Quote:
Originally Posted by
sanlyn /forum/post/18839825
The xxW panels are not the same. Even if they were, when you set calibration values you are not adjusting the panels, you're adjusting the image processor and decoder circuits on the motherboard. From reviews I've seen of the W and EX series for some time now, there are major differences in out-of-the-box RGB curves. The Ws have heavy Red push and Green is undersaturated. Besides making it difficult to achieve a natural color balance even with a flat RGB curve, individual color saturation levels on SONYs isn't possible, not even in the service menus. Red stands out too brightly, even in dark scenes, giving everything a Christmas-tree effect. I tried 3 different 2009 SONYs last year and returned all of them for that very reason. From what I can see of newer EX's, there's not as much color push on any one color, though Green seems a bit undernourished, but I'll be buying an EX soon and will see how they measure.
Borrowing settings for contrast, brightness, etc., often works OK but borrowed RGB settings are very iffy. Remember that SONY's "Gain" controls, which are supposed to control the bright end of each color, can't be raised -- they can only be lowered. That's a serious limitation (idiotic, IMHO), and in my case it rendered the 2009 models incapable of really natural-looking RGB adjustment. The color that was most troublesome on the 2009's was Blue; SONY designed the color processor to raise dark blues but to gradually diminish Blue at the bright end. If you could lower the dark Blue (bias) and raise the bright Blue (gain), that would give you and even response curve for Blue. But, remember, SONY won't let you raise the Gain values.
Saturation levels aside, the only way to balance things on the old or new SONYs is to gently lower Blue Bias (i.e., lower the darkest Blue). This will at least give you blacks that aren't heavily tainted with Blue, which has been a kind of trademark with SONY LCD's. Lowering Blue bias slightly tends to level-out Blue response from the darks to the brights. But Blue RGB will be slightly below Red and Green, so that overall the RGB balance will look too yellow. To correct that, Lower Red Bias, Green Bias, and then experiment with lowering Red Gain and Green Gain -- this lowers the Red and Green RGB evenly to match more closely with the Blue level. If you don't have a colorimeter and measuring software, you'll have to do it by eye -- that can be a lengthy trial-and-error process. To see what these controls actually do, try spending a half-hour at this website:
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457
Remember that since you're lowering all 3 colors somewhat, you'll have to adjust bright/contrast to compensate.
CNET's settings for any TV have always seemed like some sort of eerie fantasy. I've never known them to work well. Same for TweakTV. Both tend to assume that settings for one model in the same series will work for all models in that series. It ain't so.
While SONYs have always had limited capability for calibration, at least they have more than others offer beyond the fairly useless Color and Hue controls.