I have charter cable with there hd service. I used some setting from this forum that a guy shared after he had his professionaly calibrated. Discovery HD is incredible with the outside scenes. Football in hd looks great.

Here is the problem. If i'm watching a movie or show on one of the hd channels like hbo or nbc and there is a dark scene outside or if the scene is inside a dark room the picture in the dark areas looks like crap. It's hard to explain how it looks. It's kinda smokey looking and not clear. I'm guessing this is a common problem ?

I've not yet watched a bluray dvd to see if the same thing occurs. I'm hoping it's just the broadcasting.

Anyone advice would be great. Thanks

Sounds like you may be trying to describe black crush or lack of shadow detail. Have you calibrated the set yet?

Using someone elses calibrated settings should only be a starting point. Everyone is going to have variances in ambient lighting and even slight variances in the plasma panel itself...making someone elses settings not exactly right for you. Then again I don't know anything about Sammy plasmas...they may have black crush that can't be dialed out. (I have an older 768p LG that is this way)

People have gone nuts here sharing settings. But every TV is different and more importantly the source (Cable, Sat) also greatly impact the picture. Factory in those 2 variables and some else's setting are probably meaningless

I have charter cable with there hd service. I used some setting from this forum that a guy shared after he had his professionaly calibrated. Discovery HD is incredible with the outside scenes. Football in hd looks great.All PDPs do a good job rendering bright, colorful HD images. The B&Ms feed this kind of looped content to their display models, which accentuates the positive aspects of their PDPs.Here is the problem. If i'm watching a movie or show on one of the hd channels like hbo or nbc and there is a dark scene outside or if the scene is inside a dark room the picture in the dark areas looks like crap. It's hard to explain how it looks. It's kinda smokey looking and not clear. I'm guessing this is a common problem ?

I've not yet watched a bluray dvd to see if the same thing occurs. I'm hoping it's just the broadcasting.

Anyone advice would be great. ThanksShadow detail, shades of gradation, false contouring, etc., is what differentiates one PDP maker from another, which is why Pioneer costs more than Panasonic/Samsung; superior video processing.

i've only got about 5hrs on the tv. here are the settings:


movie mode
contrast 85
brightness 44
sharpness 14
color 47
tint g52 r48
color tone warm1
digital NR High
black adjust Medium
Dynamic Contrast Low
Gamma -1
Color Space Auto

White Balance:
r offset 14
g offset 15
b offset 16
r gain 14
g gain 15
b gain 17

Edge Enhancement ON
xvYCC OFF

All PDPs do a good job rendering bright, colorful HD images. The B&Ms feed this kind of looped content to their display models, which accentuates the positive aspects of their PDPs.Shadow detail, shades of gradation, false contouring, etc., is what differentiates one PDP maker from another, which is why Pioneer costs more than Panasonic/Samsung; superior video processing.

That was helpful :cool:
Anyway, I believe you can achieve optimum balance in adjusting for black level and detail in those areas using the THX optimizer on dvds like Cars and Star Wars. I've had excellent success using this. Subsequent to making adjustments with it, I did some minor tweaking to brightness and contrast to my personal preference.
Try it. It's a cheap and effective method obtaining excellent results.

Try changing these parameters

Contrast 100

Black adjust off

Dynamic contrast off

Gamma 0

turn the contrast to 100 ?

i've already turned the black adjust and contrast off. can't really tell if it helped much.

it's weird because some dark scenes like on hbohd last night looked fine. then there may be a seen that is dark with a light and it looks weird. like the picture is moving. not moving up or down or side to side just the color is not solid.

Most will say contrast @ 100 is too high. But is has been a big positive in my 5084.
To my eyes it improves color accuracy and shadow detail.

Is it possible what you are seeing is plasma flicker?

maybe its charter cable service?
does this happen with over the air HD?
without using the box?

Also, do the DNIE demo.