Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Owners Thread [No Price Talk] - Page 400

I have the DRV for NORMAL turned down a fair bit compared to WARM.
This is to give the same apparent brightness for both colour temps.

NORMAL is cooler than WARM and thus will appear brighter with DRV's set the same.

Lowering the ALL-DRV on NORMAL to DE (brings all DRV's down at the same by the same amount keeping the balance equal) while not altering the WARM DRV's results in only a colour shift when switching between COLOR TEMPS.

The is no longer a brightness shift between the 2 colour temps.

Mike

For any DirecTV owners, is it best to output everything at its native resolution and let the TV upconvert it or have the D* receiver output everything to 1080i and then let the TV just deinterlace it?

Upconversion done by the TV is not nearly as good as the upconversion you might find on a DVD or Blu-ray player, for example. I would think your receiver can do a better job of upconversion than the TV and you can try both options to see the difference for yourself.

Technically speaking, a 1080p set will upconvert (and deinterlace if needed) everything to its native resolution of 1920 by 1080 progressive; however, if you've ever upconverted a DVD before you see that when the player does the job the result is near HD and when the TV does the job it's noticeably inferior.

Simply put, when you press "info" on your TV remote the higher the resolution indicated, the better the picture quality, regardless of whether it's true 1080i or upscaled to 1080i.

Thanks, I'll plug in those values for Warm when I get a chance and switch back and forth a few times between Normal and Warm to see which looks better to me.

FYI on my 46" 800U, I bought my meter after several hundred hours, it was .0017, and after a few calibrations it's bounced between .0017 and .0019. I'm getting like 39.5 peak so contrast ratio is over 2K, but I would gladly trade that for sub-.0017 black and lower peak. Not sure how to lower the black output and maintain black detail. Based on member's suggestion I will try raising the SUB-BRIGHT and lower the brightness (or CUTs) and see how that works.

Where did you get the meter?

I know this is not documented in the owner's manual. Is 80U capable of displaying tv shows info/description? Thanks.

For Cinema mode on a PZ80U, does a white clipping point exist? I was looking at the AVSHD white clipping pattern but could not tell exactly. My guess is that there isn't.

You can't get there from here.

This is a case where I'd suggest you try both cases yourself. I run in native mode because although I don't think there's an appreciable difference (which surprises me because I think the HR2x is junk) there are other annoyances that irked me.

I can't tell a difference no matter what I try (leaving native on but only selecting 1080i under TV resolution, native off with 1080i selected only, native off and selecting each TV resolution but with 1080i being the last active resolution D* recognizes).

Not sure I could tell a difference short of a method of going A/B immediately on various content rather than navigating menus to make the selections each time anyway though. I was hoping there was a consensus on which might be the way to go by those that are far more qualified than myself.

Since it doesn't appear to matter (I don't notice any other differences between the two modes other than the HDMI image popping up briefly with native on.. any delay of switching channels seems the same either way regardless), I'm going to stick with native on and each TV resolution selected and assume the TV does at least as good of a job of upconverting as the D* receiver. It might be optimistic but I would hope the TV could hold its own against the basic H23-600 receiver.

Thank you both, bodosom and PlasmaPZ80U, for the input.

Hey guys I have a question. I was looking at that faq posted in the first page and tried to edit my black level and HD size for cinema and standard, but those settings are grey'd out. Like I cant even edit them. Is there a reason for this?

The source needs to be 1080p or 1080i to use HD Size for sure, and maybe the black level as well, but I thought you could adjust that in 480i/p.

Yeah the source was the standard comcast cable box =P. Ill check today when I power up the BH200 and Xbox 360. thanks

So after much debate trying to decide between a Samsung PN50A550 or the TH-50PZ80U the decision was made easy for me today when I went back to the store and the Samsungs were all gone. So I'm now the proud owner of the Panny! Just need to figure out a way to break it to my wife...

Once I get it home I'm glad I'll have this thread to use for calibration settings.

Next: Blu-Ray and HDTV...

Congratulation Winner26, for the WAF just tell her the livingroom is out of style. And this decoration piece will bring the elegant of the room. Plus you got it on sale using a coupon.

After having my pz80 for a month or so now I've got about 200 hours on it at least, including 100 hours of break in cd time. We watch a lot of 4:3 tv still and I do use the grey bars, however when I put on Blade Runner tonight (which is awesome!) I noticed on a black screen that the side bar locations are visibly lighter now.

How can I get rid of it? Also, why does the scolling bar shut off after 15 minutes? What good is that?

Stretch your picture. That's the only sure way to not get IR/Uneven wear from 4:3 material. Even with the gray bars, they sides aren't aging the same as the middle.

If the scrolling bar + leaving it off overnight doesn't get rid of it you're running the side bars too bright (which is what Panasonic stupidly recommends). Turn them down. However that's unlikely since you've only had the display for a short time.


It should be sufficient given a few passes. However you wouldn't want have someone turn it on and forget and leave it running over the week-end.

I'm very much debating to pick up a Panny TH-50PZ85U as I see quite a few on sale on my local craigslist (one comes with a transferrable 5-year warranty and is unopened). I know that prices are not supposed to be mentioned in this thread so can someone send me a PM of a low price that they'ver purchased it at (or what you would consider a good price for it to be)? I'm trying to figure out if I should get it now at the price I see or just wait it out in hopes that the general retail price for it will drop...

I hate the way stretched looks. It truly bothers me, deep down in my soul!

But the retained image at the sides is brighter than the middle part of the picture, as though the edge phosphors haven't been aged enough. I actually had ben running the side bars at medium so now I've put them on bright. Also, I think we'll try not to run as much 4:3. I'm sure it will clear up soon.

I thought I was that way. Now, I don't notice so much. Only exception is if I am watching a classic movie. Otherwise...S T R E T C H...!

Thanks to those who replied to my post last week concerning uneven wear caused by not stretching 4:3 material on a 50PZ85U. Well, I've been working on it and I am happy to say that the issue seems to be going away.

Some background: I went through the 100 hour recommended break-in keeping settings low and stretching 4:3 material to avoid the black bars. After this time I mistakenly thought that watching HD 4:3 material wouldn't cause any problems (I really can't stand stretched material, and even if you are watching 16:9 HD material the commercials are still often in 4:3). That was since last summer so I've been doing this for quite awhile now (500+ hours). Last week I noticed that the sides of the screen were lighter than the middle. After posting in this forum I learned that it was caused by uneven wear due to using the black 4:3 side bars. The middle seemed greener and the side whiter if you catch my drift.

So...

From this thread I learned that the black bar use caused the phosphorus to age slower on the sides than the middle (duh). So I switched to stretching from now on after running the scrolling bar for the full cycle of 15 minutes (last Saturday).

I also figured out why the sides, when material is full screen, looked whiter than the middle. It's because up until recently I used the warm temp setting. In the last month I had switched to the normal temp. This was because I had watched John Carpenter's The Thing on Blu-Ray and noticed all that snow looked greenish. Normal nailed the whites.

So it stands to reason that the middle of the screen would've aged more on the warmer side than the 4:3 sides which were just black. Honestly, the amount of 4:3 material over the first 500 hours was probably around 30-40% which seems significant enough to me to cause this problem.

My solution was to use the warm setting with all 4:3 material stretched until the screen color seems uniform. I'm happy to report that this set is doing just that, and rather quickly. It's really a non-issue now, I can only notice it because it was so much more obvious last week. Once the color gets close enough I might try switching back to the normal setting. But to be honest, warm is admittedly more accurate looking overall.

Thanks again to everyone who posts to this thread. Your advice and comments are very helpful.

1 year update!

Well, it certainly has been a crazy year.
Last year at this time I got my 50PZ85U.

So far I have had no problems with the TV. This is going to be kind of a boring update, as I have nothing to report, just good performance for a solid year.

The only real change over time might be the IR potential. I have NO BURN-IN.
But temporary IR has occurred, and goes away every time.
The kids will tend to watch Nick on it and I was worried about the station tag, and they have also let the On demand menu sit there, or DVD/BD menus sit there. But no worry no burn-in yet.

The screen is pristine.

I am looking to hook a HTPC up to it, but I use my PS3 in very much the same capacity anyway.

Peace out!

Ok-I'll also give my one year update; as I recall mine arrived at the end of April last year and it's been as close to perfect as it can be. I've never seen even a little burn-in but I don't game. It runs about 10 hours a day during the week and about 14-16 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I run a HD Tivo, a Comcast HD box, a PS3 and an HD DVD player through it. As I've said before in this thread; the picture is actually slightly better now than it was on day 1. The only slightly negative thing I can say is that the glare is a pain; unfortunately because of where it's set up it gets slightly filtered sunlight directly on the screen so during the late afternoons I see mostly curtains. I'm working on window treatments to cure that. At night it's nothing short of stunning.

Here is a note to all of you using your Bluray Player or PS3, and outputting 1080p/24.

DON'T DO IT.

The Panny display is not very good at converting 1080p/24 into 1080p/60.

I have a PS3, and I used to send my PZ85u 1080p/24, until on one Bluray, I noticed some pretty bad judder.

Then I set the PS3 to output 1080p/60, and bam, the judder was gone.

So the PS3's processor, converted the disc's 1080p/24 into 1080p/60 almost perfectly, certainly better than the Panny can.

Which Blu-ray disc? I have been wanting to test this out, but really didn't know what discs or scenes to use.

AND for my one year report (actually, received at end of March 08); still a very nice set. As my first HD TV, I didn't have much to compare to, but the 85U is much better than any of my family/friends sets (pretty much all mid to low end LCD). I have had no issues with stuck pixels. We game on the Wii and PS3, watch hours of ESPN and news channels, and don't have any burn-in. Do see IR occasionally, but it goes away quickly. Have settled on using NORMAL Color Temp because it works for pretty much all sources with skin tones that look natural, not slightly red like they do in WARM. About the only improvements I would like for my next set is a better black levels and more accurate colors (which I really don't notice on NORMAL). But this has been and great, trouble free set so far.

For the life of me, I can't remember what disc it was.

But I can tell you the circumstances.

I clearly remember watching a boat move across the ocean, and it didn't quite look smooth. I almost would have forgetten it, until at the end of the movie, I realized the credits were not smoothly scrolling up and down. In both instances there was a noticealbe shudder in the movement.

It got me thinking, I wonder what would happen If I let the PS3 handle the dejudder process, so I switched it from 24fps to 60fps.

When I replayed the same boat scene and scrolling text, I noticed both appeared significantly smoother and more film like.

I was quite amazed at this. But after thinking about the circuitry inside of the PS3, I realized it shouldn't really be a surprise to me that the PS3 does a better job than the video processor inside the set.

But I would really like someone to back me up on this.

Just pick any Bluray that has a long sweeping constant motion in a scene, and has scrolling credits at the end of the movie.

Just take a good look with your Bluray player in both modes, 1080p/24 and 1080p/60.

I'd really like to know if I'm just imagining things, but I really don't think thats the case.