Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Owners Thread [No Price Talk] - Page 128

Originally Posted by jerome21

Thanks for the tip; I will run over to bb and try out the rabbit ears when I get back in town next week.

Originally Posted by JohannFreytag

Sorry if it is posted already, I ran an unsuccessful word search. Can somebody post instructions on how to access the time counter on a 46PZ85U?

Originally Posted by scorpio_87

Does anyone know why I'm not getting OTA HD channels on my pz85? When I had it hooked up in my bedroom the TV was able to pick them up during the channel setup. Now that I've moved it over to my living room the TV isn't finding them. The only difference in setup is that in my room I had the cable hooked up directly to the TV, whereas in my living room I have the cable going to a cable box, then to a dvd/vcr player, and then to the TV. All the connections are coaxial (at least I think that's what the thick white cables are called).

Any help is much appreciated!

Originally Posted by jerome21

That's what I originally thought with my first 46pz85u set, so I tried different hdmi cables and swapped them around for all the devices, and nothing changed. So, the same is true with the new set. Prior to this TV, I had purchased a 46" sharp LCD but it had really bad banding, however I noticed no other compression issues with it. I returned the Sharp because the banding was just ridiculous and went with the Panny...which blew the sharp out of the water.

Thanks for the tip; I will run over to bb and try out the rabbit ears when I get back in town next week.

Originally Posted by JoeProcopio

well first thing i noticed is that he is running in cinema mode and I set mine up in custom...i have seen this mentioned a lot lately, and frankly never asked to see which mode would be best to start with. I assumed custom had the most neutral settings to begin with.

anyone know why you should start with a certain mode? why cinema would be a better starting point than say custom?

I guess it depends, take measurements in both and see which one i like better. but since i matched this display really close to our Sony CRT production monitor, I'm inclined to leave it set up that way...although of course, I have to test the other mode, lol.

Originally Posted by BigTez

I've made up my mind, and I'm going with the Panasonic Plasma over the Samsung LCD! Quick couple questions...

1) Can someone explain the difference between the 80U and the 85U? I've compared them on Panasonic's website, but I barely see any differences. Is it mainly in the style?

2) I've read that certain receivers will "upconvert" SD to 1080p. Such as the Onkyo TX-SR875. Does anyone know how well this works with the Panasonic's? Does anyone have any advice for buying the best receiver for use with this new TV?

Thanks for all your advice!!

Originally Posted by Patrick.

The 85U adds a nicer bezel (subjectively, I like it) C.A.T.S (useless dynamic contrast mode), a VGA input, and a supposedly higher contrast ratio which hasn't been confirmed yet. I'd go for the 85U just because the 80U kinda seems like a waste of a SKU.

Originally Posted by scorpio_87

Does anyone know why I'm not getting OTA HD channels on my pz85? When I had it hooked up in my bedroom the TV was able to pick them up during the channel setup. Now that I've moved it over to my living room the TV isn't finding them. The only difference in setup is that in my room I had the cable hooked up directly to the TV, whereas in my living room I have the cable going to a cable box, then to a dvd/vcr player, and then to the TV. All the connections are coaxial (at least I think that's what the thick white cables are called).

Any help is much appreciated!

Originally Posted by rkish

I wish that I had an OTA option. I live in the Mid-Hudson Valley (Dutchess County), right between the Hudson River (one mile from Hudson Line train station) and the mountains. I had cablevision when I first moved into my house 15 years ago and got into bed with DirecTV about 10+ years ago.

Without these options, I would have NO broadcast TV. It's bad enough that I had to get an emergency pruning of my magnolia tree when my Slimline dish was installed (I had to do further pruning myself after the fact, as I was losing the 119 satellite). So you see, I'm lucky to have "TV" at all

Are there any options for pulling in a crappy/non-existent OTA signal and boosting it? Does an OTA HD signal need any more or less of a signal to be picked up in comparison to an SD signal? Will signal reception be affected when things are purely digital in 2009?

Originally Posted by HoustonPerson

Did you use the QAM in the bedroom and the cable box in the living room, is that what you are saying? Maybe just re-think your set up and configuration; perhaps, set up a split before the cable box, and you can use the QAM again? If that is what you were using before?

Originally Posted by scorpio_87

In my room I just did the standard auto setup when I hooked up the TV. I hooked the cable directly to the TV, no cable box or anything in between. When it was doing it's channel search it found all my normal cable channels as well as the HD digital channels. Where those HD channels came from I don't know, but the TV found them.

In my living room, after hooking it up through my cable box and dvd player like I described, the TV wouldn't find those HD digital channels like before. It only found my regular analog cable channels.

Originally Posted by notoriousmatty

Coming from 3 lcds and this being my first plasma, is the picture supposed to look so grainy? Everything that was crystal clear before (cable, bluray,games) have a certain grain to them. I know this is probably stretching but if anyones played Mass Effect you had the ability to turn off the film grain and Wow the picture cleared up and looked so nice. Is there a way to do this with the tv? The colors and everything are amazing but the grain irks me.

Originally Posted by am777


and of course the vp goes with you to the next TV, etc which is nice....

Tom, when you get a chance can you give us some details about your experience with the lumagen VP? Like what was corrected, does it now match rec709 spot on, thoughts on before/after gamma, etc or any other info you think might be helpful to someone considering an external VP to use with this TV to take it to the next level.
thanks.

Originally Posted by savet0night

Does the 80U support native display of 1080p/24?

Originally Posted by tsanga

Joe,

See Tom H.'s comments re: Cinema vs. Standard modes. Also, he found Standard = Custom, except for the ability to save settings for individual inputs.

Also, here are Tom's original measurements in Standard.

Originally Posted by TomHuffman

Here's another strange difference between these two modes. As I said before, in the Standard mode, the Color control acts very much like a true saturation control. I was able to reign in the red primary to a nearly ideal point. However, in Cinema mode the Color control behaves very differently. It has very little effect on saturation, but acts directly on lightness, becoming an effective way to adjust color decoding. This is a mixed bag. I was able to get some colors more accurately adjusted this way, but others were worse, red in particular.

Originally Posted by TomHuffman

I have some more information about the 50PZ85U.

It turns out that the observation I made before about the red primary being so accurate in the Standard mode was only part of the story. What I saw was the result of 3 variables: Standard mode AND component input AND SD (480i/p) resolution. 720p and 1080i (component and HDMI) and 480p HDMI are essentially the same whether in Standard or Cinema. All show an oversaturated red primary, even with the Color control turned down to get reasonably good decoding. Odd.

Also, like a lot of modern digital displays, this one definitely performs the best with the HDMI input. With component inputing a 1080i signal, a 37.1MHz multiburst shows very rolled off luma resolution and non-existent chroma response. In comparison, the HDMI response looks crisp and clean. I also noticed significant color bleeding from test patterns on component inputs.

This is too bad. There is no technical reason why a display's component input can't offer perfect response with 1080i signals, but manufacturers just aren't making much effort.

........NOTE - POST EDITED....SOME PARTS REMOVED........

BTW, tests and tech talk aside, this plasma provides a VERY good image. The detail and depth are stunning and post-calibration the color is very convincing, though the oversaturated red primary gives skin tones a somewhat rosy appearance that was often, though not always, evident. Perhaps the most telling testimonial I can offer concerns a very high quality CRT that I love. I was amazed to find that it is now difficult to watch because the Panny plasma's detail and that "looking-through-a-window" experience is so much more compelling. This is true even for SD material where the CRT should have a natural advantage. The CRT looks dull and fuzzy in comparison. I have not seen any motion artifacts or problems with white field uniformity (perfect on my unit) that some others have complained of.

Originally Posted by JCBoomer

Are you using Cinema Mode? It greatly reduces the grain. Also, check out the settings thread for some good suggestions on what settings to use on the 80/85U.

Originally Posted by jerome21

Artslinger:

No, each device is connected directly to the TV via HDMI. Just noticed something else...when I pull up the picture menu on the screen it also has the intermittent flicker that i was describing above around the edges of the lines of the menu and its options, so it would seem it is something on the TV itself since the menu operates independently from the sources themselves.

Originally Posted by Fr. John

Could you point me to that thread please?

Originally Posted by JCBoomer

Holy cow, Tom, that nailed it. Should that be typical with most sets, or does the Panasonic Panel have something to do with being able to dial it in like that?

Not to turn this into a processor thread, but are there any lesser models/brands for us mere mortals that could at least produce decent results? Since this set already has pretty good gamma and greyscale (after adjustment), maybe one that was good at the color?

Originally Posted by TomHuffman

(When using a video processor....) Nearly perfect grayscale, ruler flat gamma, nearly perfect color decoding, world-class processing and noise reduction, and best of all, the best color correction tool available.

Originally Posted by JKnievel

First time post, long-time reader of this thread. Thanks to everyone for all the useful information.

I pulled the trigger on the 50PZ85U last week through Big River and it's being delivered tomorrow afternoon. Tonight, I suspect, will be like trying to fall asleep when I was a kid on Christmas eve.

My question is probably off topic, but if anybody would know the answer you folks would: Big River delivers "white glove service", so the least I'm going to get is having it brought up to my 2nd floor apartment and unpacked. In that situation, do you tip the delivery guys?

Once I get it set up, I'll post pictures.

Thanks again everyone- without resources such as AVS, I'd be reliant on BB or CC salespeople, which would put me at disadvantage IMHO.

JK

Originally Posted by webmasterbill2

What I'd love to see is a posting of the Panny's own internal picture adjustments that bring a particular "reference" TV (such as one 50PZ85U) as close as possible to ideal, including a listing of all the service menu tweaks. I realize that a full calibration including all service menu tweaks is really only meant to apply on a unit-by-unit basis, but I'm prone to believe that the optimal tweaks derived from a single example TV would still result in a lot of improvement on virtually all other TVs of the same model. I'd be willing to try the full calibration settings derived from some other 50PZ85U on mine (as long as I could figure out how to return to factory settings if I turned out to be wrong!).

Is there any possibility such tweaks could be listed here?