, even with the range fully extended for each color in RCP, and with each color's "position" centered, the RCP does not affect the entire gamut. ALL colors in the gamut aren't being altered by RCP.

Below are two photographs I took of a color gamut being projected by the Pearl. The first is with RCP turned off. As can be seen, the gamut is full and even. The second photo is with RCP turned on, all color "positions" centered, and all color "saturations" reduced to -50 (the minimum). If RCP were affecting the entire color gamut then the gamut should be black and white with all saturations reduced to their minimum. But the gamut is not black and white (only parts of it are), and there are “holes” in RCP’s range where color still exists.

RCP Off
http://www.cir-engineering.com/bin/pearl/rcp_off_small.jpg

RCP On: all RCP "saturations" at -50
http://www.cir-engineering.com/bin/pearl/rcp_on_small.jpg

I know that you might think the primaries are correct, but they aren't. At first I thought I was fixing the primaries as well. I can make the Pearl appear to be correct technically as in the image I captured from my ColorFacts with PR-650 below.

http://www.cir-engineering.com/bin/pearl/CIE_Calibrated.jpg

However, this is only a parlor trick. After "fixing" the primaries, look at the entire image and you will see that nothing is correct. Colors are missing, are too dim, and the image looks more like Technicolor then what it should be.

Furthermore, if you have experience in calibration, then you know what a color bars pattern should look like when properly calibrated. Look at a color bars pattern after “fixing” the primaries and you will see that blue is far too dark as well as red and green, and all the colors.

Also, since RCP has holes within it’s range, some colors will still fall outside the boundaries of the Rec 709 color gamut even when the primary and secondary colors appear to be on target (but again they aren’t anyway). If you have AVIAPro, you can verify this by taking measurements of the colors in their “Gamut” test pattern. You will observe colors that are not directly on the primary or secondary coordinates still fall outside the gamut. Inversely, you will observe that many colors inside the gamut are at the incorrect coordinates.

Try playing with RCP while displaying a color gamut on the screen and the point becomes readily apparent. Greg Rogers noted this exactly in his review of the Pearl as well. Greg stated “I hoped that the RCP function would allow the primary colors to be set to the Rec. 709 and Rec. 601 standards, but that was not the case because it doesn’t provide independent brightness and saturation adjustments for the colors.” He is absolutely correct, and you can not properly align the primaries no matter what you do with the native Pearl service and / or user menus.

One future option will be the Lumagen Radiance processor. It is going to offer chromacity calibration functions for digital displays that mix colors to correct primaries. But for now, we can make these sets look really good with what we have; they just aren't going to be perfect.

The Pearl is a very nice projector for $5,000.00 but you can't expect the world at that price. It’s a darn good projector so please enjoy it. It can be difficult not to obsess over such things, but I promise that you are better off just letting it ride for the moment ;)

craigr

11-16-06, 12:27 PM

That being said, on the Pearl there are always going to be some situations where something doesn't look quite right. It's more a matter of balancing things out and making it look its best most of the time. The Pearl (nor the Ruby) are capable of achieving a technically correct image. They can be excellent looking projectors, just not always perfect.

Nothing is ever "perfect" but I expect we can get this projector pretty close, given all the adjustments available.

There is more to this projector's calibration than what can be adjusted from the remote control. It has an internal LUTs for "gamma", with 512 steps of adjustment in RGB (3 tables), and it has Uniformity tables. A full calibration of this projector would involve proper adjustment of these, which I expect will produce a very flat gray scale and good uniformity.

William

CIR-Engineering

11-16-06, 12:51 PM

I suspect that you are correct William. However, as it stands today, this projector's color can not be properly corrected from a technical standpoint. People think they are aligning the primaries, but they aren't ;)

I also agree... nothing is ever perfect :p

craigr

Victor

11-16-06, 05:00 PM

Nothing is ever "perfect" but I expect we can get this projector pretty close, given all the adjustments available.

There is more to this projector's calibration than what can be adjusted from the remote control. It has an internal LUTs for "gamma", with 512 steps of adjustment in RGB (3 tables), and it has Uniformity tables. A full calibration of this projector would involve proper adjustment of these, which I expect will produce a very flat gray scale and good uniformity.

WilliamThanks William, can you share more info about gamma LUT/Uniformaity access? I found so far only 64 points 10bit gamma "table".

Victor

Digital2004

11-17-06, 12:05 PM

Craigr
very very interesting
bottom line: better leave RCP off at this stage ?

madpoet

11-17-06, 12:40 PM

Digital2004

11-17-06, 01:05 PM

try the CALIBRE VANTAGE . realta chip and powerful mosquito noise reducer

still would like a bit better reds with my Pearl. anyone has a recommendation ?

danam

11-17-06, 01:58 PM

I just edited my infos : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8856381&&#post8856381

Finally managed to connect the Pearl with my laptop but I don't how to use the Image Director tool provided with the Pearl.
Any tutorial available ?

Victor

11-17-06, 06:17 PM

No.

I agree that reducing dE will improve the situation, but there is no way to fix the primaries. You can make the primaries and secondary fall within the proper x and y locations in the color gamut, but their brightness is still not correct. You are not really fixing the primaries.
Thanks a lot for this very useful info!

drapp1952

11-25-06, 09:31 PM

still would like a bit better reds with my Pearl. anyone has a recommendation ?Did you try reducing red brightness a bit in RCP? That's what Greg Rogers recommended in his WSR review, along with using wide mode. I have mine at -5 and it works to reduce too-bright reds.

Dan

RobZ

11-25-06, 10:09 PM

I've noticed that when watching SD DVD on my HDA1 & Pearl, I need to reduce red brightness in RCP. With HD DVD, there is no need to reduce the red much.

Fix

11-29-06, 10:15 AM

danam :

How did you messure this ?

gremmy

11-29-06, 11:33 AM

Guys, I'm pretty sure that the RCP does not allow you to adjust the brightness of the colors. Rather, you are adjusting their saturation.

The only way to adjust the brightness of the colors is to toggle from the Wide Color Space to the Normal one, which will apply pre-set brightness filters on red and blue. See GregR's review in WR for more information.

drapp1952

11-29-06, 12:10 PM

I'll quote from Greg's Pearl review: "I hoped that the RCP function would allow the primary colors to be set to the Rec. 709 and Rec. 601 standards, but that was not the case because it doesn't provide independent (italics mine) brightness and saturation adjustments for the colors."

Earlier in the review he noted that brightness is often confused with saturation, with saturation being how far from the D65 reference a color point is. We see this in gamut triangles when the color points are outside those boundaries for a given standard, 601 or 701, e.g..

Brightness is in another CIE axis than the two dimensional one of a gamut triangle and Greg equates it with intensity.

He notes the Wide mode on the Pearl produces the correct color brightness according to the standard color decoder equations while the Normal mode reduces the intensity of the red primary most significantly, and blue and green less.

Finally, Greg notes that the Pearl's primaries are more saturated - extending outside the CIE gamut for Rec. 601 or 709 standards - and fleshtones occasionally appeared too red. He writes, "A good alternative to reducing the Color saturation setting, which affects all colors, is to lower the intensity (I'm adding parenthetically here again that intensity=brightness) of the red primary slightly, using the RCP function."

If I read this wrong, Greg, please correct!

Dan

gregr

11-29-06, 02:30 PM

danam

11-29-06, 02:36 PM

danam :

How did you messure this ?

I'm using a french DIY colorimeter with its software developped by a french message board team : http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre/

gremmy

11-29-06, 02:39 PM

I'm still pretty sure that the RCP allows for saturation adjustment, not brightness adjustment.

If this is wrong, GregR, please let me know.

SgtPepper

11-29-06, 02:52 PM

I'm using a french DIY colorimeter with its software developped by a french message board team : http://www.homecinema-fr.com/colorimetre/

This is the thread for the HCFR software and colorimeter: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=737550

danam

11-29-06, 03:08 PM

:D didn't know you guys were talking about it here ;)
it's pretty efficient.

mblank

11-29-06, 04:44 PM

gremmy

11-29-06, 04:54 PM

WHOA!

So I have a pronounced uniformity issue, green -> red, from left to right on my Pearl, visible mainly at high IRE. For fun, I went to the service menu and the gamma table.

On EVERY row (top to bottom) at level 9, red starts at about -17 and moves up to 37 going from left to right. Green is always zero, and blue varies quite a bit. Well, that sure might explain something, huh?

Does that scound screwy to anyone else?

BTW, what are the "factory" settings for the Engine settings (just two of them)?

Marc

Your experiences sound very similar to mine. I had pronounced green corners, and my 3D gamma settings were showing an increase of green in all four corners as well. Basically, the problem with my Pearl is that the factory 3D gamma calibration was pretty screwed up. The good news is that if you are patient, you can VASTLY improve your picture by changing the 3D gamma tables slowly and carefully.

As far as the engine settings, one of them turns OFF 3D gamm adjustment (try this out and just watch how screwed up your picture becomes) and the other one leaves it turned on. In my opinion (and I'm just guessing), turning off 3D gamma is probably NOT the same thing as setting all values to zero. I could be wrong, though.

mblank

11-29-06, 05:00 PM

I sure wish there were an automated tool that could read/write settings in the table.

Marc

barrygordon

11-29-06, 05:44 PM

Victor

11-29-06, 06:05 PM

If sony has the RS232 codes to do this they are not publishing the fact in thier RS232 protocol document. Might be in thier service manual though. If they exist and someone gets me them, I will provide the capability in the RS232 software I wrote for the Pearl. Will take me about 1-2 days once I have the infoAccording to the service manual, part of an optical assembly replacement procedure is loading 3d gamma table from floppy(?) that comes with new assembly using 3dgamma quick access tool ver 6.8. I doubt that Sony sets 3d gamma manually at the factory also :)
Codes are not in the service manual.

barrygordon

11-29-06, 06:36 PM

Well the only connection to the Pearl is through the RS232 port. Ergo it is possible to do. If Sony would only tell me (someone) what to send over the port to load/save (may not be able to save), I will write the code. If someone has the floppy and the software to run on the PC I could sniff out the RS232 traffic.

Digital2004

11-29-06, 11:52 PM

hi
boosting RGB (not via RCP !) levels made a hell of a difference in color saturation and image 3D depth. huge. CRT-like.
texture density is really improved. this pj needs a quick in its RGB but :D

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 12:33 AM

I'm still pretty sure that the RCP allows for saturation adjustment, not brightness adjustment.
I agree. In my experience, the "RCP Color" setting affects the saturation of the selected color. Basically, as you reduce the value, the selected color becomes less saturated (i.e., closer to a shade of gray). It might also have a slight effect on the brightness of the selected color, but I have not noticed any such effect.

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 12:36 AM

boosting RGB (not via RCP !) levels made a hell of a difference in color saturation and image 3D depth.
Are you referring to the RGB Gain settings (for custom color temperature), or something else?

ddingle

11-30-06, 12:36 AM

We just stacked two Pearls and fed them both an HDMI signal from a Gefen distribution amp.
The screen is a Screen Research 54 by 96 Clearpix fixed.
It took maybe a 30 minutes to converge them using the shift and zoom controls,but other than some very minor problems in one corner it worked perfectly. The highest resolution patterns may have been slightly compromised,but not enought to notice.
If we ever do an final installation,critical mounting would hopefully improve the match.
At any rate after a quick set up the results are great! About as good as I have ever seen front projection. It seemed more life like with the increased brightness? At least the first impression. Covering one projector made the image look "dim" in comparison.
A Qualia with better blacks??
Just having fun,but we may try it as a replacement for an aging Sony DLP front projector on a monster perf screen.

gregr

11-30-06, 01:04 AM

I agree. In my experience, the "RCP Color" setting affects the saturation of the selected color. Basically, as you reduce the value, the selected color becomes less saturated (i.e., closer to a shade of gray). It might also have a slight effect on the brightness of the selected color, but I have not noticed any such effect.
The RCP color setting shifts both saturation and brightness. Turn down the RCP Color for red and what happens? Measure the red brightness as you turn it down. Look at the color bars. What do you see happening to red in the color bars? It gets dark.

gremmy

11-30-06, 01:09 AM

The RCP color setting shifts both saturation and brightness. Turn down the RCP Color for red and what happens? Measure the red brightness as you turn it down. Look at the color bars. What do you see happening to red in the color bars? It gets dark.

Well that's interesting. The control is actually labled "saturation," from what I recall, so I guess that means it's mislabled in the RCP, which is not entirely surprising.

Does it adjust both the saturation and the brightness evenly?

However it works, it seems very clunky to me.

gregr

11-30-06, 01:26 AM

Well that's interesting. The control is actually labled "saturation," from what I recall, so I guess that means it's mislabled in the RCP, which is not entirely surprising.

Does it adjust both the saturation and the brightness evenly?

However it works, it seems very clunky to me.
As I recall (I no longer have a Pearl) it is labeled "RCP Color" and the term saturation is never used in the RCP controls, i.e. it is the same as the Ruby (the Ruby manual is on line - I don't think the Pearl manual has been on line.)

Read my Yamaha DPX-1300 review to see how to do a color management system right. Also read my Sharp XV-Z20000 review (posted Friday) to see another good CMS function.

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 09:36 AM

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 09:41 AM

Well that's interesting. The control is actually labled "saturation," from what I recall, so I guess that means it's mislabled in the RCP, which is not entirely surprising.
The control is labeled "RCP Color." See the attached image from the Pearl's user manual.

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 09:49 AM

I don't think the Pearl manual has been on line.
The Pearl's user manual has been online since early October at esupport.sony.com (http://esupport.sony.com/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=VPLVW50).

gremmy

11-30-06, 02:52 PM

The control is labeled "RCP Color." See the attached image from the Pearl's user manual.

Yeah, I figured I was wrong about that after Greg corrected me.

Digital2004

11-30-06, 03:00 PM

Are you referring to the RGB Gain settings (for custom color temperature), or something else?

yes

i had an HD10K for a week. what stunned me was the saturation, CRT-like image of the HD10K with blu ray (HTPC).

i jumped back on my Pearl and boosted the RGB (color temp user) accordingly.
much much better now. and it adds tremendously on the depth and "relief".

CRT is often praised for its constrast. sorry , what really strikes with a good CRT is :
color saturation
no structure (i talk of 8 or 9" with tripling or quadrupling of lines)
lots of depth because of........ absence of structure (100% fill factor) and color saturation

DILA technology allows that but it needed a boost in contrast, 2K and color saturation. it's amazing now.

and the technology is CLEAN: no added noise, no motion dithering !

DLP still has a slightly the edge in ansi contrast but that's all. even DLP sharpness is so depending on the optics. (an Pdesign being much sharper than a Benq for instance)

gregr

11-30-06, 07:39 PM

The Pearl's user manual has been online since early October at esupport.sony.com (http://esupport.sony.com/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=VPLVW50).
Thanks Erik. I didn't know the manual was there.

Erik Garci

11-30-06, 10:49 PM

i jumped back on my Pearl and boosted the RGB (color temp user) accordingly.
I'm still not sure what you mean. What adjustments did you make to the color temperature?

Typically, the color temperature controls are used to calibrate the grayscale to D65. They also affect the hues of the secondaries (cyan, yellow, magenta). I don't see how they would affect the saturation of colors.

Fix

12-03-06, 07:38 AM

I wonder if there are any "good" settings to start with.
Like, Gamma 3, Auto Iris 1 etc etc...

nathan_h

12-03-06, 08:15 PM

Several are discussed in this thread, and in the reviews in Widescreen Review. In fact, there are some detailed results, as well, here.

I recommend against using the settings in Perfect Vision (avguide.com site) article since they seemed to not use the dynamic iris, which hurt their contrast and shadow detail, and they managed to hurt high-frequency response for 1080i sources.

Paulidan

12-03-06, 08:24 PM

from my experience, there was such a difference between the OOTB images between the two units i've had, that I would feel little confidence in using any given settings to achieve even a ballpark result.
The second unit I got, which I still have, was almost perfect out of the box whereas with the first unit, while it appeared to be spot on according to the Avia tests, I was just never able to dial in the picture to a satisfying degree.
I think this may have been the result of the uniformity problems being severe enough to actually be noticeable on color scenes as well.

drapp1952

12-06-06, 12:42 PM

I have a couple of questions about the 3D Gamma correction process for color non-uniformity. In the service menu there is an option for choosing external sources rather than the "Level" choices in gamma. I did this and used the GetGray calibration DVD as external source to attempt to do the 3D Gamma adjustments, but that didn't work. The cursor moves about and level, position, R, G, B menus were visible but changes in the latter weren't translated to the screen, and I was using approximate "Level" choices to match a given %stim field from GetGray. Changes were visible when reverting back to the Levels generated by the Pearl.

Also as noted elsewhere, the color temp of the Level screens is not near 6500K, but more like ~8300 Kelvin according to a couple of reads with a Spyder2 and DTP-94 colorimeters. I guess Sony did this to gibe with their factory probe color uniformity check/correction system, such as it is.

So my questions are:

1) What is the way to get the "Level" RGB changes to be manifested when using external sources that are closer to 6500K?

2) Can someone verify that the ~8300K temp is consistent across all Levels in the Sony gamma menu? It would be weird if it weren't but I just want to check. If so, one could simply use this temp across all the levels as the reference to correct panel non-uniformity. This is what I've chosen to do so far.

It'd be great if a software interface could have the option of choosing "areas" or a bunch of contiguous positions of a given Level for mass changes, or even have the option of moving directly up and down columns of positions rather than having to move across rows of them.

Dan

gremmy

12-06-06, 01:12 PM

but changes in the latter weren't translated to the screen, and I was using approximate "Level" choices to match a given %stim field from GetGray. Changes were visible when reverting back to the Levels generated by the Pearl.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, since I had planned on trying the same thing. Have you tried experimenting with various IREs to see if you can find one where the changes are manifested on screen?

Since IRE is relative, I wonder if maybe this would help. I can't imagine why we wouldn't be able to see changes manifest on-screen using our own patterns, since changes made using the internal 3Dgamma screens do indeed manifest on white-fields fed via standard content.

12-06-06, 02:09 PM

Victor

12-06-06, 02:27 PM

Dan,
The level will be different for each primary color for a given "3d gamma" level. This is one of my biggest complaints about how Sony chose to do this. It would have made more sense to have the uniformity tables in a different order in the signal processing path.
Isn't 3D gamma table last in that order as it's suppose to be?

12-06-06, 02:31 PM

Isn't 3D gamma table last in that order as it's suppose to be?

Who defines "supposed to be"? I prefer JVC's design.

gremmy

12-06-06, 02:33 PM

Dan,

The level will be different for each primary color for a given "3d gamma" level.
William

Wow. Doesn't this make calibration virtually impossible to do by eye?

Using Sony's internal patterns, I've been able to successfully dial out my green corners by eye. But that might be due to the fact that the problem was virtually identical on all IREs. Now that I've only got a few problem spots, I'm finding it much harder to make progress. Maybe this is why.

Victor

12-06-06, 02:36 PM

Also as noted elsewhere, the color temp of the Level screens is not near 6500K, but more like ~8300 Kelvin according to a couple of reads with a Spyder2 and DTP-94 colorimeters. It looks close to the native Pearl white point (maximum reflection from all panels). 3d gamma suppose to be adjusted at native white points, not whatever user will decide to be correct one, because D65 will represent different panel operation points for 3 PJ panels.

Victor

12-06-06, 02:41 PM

Wow. Doesn't this make calibration virtually impossible to do by eye?

Using Sony's internal patterns, I've been able to successfully dial out my green corners by eye. But that might be due to the fact that the problem was virtually identical on all IREs. Now that I've only got a few problem spots, I'm finding it much harder to make progress. Maybe this is why.If you are changing only one of the color channels (for example green) at a time it should not be a problem

Victor

12-06-06, 02:49 PM

Who defines "supposed to be"? I prefer JVC's design.
How is it designed by JVC?
IMHO, 3D gamma is panel only property, so it should be adjusted right before the signal goes to the panel driver, this way we will have ideal "virtual panel". Also keeping in mind that Sony calibrates optical assemblies at the factory and ships 3d gamma data with each optical assembly, it looks like the only possible way for them to avoid recalibration of 3d gamma after installing assembly into PJ and after each change of gain/bias, iris and gamma settings.

drapp1952

12-06-06, 03:11 PM

Dan,

If you select external patterns you need to find the correct signal level for each shading level. If you aren't seeing any change it's because the signal level is wrong.

The level will be different for each primary color for a given "3d gamma" level. This is one of my biggest complaints about how Sony chose to do this. It would have made more sense to have the uniformity tables in a different order in the signal processing path.

It may be possible to "equalize" the levels with the "Gain" controls. I have not tested this yet.

WilliamThanks for this response. I did attempt to match the signal level (DVD generated input) to the Sony "Level" but that didn't seem to make a difference; there was no delta change whatsoever regardless of what degree of cut or gain I applied to R, B, or G. Similar adjustments are readily visible on the comparable Sony gamma Level.

All that said, I'll try matching Sony Levels to external ones again to make sure I didn't miss a step somewhere, including going back and retry the "Other" service menu option for external sources

William, I'll look for external source primary fields as that would be ideal as you outlined in an earlier post. Would unplugging 2 of 3 component cables for each primary while inputting 10% gray fields (assuming I could get the DVD source to work) suffice?

Alternatively, as far as you know are the Sony-provided Levels consistent in color temp?

BTW, for those who missed it, I'll again reference Steve Smallcombe's basic description of the process with a Sony 10HT. Comments and variations as they relate to the Pearl are welcome.

http://home.pacbell.net/steve367/gamma.html

Dan

drapp1952

12-06-06, 03:16 PM

It looks close to the native Pearl white point (maximum reflection from all panels). 3d gamma suppose to be adjusted at native white points, not whatever user will decide to be correct one, because D65 will represent different panel operation points for 3 PJ panels.And I assume that native white point will be the same at different Levels (as in Levels in the service Gamma menu.) Another hopefully straightforward and obvious way to state it would be that only brightness is altered with each Level, right?

Dan

Victor

12-06-06, 03:39 PM

And I assume that native white point will be the same at different Levels (as in Levels in the service Gamma menu.) Another hopefully straightforward and obvious way to state it would be that only brightness is altered with each Level, right?

DanOnly if R, G and B panels are identical, including having the same temperature.

12-06-06, 03:59 PM

1) set user mode Bias and Gain to zero, and set service mode Bias and Gain to 128 for all 3 colors if you want the levels to track for all 3 colors. (record original values first, of course)

2) determine correct signal level - I "spike" the data and observe the level at which the maximum effect occurs. With Bias and Gain set as above this appears to be the same for all 3 colors. It is easier to observe negative spikes at higher signal levels.

3) do not adjust for D65. Measure the center and adjust the rest to match if you want to take that approach.

4) it appears that Sony has chosen to adjust only Blue and Red, leaving Green at all zeros. I have no idea why, since Green uniformity meaures as far off as any of them. I get around 23%, with a very noticeable bright area in the center and brighter at top than bottom.

I believe the correct approach is to adjust for uniformity in each color, as I have done with other LCOS based projectors. This includes adjusting green. This is probably difficult to do with a simple measuring device such as a colorimeter.

I definitely observe changes corresponding to my adjustments with external patterns. If you aren't, the input signal level is wrong. If you have not adjusted the Bias and Gain as above, there are some levels, in particular in Green, that you cannot display.

Level 10 appears to correspond to an input signal of 255 (PC level, not Video) with Contrast set to 84(!).

If you want it done right, you'll need to send it to me (shameless plug). When I'm ready, that is...

William
(edited to fix typo)

12-06-06, 04:06 PM

Alternatively, as far as you know are the Sony-provided Levels consistent in color temp?

No idea - I don't use the internal test patterns and have no reason to measure them. It's worth checking to see if they are affected by the Bias/Gain adjustments or not.

Grayscale will also be affected by the LUTs, both user and internal. Therefore if you are using a colorimeter to adjust uniformity, I suggest you measure the center of the screen as a reference for each level. Do not adjust the center in any color.

Do not Save until you are sure you have it right. If you end up with a mess, power the projector off and the changes *should* be gone. Of course I would take a backup first...

drapp1952

12-06-06, 04:09 PM

William, the sooner you're up and running for Pearl service, the better. You may be rolling on the floor laughing when you get my Pearl after what I'll have done to it. Actually, it looks far better after my so-far clumsy efforts.

Thanks for the instructions. I will be getting an i1 soon and I trust I'll then be measuring more accurately.

Dan

Garman

12-07-06, 01:22 AM

wm/drapp1952: I might be picking your brain later on setup, I just ordered a Pearl via
local dealer, they had a price I couldn't refuse and I can't wait around for the JVC RS1. Dan interesting to see that page you posted was on the 10HT which I had years ago, Don Munsil had a extensive page and setup on that unit which was very useful. Thanks for the good information guys..

wm: are you certified ISF? If so are you a traveling one ;)

drapp1952

12-07-06, 03:35 PM

This is an update regarding the external source issue for uniformity correction. William, your prompting was again helpful and assessment correct. My external source was working; I simply had not matched the external stim % with the correct Sony Level. With the GetGray DVD 10% gray fields I get something like the following:

Sony Level Stimulus %
9-10-----------------100
8--------------------90
7-8------------------80
7--------------------70
6-7------------------60
6--------------------50
5-6------------------40
4--------------------30
3--------------------20
2-3------------------20
1--------------------10

Even these are approximations as the overlap and imperfect fit complicates things a bit. I got pretty good red uniformity so far using the red filter that came with AVIA. Reiterative visits to neighboring Levels and external source stim levels is needed to check overlapping effects from one stim% level's corrections to another.

William, thanks again.

Dan

Linux23

12-23-06, 09:02 PM

Just a quick Calibration question for you guys.

1) When using Avia DVD on the the Toshiba HD-A1, do you set Enhanced Black on the player or do you leave it at normal Black?

2) Calibration: Should it be done with the Iris in Manual mode set to fully open? I've never calibrated a display device with an Iris before.

3) Since I have misplaced my manual, when you are making settings, do you basically switch to User mode first, then make your setting changes, or do you keep it in Cinema mode, etc and once the changes are made, you save them to a user preset?

Garman

12-23-06, 09:42 PM

Pearl in the House...... Can someone direct me or post some good general settings for this projector. Out ot the box this one isn't bad, but some tweeking is always needed of course when it comes to any TV....

Also any decent settings in the factory settings I could try.. eventually we have a local ISF tech that I will be calling.

Anyone could direct me to good general setting for the Pearl:

Or any factory settings that would be good:

Thanks again for any help, and Happy Holidays!!!

ddingle

12-24-06, 09:48 AM

At some point gregr mentioned reading at 10 ire and below. I agree that the darkest part of the gray scale has the biggest effect on the image. I normally try to get 20 or lower close and then try to get the rest as close as possible without damaging the low IRE results.
Hey Greg are you using your Philips analyzer for the lower readings? I still have mine, although it probably needs to be re -certified. It is very sensitive at low ire.
In addition UMR is using a different software and Eye one probe to read directly from the projector. The increased output allows for more accurate low IRE readings.

Robbo

12-24-06, 10:53 AM

Can someone direct me or post some good general settings for this projector.

Post #1 in this thread is a good place to start (just focus on the top and bottom of the thread which gives several users settings--I'd ignore the service menu for now).

adrian27

12-29-06, 07:17 AM

Linux23

12-29-06, 11:13 AM

usualsuspects

12-31-06, 12:50 PM

Has anyone enter in the service menu in "OTHER" and change the default values on IRIS:0 to:1, I do, and I get an image noticeable brightest, can this setting cause a damage?, please any advice or suggestion

Thanks in advance

I'd like to know what exactly this setting does also. If you change the Iris control from zero to one you get a huge jump in light output. So much brighter that I have to go from high to low lamp mode.

S Varney

01-01-07, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by adrian27
Has anyone enter in the service menu in "OTHER" and change the default values on IRIS:0 to:1, I do, and I get an image noticeable brightest, can this setting cause a damage?, please any advice or suggestion

Thanks in advance

I'd like to know what exactly this setting does also. If you change the Iris control from zero to one you get a huge jump in light output. So much brighter that I have to go from high to low lamp mode.

There was a service menu function on the Ruby that increased light output... could this be the same control on the Pearl?

I'm not brave enough to try it on my Pearl until others have lived with it for a bit of time; but I bet this only causes the iris to open wider. Could there be heat issues though?

Erik Garci

01-03-07, 06:07 PM

Thus far, my experience tells me that you have to make a choice between shadow detail and deep blacks with this projector.
I recently discovered a way to tweak the shadow detail near black and still have a deep black. It is done by sending commands to modify the gamma table (from a PC to the Pearl over an RS232 serial connection). Although ImageDirector can be used, it does not offer enough control over the levels near black, so another tool should be used. For more info, see my other post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9335709&&#post9335709).

A/Vspec

01-03-07, 06:27 PM

Yes, it is out of the box close to D65 Standard.

Also you may be slightly crushing blacks at 49 brightness.

If you bring up a SD DVD that has a THX Video Calibration - can you see any of the THX drop shadow?

if not you should bring it up to a point were you can just about see it. other wise you are losing some black details.

So which is it ? High or Low? In you list of setting in the very first post you have it listed as "Lamp = High" then is this post you say to use "low"

Also I do not see an overscan setting? Is that because I am feeding the Pearl 1280x1024 over DVI?

mdavis

01-13-07, 06:49 PM

I've noticed a white/green line at the right side of the screen on HDNet and TNT-HD (DirecTV/HR20), at the bottom of the screen on ESPN(72-DirecTV), on my pearl when overscan is off, running via HDMI w/1080i input from the HR20. I've also noticed a staggered line at the top of the screen on CBS/ABC OTA local HD in SD mode or any DirecTV channel in SD mode - HR20 outputs 480i here (native mode on). Yellow line on the left, blue on the right on NBC OTA local HD in HD mode. Hopefully I've provided enough data points.

Are these expected artifacts? I'm sure I can move the artifacts into a velvet black border on the StudioTek 130 I will likely end up with for this, but I am wondering if the convergence of the unit is off...

Easy way to fix this in the service menu? Recommend a good ISF guy who knows this projector and services Portland, OR? I have about 60 hours on the unit now, so it should be almost ready for a full greyscale D65 calibration...

I'm currently just projecting on a white wall (temp. config - custom room soon)..

I've done the basic, obvious stuff from DVE,Avia,THX test pattern,etc...

Settings:
Cinema
Low Lamp
Auto1 Iris
Contrast: 80
Brightness: 59 (per DVDE)
Color: 50 (no adj yet)
Hue: 50 (really haven't adjusted this)
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: 0
NR: Off
DDE: Film
Black Level Adj: Off
Gamma3
User3 RCP, red -5
Color Space: Wide
Wide Mode: Full

nathan_h

01-13-07, 09:39 PM

If the lines are at the very edge of the screen, it's probably what is being broadcast. I see stuff along the bottom of some DISH channels, especially in the lower left corner on Voom channels. On SD channels, I'll often see a narrow gray bar on the edge of the 3x4 area.

SOWK

01-13-07, 10:06 PM

So which is it ? High or Low? In you list of setting in the very first post you have it listed as "Lamp = High" then is this post you say to use "low"

Also I do not see an overscan setting? Is that because I am feeding the Pearl 1280x1024 over DVI?

I never had my posts wrong. I said LOW color TEMP, not low LAMP

Settings

High = LAMP
Low(WARM) = Color

gremmy

01-14-07, 05:04 PM

GlenC

01-14-07, 10:54 PM

mdavis, it is most likely you are seeing broadcast issues only. With near zero overscan on HD channels, there are generally issues at the top of SD broadcasts.

Ken Tripp

01-15-07, 01:33 AM

Simon Woodgate

01-20-07, 01:05 PM

Hello all. I've just made the leap from a low end 848x480 DLP to the V50 and having some trouble setting it up. I've had a quick look through the forum and can't find anything about setting up gamma from a Mac - I wonder if anyone has had any experience? The Sony gamma software doesn't work on a mac. I'm connecting to HDMI input A direct from a G5 via a DVI>HDMI lead. I have set input A to 'computer', but I suspect it is expecting a PC which IIRC has a generally brighter picture than a mac? 1080P trailers from the Apple site look good as far as detail is concerned, but there is some crushing of the blacks with default settings.

FremontRich

01-20-07, 01:47 PM

Can anyone recommend an external processor for the Pearl? My sources are BD, HD DVD, HTPC, and HD cable so I sort of run the gambut. I have a Panamorph U85 that I'd like to use it with so I need Mode 1 scaling. Is the Lumagen HDQ the best pairing?

According to ddingle it is:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=778292&page=3&pp=30

see post #80

Erik Garci

01-20-07, 03:15 PM

Hello all. I've just made the leap from a low end 848x480 DLP to the V50 and having some trouble setting it up. I've had a quick look through the forum and can't find anything about setting up gamma from a Mac - I wonder if anyone has had any experience?
Have you tried adjusting the "Gamma Correction" setting in the menu? It can be set to Gamma1, Gamma2, Gamma3, or Off.
The Sony gamma software doesn't work on a mac.
Even though I can use Sony's software on my PC, I created my own software to get more control over the gamma curve, especially the levels near black. I suppose that similar software could be created for the Mac, and it would use the RS232 protocol that was explained in another thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=746154).
I'm connecting to HDMI input A direct from a G5 via a DVI>HDMI lead.
Are you connecting to HDMI1 or Input-A? They are different inputs.

Input-A is not for HDMI video. Input-A is for analog video, such as RGBHV (aka VGA) or YPbPr (aka Component).
I have set input A to 'computer', but I suspect it is expecting a PC which IIRC has a generally brighter picture than a mac? 1080P trailers from the Apple site look good as far as detail is concerned, but there is some crushing of the blacks with default settings.
The "Input-A Signal Sel." setting is irrelevant if you are using HDMI.

Simon Woodgate

01-20-07, 07:13 PM

Thanks for the reply Erik. Yes, I am using the HDMI input, sorry, I mistakenly called it input A. It looks like there is no way to tell the pj that I am connecting a computer, not a video source to the HDMI in the way that you can select 'computer' for input A.

I was very interested to hear about your gamma software - how is it coded? if it's Unix based, is there any chance of compiling an OSX version? I don't think the G5 has RS232 :(

I was hoping there would be another user who had a custom profile for Macs that I could somehow download, or input manually!

I was reading about various THX setup DVDs etc. and wonder if there are any TIFF files about with calibration charts at full 1920x1080 res? I can't see much point calibrating to an upscaled DVD, how will I know if artifacts in the gradients are the PJ or the scaling!

Even without 100% setup, I'm really enjoying finally seeing some proper 1080p though, it's amazing! I'm getting the Sony V1E 1080/25P camcorder next week so I'll have plenty of footage to show it off soon. It's also great to find this forum with so many knowledgeable people! fantastic!

Erik Garci

01-21-07, 12:02 AM

I was very interested to hear about your gamma software - how is it coded? if it's Unix based, is there any chance of compiling an OSX version?
It is coded for Windows. I'm not able to compile it for a different OS since it has code for serial communications that is specific to Windows.

One alternative would be to use a hex editor to write the commands to a file, and then use a communications program to send the file in raw form to the projector over a serial connection. There would need to be a way to pause briefly (at least a tenth of a second or so) between sending each command in order to give the projector time to process it and reply.
I don't think the G5 has RS232 :(
I think a USB-to-serial adapter could be used.

Simon Woodgate

01-21-07, 06:27 AM

Hi Erik. I was just reading up on white balancing for shooting HDV and they were recommending calibrating your light sources to the cameras white point, not the other way round as you might with tube cameras. Then it hit me! I should use the monitor calibration software built into mac osx to set the mac's output to match the pj! That way I create a profile for the pj that it saved on the mac, and when it detects I have plugged the VW50 in it will switch to that profile. There are many stages to the setup which in principal are like the THX calibration DVDs, i.e. adjust contrast until you can't see the shadow etc. I will have a go at this tonight!

Simon Woodgate

01-22-07, 09:19 AM

Well I tried this several times last night to create a monitor profile for the pearl in OSX and it was a disaster. The first thing the setup says is set the pj (monitor) contrast to 100%, then move the brightness until the grey apple matches it's surroundings. This immediately made the screen quite dark, and the following settings for colour etc only made things worse! They were mostly at the far end of their range, which usually worries me a bit. I had the pj setup with everything at default (except bright/cont), cinema mode.

Strangely I did find that reducing sharpness from 50 to 0 seemed to bring back some shadow detail.

I still can't seem to get the image right in the blacks, whatever I try.

I wonder if anyone has an ICC profile for the ruby I could try out?

JHL

01-22-07, 11:41 AM

Last week I set up my Pearl and it is a little different than the CRT projector I used for the last 8 years. I found it a little tricky to line up the picture perfectly on my screen. I also had problems with overscan from my satellite receiver.

I ended up solving these issues with blanking. What are the typical blanking settings other people have been forced to used? As far as I can tell, the blanking settings are universal so I can't reduce the vertical blanking for a specific input (HD-DVD) that does not require it. Or did I miss something in the manual?

thanks,

John

Simon Woodgate

01-22-07, 06:56 PM

Last week I set up my Pearl and it is a little different than the CRT projector I used for the last 8 years. I found it a little tricky to line up the picture perfectly on my screen
John

Hi John. Does your lens adjust jump about a bit? mine sometimes takes ages to move, then moves quickly, usually just a bit too much. I was hoping to find a speed adjust somewhere but no luck so far

JHL

01-22-07, 07:14 PM

Yes it did. But I managed to get that reasonably close to where I need it. The overscan issue is a bigger problem. I am using HDMI1 for HD-DVD and HDMI2 for DirecTV. I only need to make a adjustments on DirecTV but the settings get applied to all inputs and all profiles.

nathan_h

01-22-07, 07:16 PM

Hi John. Does your lens adjust jump about a bit? mine sometimes takes ages to move, then moves quickly, usually just a bit too much. I was hoping to find a speed adjust somewhere but no luck so far

Although it is not clear, those times when it appears to not be moving, it actually moves JUST A TINY BIT, I mean like one pixel at a time. for each quick button press. So it takes A LOT of short taps to move it enough to see it from the seating position.... but means you don't have to play the game of overshooting in each direction 10 times before getting it close.

Simon Woodgate

01-22-07, 08:13 PM

Thanks Nathan, yes, I tried it again today while standing right next to the screen and could see the tiny movements. Shame it doesn't vari speed the longer you hold it. Either big jumps or tiny ones :( Still, it beats the manual methods from my old pj - no need for short focus binoculars to set focus on this one!

nathan_h

03-09-07, 06:08 PM

If you want it done right, you'll need to send it to me (shameless plug). When I'm ready, that is...

William

Anyone know if William has started calibrating/optimizing the Pearl? I know I was "second in line" after the one Pearl he had in hand, in December, but with the holidays and then moving into a new house, I have lost track! Now would be a perfect time for me, since I won't be able to use the projector for another week or two, at the least, anyway.

(And yes, I have emailed William, but I know he gets way too much email, so I'd guess I'll hear back from fellow forum members prior to when I would hear from him :) )

madpoet

03-21-07, 06:59 PM

So the only way to check convergence is through something like Avia? I just fired up some of the crosshatch patterns and frankly I couldn't find any MC. But they are all B&W :) Soo... what am I missing? I'm sure I'm forgetting something simple.

Stormtoke

03-22-07, 09:11 AM

Friends!

I live in the Europe, but I am going to buy Pearl in the USA as the price for this projector at us is very high - 8000 $... :-(

The Question: whether the American model with 220V/50Hz is capable to work?

In advance thanks for answers!

madpoet

03-22-07, 09:58 AM

It is definitely 50hz capable. I think you'd need to convert the power though.

nathan_h

03-22-07, 01:40 PM

So, it can play 50hz video, but I don't think it's ready for 220/50hz power, unless you buy a model in a market where power is 220/50hz. (US is 60hz.) I don't see any switch or indication that it can handle the different voltage.

usualsuspects

03-22-07, 03:04 PM

Pearl manual states: "Power Requirements: AC 100 to 240V, 1.3 to 3A, 50/60Hz "
Looks like it has a universal power supply - these are getting more common - cheaper to have a universal power supply than to engineer localized PS versions for different power systems.

A/Vspec

03-22-07, 04:27 PM

What is the story on the new firmware for the Pearl?

Stormtoke

03-22-07, 04:28 PM

barrygordon

03-22-07, 04:36 PM

Your English is much Better than my Russian.

usualsuspects

03-22-07, 04:56 PM

Stormtoke - your English is good - no problems understanding you.
The cine4home.de review shows the same power requirements (universal) and I assume that they are on the German power system 230v. They had no complaints about power supply issues.

nathan_h

03-22-07, 07:59 PM

What is the story on the new firmware for the Pearl?

What firmware?

(And I'm glad I was wrong about the universal power. Very helpful that all units are world-wide capable.)

Sejour

03-23-07, 10:45 AM

All thanks for operative answers!

For the insurance I shall try to include in the beginning PJ through lowering transformer 220V 50Hz -110V 50Hz (its price insignificant -15/20 $)
Though this probably superfluous - time in the user's guide is written that at Pearl autovoltage. Just in case - I shall write the letter to service of technical support Sony.

About result I shall write at a forum.

P.S. I am sorry for my bad English.))))

You should change the fuse to 1.3 - 1.5 amps when you run it on 220VAC. Any voltage spikes will damage the power supply if you use the 3 amp (maybe 2.5amp) fuse that is in the US model. Rough rule of thumb is halve the current when doubling the voltage.

Don't try the Pearl on Russian voltage until you have changed the fuse!!

I'd be surprised if a USD15 step down transformer can deliver enough watts for a Pearl - you need to use a 500w model to have sufficient margin. Better to run direct.

Stormtoke

03-23-07, 11:54 AM

You should change the fuse to 1.3 - 1.5 amps when you run it on 220VAC. Any voltage spikes will damage the power supply if you use the 3 amp (maybe 2.5amp) fuse that is in the US model. Rough rule of thumb is halve the current when doubling the voltage.

Don't try the Pearl on Russian voltage until you have changed the fuse!!

I'd be surprised if a USD15 step down transformer can deliver enough watts for a Pearl - you need to use a 500w model to have sufficient margin. Better to run direct.

You are right - powerful (500W) the lowering transformer costs much more dearly - approximately 250 $ :confused:

I shall connect Pearl directly, preliminary changed the fuse ,as you recommend.

Once again all thanks for answers :)

A/Vspec

03-23-07, 05:09 PM

What firmware?

(And I'm glad I was wrong about the universal power. Very helpful that all units are world-wide capable.)

Try this link:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9928502

Says it has transparent OSD.

Michael9009

03-28-07, 11:32 PM

adamfl

03-29-07, 12:16 AM

briansxx

03-29-07, 11:43 AM

I note in an early review of the Pearl that the reviewer mentioned a crosshatch test pattern internal to the PJ. Has anyone found this pattern? is it useful for convergence testing?

Thanks,

Brian

adamfl

03-30-07, 02:19 AM

ttt

Michael9009

03-30-07, 10:32 AM

I have a short question about the sharpness adjustment on the Pearl. I have only fed the PJ component signal, nothing else so far. With this kind of signal, the sharpness control has absolutely no effect, whatsoever. I checked this with patterns from Avia and DVE. Is this normal? Is the component signal "injected" into the video path after the sharpness control? A friend of mine tells me it should have an effect only for composite and S-video signals, not for component signals. Any idea what is actually going on? Thanks.

So?... Nobody knows?... Is the sharpness effect on your Pearl not effective with component signal?

JHL

03-30-07, 12:24 PM

I have a quick question about aligning the Pearl with my screen. I have an 8 foot wide 16x9 screen and the projector is near the minimum distance, about 11.5 feet from the screen. When I set up the projector a few months ago I was unable to completely fill the screen with an image. I ended up with a dead area, about 1" wide at the top and bottom of the screen.

Adjusting the image was tricky because it seemed to require diagonal stretching. Once I reached the sides of the screen, it was not possible to make the image taller without bleeding off the screen.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

thanks,

John

javdog

03-30-07, 01:43 PM

^

Ensure your overscan is off.

You can mask the top 1".

You can retract the screen the 1".

Or you can Lense shift the image up 1/2 inch and just have 1/2 on top and bottom.

Cake.

pjones

03-30-07, 10:53 PM

I have a short question about the sharpness adjustment on my Pearl. I have only fed the PJ component signal, nothing else so far. With this kind of signal, the sharpness control has absolutely no effect, whatsoever. I checked this with patterns from Avia and DVE. Is this normal? Is the component signal "injected" into the video path after the sharpness control? A friend of mine tells me it should have an effect only for composite and S-video signals, not for component signals. Any idea what is actually going on? Thanks.

I have only fed my Pearl an HDMI signal at 1080p (and zero overscan), but for what it's worth, I have observed that the Pearl's Sharpness setting seems to have no effect with that sort of input (although I have kept it an "Min" anyway).

-- Peter

blackbird

03-31-07, 12:26 PM

After my Pearl meanwhile again new is (by Sony was exchanged the service) I have OutOfTheBox measurement made only brightness and contrast adjusted.
Who likes can the result regard.

CalMan (http://www.itl-net.at/download/OutOfTheBox_pearl.pdf)

My Pearl was replaced with a new unit from Sony because MC.

A/Vspec

03-31-07, 12:52 PM

After my Pearl meanwhile again new is (by Sony was exchanged the service) I have OutOfTheBox measurement made only brightness and contrast adjusted.
Who likes can the result regard.

CalMan (http://www.itl-net.at/download/OutOfTheBox_pearl.pdf)

Ok, I'll bite... do you have a key to decipher you message?

The PDF looks good for out of the box though.

nathan_h

03-31-07, 01:03 PM

Wow that PDF looks GREAT for OOTB!

I recently had my Pearl serviced and all of the user controls were set back to defaults and have been watching it for a week that way (no time to do any adjustments yet, other than confirm the black level is right) and my OOTB settings look better than I recall OOTB looking. Wonder if Sony service center is paying more attention to details?

scottyb

03-31-07, 03:37 PM

JHL

03-31-07, 04:29 PM

^

Ensure your overscan is off.

You can mask the top 1".

You can retract the screen the 1".

Or you can Lense shift the image up 1/2 inch and just have 1/2 on top and bottom.

Cake.
Unfortunately I have a fixed screen, so I can't adjust it. Overscan is definitely off.

blackbird

03-31-07, 04:31 PM

Lamp = High
Gamma = Off
Black Enhancment = Off
Iris = Auto 1
Color Temp = LOW
Color Mode = NORMAL

mac11

04-11-07, 08:58 AM

Victor

04-11-07, 10:46 AM

Can one harm Pearl's hardware by entering the service menu and changing some settings?
Maybe it is my imagination but after changing 'iris #1' (1 of 7 steps) from 0 to 1, the picture brightened immensely but have made the picture much worse and darker after a while.

Was watching 'Knight's Tale' blue-ray with some ambient light b4 and was impressed with bright and accurate video, but after fiddling with the service menu at night, everything was way too dark even with no ambient light. I must have destroyed this hardware... ' ' ;I don't think it is possible. Most likely you just inadvertently adjusted some other brightness related parameter too. You may want to check how bright your hardware could be: turn off iris, go to service menu B/W ballance and set R/G/B gain to 255 :). Don't forget to write down initial gain values

storman

04-30-07, 07:50 PM

I'm in a quandry about setting Brightness level on my Pearl. My first time viewing of this projector I had it projecting on a wall as I don't have my screen set up ( HT room is not finished ). I was using the THX Optimizer from the SW Episode III DVD. Instructions are to adjust until drop shadow just disappears.
However, when looking at the 10 shades of black on same screen, only the 7th one is visible - 8 through 10 completely disappear. This is with Auto Iris 1, no black level enhancement, low color temp, cinema picture mode. ( I'm using a HDA2 via HDMI, 0 IRE setup ) If I raise brightness to 63, then a few more black squares appear ( recalling from memory of a few nights ago ) and technically I have much better shadow detail. But when viewing the movie I notice the image is getting washed out and not very contrasty. Switching back to another picture mode with Brightness at default or 53 shows are much more punchier, somehow more detailed and appealing picture without loosing too much detail in the dark scenes. Night scenes of Couruscant city look much better at 53 than at 63. And switching off DI did not seem to brighten up shadowy areas in dark scenes.

Where should I settle on Brightness ? Obviously, better to work on it when I have the screen up ( DaLite Pearlescent 1.5 gain 115" 2.35:1 ) Seems like most of the respected posters here recommend keeping Brightness and Contrast at their defaults.

Thanks,
Bill

DVD MAN

04-30-07, 07:57 PM

I just brought the pearl all is good but green seems very high in output Is there anything I can do?

Performance
In terms of picture quality there is no doubt that resolution is seductive, and the Pearl does deliver every pixel of a 1080i/p HD source. It also has solid contrast ratio, which is arguably the most important performance parameter in a display. Where the Sony falls short is color accuracy; the primary and secondary colors are way off the mark.

jhe

04-30-07, 09:00 PM

In the service menu I figured out how to do color temp and grey scale tracking.
And I think I understand the thousands of gamma settings. I even found how to turn on and off the internal grey levels. But I have not a clue how to adjust anything else like:

a/d
iris
engine

Engine has a setting that turns gey scale half black and rest all red! Just curious what it's for.

And a/d I seems to be at some standard defaults and may never need touching.

But seems like auto iris calibration should be attempted but many of the controls make little sense to me. It looks like there's settings for iris mid settings, iris open pts and close pts with some need to set a hysteresis for going up or down in levels.

Then there's a mystery setting for other/synchronous?

But no info in service manual on what IRE levels these should be set to.

I did measure in manual that the iris controls just about an f stop so that would effect where the iris should start closing so it won't compress.

But that's as far as I've gotton.

And one other question I have is the regular user setting for normal or low power standby? What's it do? If normal powers up the lamp faster it is a very negligible change. No idea why I should use the normal setting for anything?

For the moment I am just happy to be rid of the red lower half of the grey bars that it was delivered with.

My screen seems pretty uniform as is, even though all gammas are just set -1.