Probably a conicidence, but my 58PE75U died this morning. Watching the news and then it turned off. LED blinks 10 times. Replaced the set with a
50PE700U that is 1080P and has much better black retention. It's the same as the PZ700U, but is the costco model.

The calibrator said he would do it again, but I would have to pay for his travel time. His site is HDTV4ME.com. Any chance he broke the set during the calibration? I highly doubt it, but then again I am not an ISF calibration expert.

Possible but not likely. Most of the controls calibrators use in the service menu wouldn't harm the TV unless they were calibrating to D20,000 instead of D6500:rolleyes: There are parameters in service menus that may harm a TV but unless the calibrator is not familiar with your TV and just experimenting with different parameters to figure out what they do it is unlikey a calibrator would ever adjust any of these harmful settings.

Sorry, to hear about your TV. I hope you like the new one better.

Bob

he was unfamiliar with my set but his settings were pretty close to D65. I watched him pretty carefully and he didn't seem to get into any weird menues.

I did have the set serviced prior to the ISF tech arrival. Panasonic had replaced the Power Supply, D-Board, A-Board, and Input Board. After the service call, my issue was kind of fixed (floating blacks) but their was video noise. My guess is that it was just a bum set.

In all honesty, I really don't think I want the set ISF calibrated again. It looks good right now and I don't want to put up with the risk of the ISF calibrator breaking it. Am I nuts?

It is very unlikely that anything that he did had anything to do with the failure of the set. I would be more concerned about the fact that he was unfamiliar with your set. IMO, a calibration professional should be familiar with it before he arrives. Even if he has never done one, he should have done some homework to familiarize himself with its menus and capability. Did he do anything other than gray scale? Did he explain to you what he was doing and how to adjust the set?

He did gray scale mostly and adjusted contrast and brightness in the service menu. He had a sencore machine and a color analyzer. When he was done the calibration, he emailed me the Sencore print out that showed my calibrated colors pre and post calibration, my +/- at different IRE and my gamma curve.

What else is an ISF calibrator supposed to do for a plasma?

He did do some homework. He knew how to get into the service menu and said he did some internet searches. He did make a comment that at first things weren't clipping in the direction that he expected and that he had to reverse the process. That made me nervous when he sounded a little unsure.

However, when he was all done (clost to 2 hours), the set looked amazing! I watched some of my movies and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Still, I am so unsure of what to do. I am considering swallowing the money and considering it a learning experince.

So, he was familiar with your set and made a significant improvement. Why is there a question? Have him do the same for the new set.

Besides adjusting contrast and brightness and getting your set to 6500K, what else is he supposed to do?

It depends on the display. Some displays will have adjustments for primary and secondary colors. Some also have controls for color decoding. Other things that should be done is set the various processing features correctly either in the service menu or user menu. Many will need to be turned off like edge enhancement. We do not carry Panasonic so I'm not familiar with parameters of your display. We only calibrate the brands we carry. A good calibrator will get the service manual if possible and research a lot of parameter's on the calibrator's forum.

Hope this helps.

Bob

I don't think I had a good calibrator then. He did limited research and only did the contrast, brightness, and d65K.

Arghh!!! I wish I had gone with a panny ISF calibrator. It's so hard to find good service!

How did your color Gamut chart look. Were the primaries/secondaries close or off? Can't pass judgement on the calibrator unless we see the charts. Could not have been too bad since you said you saw a noticeable improvement in pq.

It might not be the calibrator. Some displays do not have those parameters and might only have grayscale and basic user controls. I do not know what your display has for parameters. Sometimes the other parameters (primaries, secondaries, color decoder, gamma, etc) are built into various modes or presets. Sometimes that's all you can do is set the mode which is closest to reference and then adjust basic adjustments and grayscale.

I do recommend finding a calibrator that is familiar with your model or at least similar models of the same brand. I recommend other experienced calibrators if I get a call for a display I'm not familiar with calibrating. I could probably do a very good job with most of them. Frankly, the extra time to research and the cost to get service manuals isn't worth it to us as a company if I'm only going to do a maybe 1 or 2 of any given model display. Its easier for me to stay current on the brands we sell and I can play with our demos.

One of the experienced traveling calibrators might be an option for you if no one locally is experienced with your type of display. I would usually prefer someone local in case of problems or for convenience if I want a touch up. But, this is a very limited field and sometimes local is not always possible.

Bob