Quote:
Originally Posted by
EWL5 
Not exactly. I changed my IRE to 0 and tried recalibrating but the BTB bar disappeared on me on DVE no matter how high the brightness setting goes. Changed back IRE to 7.5 and the BTB bar reappears. I've seen this happen on other devices but letting others know sometimes you don't have a "choice."
That's correct. Some devices will clip Blacker Than Black or Peak White data with one setting and not the other, and it could be EITHER setting that has the problem. Obviously to test that you need to know that your DISPLAY (or intervening AVR) doesn't have its own problem clipping this stuff.
I'm not sure we've actually confirmed whether or not the 3800 has this problem with either of those settings (independent of which setting might be best for working with any given display).
The above is for Component (ANALOG) video output.
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For DIGITAL video output (HDMI or DVI) the "correct" choice for RGB data format output for home theater use is "Studio RGB" -- i.e., "black" is encoded as digital 16 instead of digital 0. Blacker Than Black data goes in the range from 1-15 if it hasn't been mistakenly clipped. [NOTE: Technically there is no such thing as "IRE" setup level for Digital video. IRE setup level is a concept that only makes sense for Analog video. This hasn't kept some clever product marketing types from confusing these concepts in menu entries and manuals -- see below.]
Using "Extended or PC RGB" (black encoded as 0) means you HAVE TO lose Blacker Than Black data because there is no such thing as pixel values less than 0 -- i.e., there's no data range to hold that stuff.
Using YCbCr output for HDMI should automatically get you "black"=16 for home theater devices, so the choice here for digital video output usually only rears its head when using RGB output data format. Note that YCbCr (and in particular YCbCr 4:4:4) is the normal default data format for HDMI connections and RGB (either Studio or Extended) is the normal default for DVI connections.
Some devices have a screwy user interface where they make this choice for DIGITAL video using the IRE 0 or IRE 7.5 setting that actually only makes semantic sense for ANALOG video. And some devices have two separate controls -- an IRE setup level for Analog and a Blacks setting for Digital where the Blacks setting has two choices -- which could be labeled just about anything. The weirdest situation however is when even devices with two separate menu items like that STILL alter the Digital video output if you change the IRE setup menu item (or the Analog output if you alter the digital Blacks setup item).
Again, I don't know that we've had enough reports here to know if the 3800 runs afoul of any of these mistakes. We've had a couple reports here that the 3800 may not be sending out the correct DIGITAL video according to these settings, and I'm wondering whether there might be a setting conflict between the Analog and Digital video sides of the setup stuff that might be causing this.
This is just background for folks testing the 3800 and for folks trying to get its video levels properly calibrated using controls in the 3800 and in their display.
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And the last gotcha here is that far too many devices treat 480i video specially -- either Component 480i or HDMI 480i. That means testing this stuff needs to be done BOTH for 480i and for whatever other output resolution you commonly use. And again, to test it, you need to know you are using a display (or AVR) that doesn't have its OWN problems with 480i.
We haven't had any good reports here yet on how well the 3800 handles 480i output (either Component or HDMI) -- an item of interest to folks who want to use an external scaler for SD-DVD viewing for CIH screen setups for example.
--Bob
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