most of the time i use the pro mode where everything is kept at 50

but in the daytime with a lot of sun coming into the room, i have to turn the contrast up to 65 or sometimes 75 even

i'm just curious where everyone else keeps their picture settings

70 views and zero replies

must be a secret :D

Pro for me too.

Picture- 35
Brightness- 50
color- 47
HUE- R1
color temp- warm
sharpness- 15
clearedge VM- off
color axis- monitor

Mode-Pro
Picture-65
Brite-85
Color-11
Hue-R1
Temp-Neutral
Sharpness-50
Edge VM-Off
Color Axis- Monitor

Mode - Pro
Picture - 65
Brightness - 46
Color - 50
Hue - 0
Temperature - Neutral
Sharpness - 35
Clearedge VM - Off
Color Axis - Monitor

wow you guys got contrast JACKED! do you wear shades while watching? I think mine is set too high at 38!LOL then again thats the first thing i lowered when i got this TV and i'm used to low contrast from my other TV. Then again i have black out shades and usually watch in the complete dark with a low back light.

Oh wait tho did i say watch? i meant i usually spend the whole night in the service menu :( Not for too much longer tho hopefully.

wow you guys got contrast JACKED! do you wear shades while watching? I think mine is set too high at 38!LOL then again thats the first thing i lowered when i got this TV and i'm used to low contrast from my other TV. Then again i have black out shades and usually watch in the complete dark with a low back light.

I can't make out anything trying to set contrast when using DVE and Avia. To me the contrast is absolutely the most difficult thing to gauge based on their tests. They say to keep putting it up until I notice blooming. Well, I am able to put it up to 90 before seeing that, lol. So I just set it at 65 because that seemed safe enough to me. But 35 seems way too low to me. I don't think that would look very good at all. Hell, my 360 games are already dark as hell at these settings, let alone a contrast setting of 35. I'm absolutely certain I have my brightness set correctly according to DVE and Avia though. Those tests were pretty easy to do. As far as my color goes the only thing that is off a bit is my greens. They are a little darker than they should be. I'm guessing that is intentional to make sports look better. I don't know where in the service menu to fix it and I'm not all that concerned with it anyway.

It really depends on how bright you like your white. Like if you like the effect of scorching white if say a snow scene comes onthen it's good high. I like the picture better tho with low brightness and low contrast. Also a good way to set the contrast with avia is not use that " until it blooms" pattern, well use it but look on top at the two white lines on top of the black ones next the steps and set contrast until you can see the one white line faintly. then go check out some ramp patterns and make sure all the shades of white are different and not just all closely the same white intensity. For a good ratio too that split pattern with the white moving lines on the left, and a grey/ white block on the side is good. You want to still be able to make out that white line moving on the right when both white intensitys come up. You don't wnat to crank brightness up to see those lines too much cause then your black level will suffer and high black level sucks and makes everything on TV look washed out and like grandmas TV.

It really depends on how bright you like your white. Like if you like the effect of scorching white if say a snow scene comes onthen it's good high. I like the picture better tho with low brightness and low contrast. Also a good way to set the contrast with avia is not use that " until it blooms" pattern, well use it but look on top at the two white lines on top of the black ones next the steps and set contrast until you can see the one white line faintly. then go check out some ramp patterns and make sure all the shades of white are different and not just all closely the same white intensity. For a good ratio too that split pattern with the white moving lines on the left, and a grey/ white block on the side is good. You want to still be able to make out that white line moving on the right when both white intensitys come up. You don't wnat to crank brightness up to see those lines too much cause then your black level will suffer and high black level sucks and makes everything on TV look washed out and like grandmas TV.

Yeah, I did all that and 65 is absolutely fine. In fact, I could turn it higher and still be within those parameters. I don't have scorching whites, lol. Everybody that comes over here complains that my settings are too dark but I stubbornly refuse to make them brighter. It really isn't much of a problem with watching TV, but 360 games are very dark. Look, you can DEFINATELY have your picture set quite a bit higher than 35. To me that is freakishly low. If that floats your boat then have at it.

Well thats the thing tho, 38 seems low to you cause your use to watching at such a high level. So you'd see my set and say "damn those whites look kinda dull and greyish" But i'm so accustomed to them that they " are" white to me. Same as if i saw your set i'd think it was leading the way into heaven. All preferences tho man! whatever your happy with keep it at that.

I don't disagree with you that 65 may be a little higher than the absolute correct setting should be. But I do believe that 65 is closer to the correct setting than 35 is. I've had it as low as 55 before. I kinda' fluctuate in the 55-65 range. 65 just happens to be where I have it at the moment.

Btw, you are talking about the XBR970, right? Just wondering because the XBR960 and some other Sony sets have a different scale.

Nah man! if you have gamma and everything set correctly 35 would be more closer i think then 65! I don't know tho since i'm not a calibrator. Maybe one can chime in who has worked on a xbr970. Not asking for specific values, but what was a closer contrast setting once everything was calibrated.

Btw, you are talking about the XBR970, right? Just wondering because the XBR960 and some other Sony sets have a different scale.

Yea 970! I think we chatted before in the official topic.

Well, of all things in here I'm not sure why a 65 Picture setting is what most grabbed your attention. To me the things I found shocking was a color setting of 11 and a brightness of 80, or something like that.

LOL i didn't even notice that until you posted! bassface must be sporting the 3-d glasses with black tint while viewing.

LOL but Maybe he lives some place else tho and has different values for settings and he tried converting them to US standards.

wicker, try his settings and let me know how they look :D

If it makes you feel better I turned my contrast down to 60. :) This is where I kept it most of the time before getting calibration discs. Once I tried those I discovered I could go even higher. But I'm keeping my 360 input at 65. Damn, 360 games are mega-dark on this set. Sometimes I feel like cranking up contrast to 70 and brightness to nearly 60 on that input so I can see what in the hell I'm playing! But I always keep myself from doing it. 65 is as high as I'm willing to go on contrast because of the fear of burning up the phosphors.

wicker, try his settings and let me know how they look :D

No way. I don't need to try that to know how bad it would look.

Another thing to think about tho is for "DIY calibrators" (aka you and me, without having proper color temp/ contrast setting tools) should have contrast set at a value point of like 20- 35%. ( and thats just guess work on their part, cause they know people like to set contrast high) So with your contrast set at 65/max. value of the parameter, what percent are you at?

I don't know how you can stand the picture with contrast in the 30s. I bought a CRT to look like a CRT, not an LCD. CRT has the best blacks and the best whites. Why would I want to make it look just as lifeless as an LCD. I want sunlight to look like sunlight on a movie, not a 60 watt light bulb. Mine is set at 60. My brightness is at 65.

You guys are like 50 years old tho right? yea i'm in my 20's! and still have good eyesite, i didn't mean any harm! when i get that old then i will also crank up my contrast to blinding white levels.

You guys are like 50 years old tho right? yea i'm in my 20's! and still have good eyesite, i didn't mean any harm! when i get that old then i will also crank up my contrast to blinding white levels.

You act as though if someone has any white in the picture at all it is "blinding". I think most people here would say that 35 is too low. However, I also believe that anything over 50 on the brightness is too much. Even when I had mine set to 50 DVE showed me that my blacks were 2% too bright. 46 was the exact setting to get a true black with my set. The contrast tests are much more difficult to judge by eye but I'm absolutely certain that 35 is far too low. With the brightness tests on these calibration discs it is very easy to get your setting precise but contrast is hard as hell. Really, I think to get a precise contrast setting you'd have to use some sort of tool rather than doing it by eye with these patterns. According to what I saw on those patterns I could have put contrast even higher than 65.

LOl relax wickerman! I'm just messing around. Like i said only thing that matters is what "YOU" like. Not really tho! only thing that matters is what we are "TOLD" is the standard and what we have to like! i have bad eyesite tho! so if my set gets calibrated and the guy does sharpness how would what he apply that to me and my set? he has better eyesite! i can't see what he sees from certain distances! ya know?

LOl relax wickerman! I'm just messing around. Like i said only thing that matters is what "YOU" like. Not really tho! only thing that matters is what we are "TOLD" is the standard and what we have to like! i have bad eyesite tho! so if my set gets calibrated and the guy does sharpness how would what he apply that to me and my set? he has better eyesite! i can't see what he sees from certain distances! ya know?

I am relaxed. :)

LOL i'm not! I hate everything about this TV so far! but i will get it fixed to my likings!

LOL i'm not! I hate everything about this TV so far! but i will get it fixed to my likings!

Really? What's your problem with it? My only complaint is that it should be sharper.

Just the overscan pretty much and trying to correct it the wrong/right way. I been crying about in the official xbox970 topic. :D

Yeah, fixing the overscan is much more complicated than I thought it would be. I was able to improve it but not get it totally right.

But as far as the sharpness thing goes I came into buying this thinking that a 1080i CRT meant 2,073,600 pixels interlaced, not freaking 921,240 pixels interlaced. I didn't find out about the resolution being less than half of 1080i until after I bought it.

Yea man i hear that! HDTV? more like enhanced SDTV :(

Yea man i hear that! HDTV? more like enhanced SDTV :(
Yep. Seems like false advertising to me. It looks good to me but if I had known that ahead of time I wouldn't have bought it.

Whats funny tho is i can notice a huge difference when watching HD movies from my HD box. But i think thats just cause the signal is so good and i was use to watching standard def. one thing i can comment thats good about is the framerate! like when watching sports everything moves smoothly and looks extra good. But man when playing like xbox 360? i don't really notice that HUGE of a leap from my 16:9 enhanced old TV.

Well, I'm waiting for LCDs to get contrast ratios that are worth a damn and then I'm going to upgrade to a 1080p model.

oh no tho! then your gonna crank the contrast to like 90 on a LCD :P j/k!

oh no tho! then your gonna crank the contrast to like 90 on a LCD :P j/k!

Well, at least I wouldn't have to worry about burning any phosphors. :)

I can't say that I am 100 percent happy with my 970 either. I had to take the bad with the good. The bad is that there are some geometry problems I still have and will annoy me less in time just like all the other tvs I've owned. The good is that I have progressive scan now, which was the actual quantum leap in TV technology, not high definition. My dvds now look alot more life like when up-converted to 1080i. I now have wide-screen. Over the air HD broadcasts look fabulous and much better than SD broadcasts. Regardless of the lack of phosphor resolution, the tv is still very accurate with colors and gray scales. The bad is that my s-video looks like sh!t because something is obviously maladjusted. The good is that the HDMI and component inputs have great PQ, which is what I really wanted. The bad is that I had to hook all my s-video stuff up to my 27inch trinitron. The good is that my home theater is no longer clogged with old systems and looks cleaner. The really good thing is that I only paid 600 bucks for it and not 1000. Yeah, I want the s-video to look good, and I will place a service call on it when I can take time off work to deal with it. For now, it's all about the HDMI and component inputs. I could care less about watching tv and playing old game systems on it right now, because I bought it for movies and widescreen video games with either progressive scan or high def. With all this tv's quirks and headaches, it's certainly not the holy grail of all tvs, but has what I needed that the plastic tvs still don't deliver. Price, resolution compatibility, contrast, color, no digital lag. I would have hated myself alot more for buying a plastic TV that can't do a simple thing like react instantly to video game commands or look like crap on lower resolutions because of native pixel count. I would have been happy with a 32 inch 4:3 progressive scan TV, but this was my only choice. I wish EDTV had been marketed better, because that was truly the best leap in technology since the invention of the TV, but EDTV sounded like a marketing scam. No it's not HIGH def, it's EXTENDED. Most people I know who bought progressive scan DVD players thought they were getting PS from their s-video output into their 480i TV. I didn't even know what it was until the high def thing took over. Anyway, the 970 won't be my only HD set. It's a good crossover unit until they figure out how to make plastic TVs cheaper, more reliable with better picture quality, with no digital lag, and did I already mention cheaper? In any case I'm now stuck with this tv because it's too late to return it to Circuit City. But I kept it for what it can do well considering the price I paid for it, and that the next step down was a 32 inch 480i display that cost the same amount of money.

I think we were just expecting more than what we got. But i mean 600 bucks! can't go wrong no matter how you slice it! i just feel bad for people who bought this set when it first came out for over a thousand! OUCH.

I payed $800 for it. I just wish the res. was higher.

I payed $800 for it. I just wish the res. was higher.

I wish the resolution was higher as well, however, even with the relative lower resolution I still think the overall PQ is better than all but the $2K+ 1080p tv's. So to me it was a no-brainer to go with this tv and wait for the 1080p tv's to both improve their black levels and drop in price. By then I'll be in the market for a large screen tv anyway and I'll be much happier (in theory) with the PQ by then. For now, the 970 is still the top tv in the under $2K group.

For now, the 970 is still the top tv in the under $2K group.

I think you mean the 960 is the best under 2k (if you can find one) and the 970 (going fast) is second IMHO. :D

LOL i'm not! I hate everything about this TV so far! but i will get it fixed to my likings!

what will be the first thing you watch when you're done? :D

Really? What's your problem with it? My only complaint is that it should be sharper.

Really? I had the 34XBR960 until it dies on me, and was considering this tv. The 960 was sharper than a tack but I figured that the 970 would be almost equally sharp. Is it really not extremely sharp with hd/sd/dvd?

Well, I thought I'd update my new settings. I had to have my XBR970 replaced and now I have one that actually works right. I'm still not sure about my picture and brightness but for now:

Picture: 66
Brightness: 66
Color: 43 (to my surprise, I had to turn color down)
Hue: 0
Color Temp: Neutral
Sharpness: 50
Clear Edge VM: Off
Color Axis: Default (sorry, can't do monitor, the people look a little too drab for me).

I would turn my Picture settings up higher but I don't want to do any possible damage.

after about a month of playing around i use 50 brightness and 60 picture most of the time

some shows are really bright like leno and i'll drop down to 46/46 for both brightness/picture

in the day time i'll sometimes go 50 brightness and 65-75 picture

i'm constantly making little adjustments which is ok because conditions and sources keep changing

i leave everything else (color hue sharpness) at 50

VM off

color axis "monitor" (faces look more natural)

Well, you guys are right and I was wrong. After more playing around, I've decided to take my Color Axis off Default and onto Monitor. I'm probably going to miss some of the red enhancements but it's a fair trade-off to get realistic skin-tones and overall color. I also turned the color back up to 50 and brightness up to 68.

Ugh, I'll be glad when I've decided on what I want...or at least get too exhausted to make any more changes.

***UPDATE***

Well, as great as the HD and SD broadcasts look with Color Axis on Monitor, the picture doesn't look so great on DVD. It's odd. Watching Star Wars, C3P0 no longer looked gold in color...he looked more like really light champaign color. Russell Crow looked slightly more, um, khaki in skin tone when watching Gladiator in Monitor...but flipping the setting back to Default solved all that. C3P0 back in all his golden glory and Crow with just the right amount of pink. So, Monitor for normal TV viewing; Default for DVD viewing.

this is what i use for HD programming
pic mode- standard
picture-68
brightness-34
color-56
hue-r2
color temp-warm
sharpness-min.
VM-high
color axis-monitor

this is what i use for SD
pic mode-vivid
picture-57
brightness-34
color-55
hue-r1
color temp.-neutral
sharpness-51
VM-high
color axis-monitor

can anyone tell me if HDMI is better than compnent? right now im using component but have an HDMI cable, theres just no connection for it on my current HD box. was wondering if its worth exchanging my box for one with HDMI output? and why does everyone have the VM off? the picture is sharper with it on high and sharpness set on min. at least for me it is. do ya'll know somethin i dont?

After calibrating with HD-DVE:

Picture - 42
Brightness - 37
Color - 61
Hue - 0
Sharpness - Min
EE - None
Color Axis - Default


I did however, make a lot of Service Menu adjustments, so YMMV.

I think we were just expecting more than what we got. But i mean 600 bucks! can't go wrong no matter how you slice it! i just feel bad for people who bought this set when it first came out for over a thousand! OUCH.

bought my 34hs420 sony in October of 2004..paid $1400 at the time.

thought id update my settings being that ive had my 970 for a year and have since changed them since my last post....

pic. mode-standard
picture-67
brightness-51
color-48
hue-g2
color temp.-warm
sharpness-min.
clearedge(VM)-high
color axis- default (i like my colors)

after messing around for what seemed like forever, im finally satisfied with my picture, aside from a slight bowing problem....why does everyone look down on the VM? IMO it gives a MUCH sharper image than when it is off. yes, occasionaly some programs do look a little odd, but i can deal with that because everything that is live and everything on ESPN looks soooo good with it on. if you like watching ESPN and other live shows or games, give these settings a try maybe...great color, good image density and detail...im watching the cowboys vs new england right now and it really does look like youre there with the VM on high and the sharpness off....i dunno, just some thoughts

Ok, I will now reveal my prefered setting on the awesome KD-34XBR970 that I have had since Feb. 2007. I too have tried to achieve the best PQ, keeping Blacks black and my Whites white.

From what I have read Picture = Contrast. "High contrast can obscure details and distort lines in the image, cause eyestrain in dim rooms, and shorten the lifespan of tubes"1. Read more about this and the other settings over at CNET.com's Picture perfect: HDTV tune-up tips (http://www.cnet.com/4520-7874_1-5108543-1.html?tag=main.optimize)

(for TV and DVD)
Picture Mode: Pro
Picture : 35
Brightness : 65
Color : 50
Hue : 0
Color Temp. : Cool
Sharpness : 30
ClearEdge VM : off
Color Axis : Monitor
6,500 degrees K Back Light

( 360 Gaming)
Picture Mode : Vivid
Picture : 50
Brightness : 84
Color : 55
Hue : 0
Color Temp. : Cool
Sharpness : 40
ClearEdge VM : off
Color Axis : Monitor
6,500 degrees K Back Light


hyghwayman
1. quote from CNET.com