Toshiba XF550 series calibration service menu access and usage - Page 3

jam2001

I have three sources, the Panasonic BD30 Blu-ray player usually set to 1080p/24. An Oppo DV-981HD DVD player set at 480p, I like the Toshiba scalling a little better than the DV-981HD scalling. Finally I have a Comcast/Motorolla DCH-3416 DVR set to 1080i / 480i output. Too bad that DVR does not pass the native HD source, you have a choice of the box converting all 720p to 1080i or all 1080i to 720p.

All three sources are attached via HDMI to an Onkyo 805 AVR and from the receiver on to the HDMI 1 input on the Toshiba.

I make no adjustments when switching sources. They are all pure digital sources.

My meter did some work with the Cool, Med and Warm settings that I thought I would share.

To start things off, I put up a 50% white screen an went to the service menu with the XF set on Med. There I left Red drive at 60H and adjusted Blue Drive and Green drive until my meter reported a 6500 temp. At 6500 with the panel set on Med, my drives were:

R-Drv 60H
G-Drv 53H
B-Drv 49H

You will note the big cuts needed to the drives vs adjesting for 6500 in warm mode. But what the heck, they are just numbers.




Here is what the temp chart looks like with the new drives at the Med setting.




Here is the temp chart at the Warm setting the temp is centered around 5000 and this curve is the flatest I have seen.




Here is the Cool setting temp chart, Note that the lower temps are so high they are off the chart. The higher gray percents are centered about 9000.

So we see that with Med adjusted to 6500, Cool is about 9000 and Warn is about 5000.

Lets look at the individual colors now.



Here are the individual colors in Med, looks ok, the Red, Blue and Green luminances are about equal from 50% up.




This is the color chart for the Warm setting. Here Red has a 120% higher luminance than Green and Blue runs about 80% of Green. This spread in what lowers the temp to 5000.




For the Cool setting, Blue has a 130% higher luminance than Green and Red is 80% of Green. Kind of the inverse of the Warm setting.

So we can see that although the drive settings in the service menu do not change, the display is using them as a starting point and will add or subtract from them to set the actual drives in Cool, Med, and Warm modes.

I will try these Med 6500 settings for a while, the 30% and 40% measurements are a bit closer to 6500.

This display works in the digital domain. We have a full spectrum backlight covered by colored filters and light valves (the LCDs). What the engineers have to work with on our 10 bit panels is the intensity of the backlight and the setting of each light valve.

To get an idea of how many numbers are involved here there are three color filters (Red, Green and Blue) and three light valves (settings 0 - 4095) for each pixel on the panel.

There are 2,073,600 (1920x1080) pixels on the panel and 2,073,600 light valves for each of the 2,073,600 Red, Green, and Blue, filters. This makes 1 backlight setting + 6,220,800 light value settings for each displayed image. There can be 120 images per second, so the computer inside your panel is calculating the value of an individual light valve 746,496,000 times per second. (oh my!)

I gets better, the values that the come in are defined as luminance and hue, but the light valves are coupled with individual colors. So the luninance and hue values coming in have to be converted to color luminance values before setting the light valves. Ok, there are formulas for that conversion, just program the computer and wa-la. But we are used to calibrating our old CRTs. What about all of those knobs we were used to, surely we can emulate what they do in the digital domain.

Well yes, we can emulate Contrast, Brightness, Cuts, Drives, Gamma, etc. in the digital domain, but each one will need to be applied as the input is converted to light valve settings. In effect each time you emulate a control, another formula has to be applied to the input (or more correctly to one of the intermediate products) before the final valve settings can be known.

This lines up something like this. Input, formula, formula, formula, ... formula, Valve setting.

Some of the formulas work against one light valve, some against the three light valves of one pixel, and others like the sharpness formula need to take into account neighboring pixels.

The number of mathematical formulas that are applied to each input to arrive at a luminance value for each valve is unknown to me. But I can estimate that there are tens of individual steps needed to get the right value. Multiply these steps by the 750,000,000 values needed every second and we are talking about a Math Monster here.

Lets hope it never gets bored with doing the same thing over and over again.

LeRoy, first I'd like to say thanks for taking the time to post the results of your calibrations (even though most of it is way over my head). When you tried your new settings using the medium color temp were the R, B, G drv values the only thing you changed? Did you leave all of your other picture settings the same as you listed in a previous post? Thanks!

corona081, yes I left all the rest of the settings alone. I basically moved my 6500 point to the Med setting using the Green and Blue drives only, I am holding my Red drive constant. Whether I stay with Med or Warm will depend on viewing preference, it is too early to tell now.

For my next experiment I intend to go to the dark side. How dark can I make 0% gray and still get 55ftL at 100% gray. I imagine that the backlight can go lower if the drives go higher, but what will that do to the evenness of my gray scale? Stay tuned.

I'm interested to see what results you find. I love the way the tv looks with your settings, but wouldn't mind having a lower backlight setting because at a backlight of 60 things can get a little bright sometimes, so to speak.

On a side note, last night I noticed that I almost prefer a "cooler" color setting for watching things like basketball. While I feel that your settings may look more "natural," some of the basketball feeds had a slightly more yellow/red look to them on medium color. I think this could also be due to the floor color and lighting in the stadium. I prefer the medium color for pretty much every other type of viewing.

LeRoyK - thank you SO much for your time and efforts. It's really valuable.

I think your point about setting the backlight first and then adjusting the rest is quite important for us all. It's interesting that I have my backlight set at 35 for my Satellite feed, and 18 for DVDs. It is much lower than most of the rest of you.

If you ever, you know, get bored, please try a quick run through with a sub-40 backlight setting and let me know what you think. I thought overall total contrast was improved, and much 'deeper' blacks achieved, in scenes like space/star fields in Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars movies are a critical calibration baseline for me...they have to look 'right'.

I think we all have to remember that there can be a lot of video engineers between us and the original physical source that was filmed/digitally captured. At many points, the source colors can be adjusted before it gets to your cable/satellite box, because someone else thought "this looks a little blue" or something like that. It's not like there is a universal standard for all broadcast mediums on how to process their signals (there are lots of little standards along the way - but not 'one true process' for sending it to us).

So even when you have your TV set as close perfect color reproduction as possible - if someone sends you a magenta-tinted image, you will see too much magenta, and may be inclined to change your picture settings.

My personal calibration goal is to have my 'baseline' calibration set for each input on the TV as close to perfect color reproduction as possible, and then to feel totally free to mess with the user settings whenever I see something I don't like!

For goodness sakes, everyone should enjoy their basketball game, DVD movie, TV show and have it 'look right' to them, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

The sanity check trumps the colorimeter...

haha. i totally agree with you lewisad. like tonight i'm watching the cavs/wizards game and tried the "cool" color temp setting and i don't like it at all. this game looks much better at the medium setting. i don't mind changing things at all. i just find it interesting how different different channels or movies or whatever can look!

Lewis,

Could you post your settings? I tend to like a darker picture than a lot of folks, so I'd be interested in how you have your TV setup. If you post your settings, I can add them to the calibration spreadsheet as well.

does anyone know what VBIS, CC, ID1, and GG are/do in the service menu? I've noticed that these have changed from their original values. My original values for these items were:
VBIS 01H
CC 01H
ID1 01H
GG 01H

I have been using Leroy's service menu and regular menu settings (and enjoy them very much!), but for fun I decided to go back into the service menu and change the drv settings, etc. back to the defaults just to compare before/after. As I was scrolling through the service menu I noticed that the above settings had changed to the following:
VBIS 00H
CC 80H
ID1 80H
GG 00H
However, when I tried to change them back to the default values I noticed that they won't stay at 01H, but automatically change back to the above values?? I don't know if those service menu items are important, but it still concerns me that they've changed and I can't change them back. Maybe I'm just being paranoid...I just don't want to mess anything up. Please note that the only service menu items I adjusted when using Leroy's settings were the drv, brtc, colc, uvtt settings.

Hello All

I just purchased the 52XF550 this past weekend and have been tweaking the controls and thought I'd share mine.

I did not feel comfortable messing with the Service Menu - so all of my changes were using only the User Menu controls.

I ran the Blu-ray Joe Kane HD basics tests for Contrast/Brightness/Color (results below - which are very close to the Standard setting straight out of the box). Afterward, I ran the Harry Potter & Sorcerer's Stone Blu-ray disc (1080p on my Panny Blu player) and Star Wars Phantom Menance DVD (upconverted to 1080p on my Toshiba XA2 HDDVD player). After watching both sources after the calibration with the HD Basics, there still was a slight green tint to certain faces and clothing in some of the scenes (very small amount, but present nonetheless). So I turned down the G-Drive setting on the Medium Color Temperature setting. I like these results in helping get rid of the green tint. Let me know what you think!

Contrast 90
Backlight 60
Dynalight On
Brightness 50
Color 50
Tint 0
Sharpness 5
Dynamic Contrast = Middle
Static Gamma 0
Color Temp = Medium
B Drive 0
G Drive -7

Colormaster On
Red 0, 0, 0;
Green +8, +4, +2;
Blue 0, 0, 0;
Yellow +4, +4, 0;
Magenta+7, -4, +2;
Cyan 0, +2, +2

DNR = Auto
Mpeg = Low

FYI - I had the endure the laughter of my wife as she watched me use the little color template from the HD Basics Blu-ray to cover my eyes during calibration. I share my pain and gain with you all!

Mikey

Hi Jam, I will definitely post mine - I've still been fiddling a bit, and wanted it to 'settle', but I am pretty happy now with my 3 settings, and when I get to it at home tonight I'll try to remember to write it all down.

Your google spreadsheet is great, thanks for doing that.

-Aaron

Also a note on Noise Reduction:

last night I watched Utah/Houston NBA, followed by Nashville/Detroit NHL.

Both were HD signals served by Dish network. But the the NBA game on TNT was noticeably worse signal than the NHL game rebroadcast on NHL Network.

For the basketball game, I turned Mpeg to Middle and DNR to Middle to get rid of the most noise in the picture. It occasionally added to much smoothness in close-ups on people's faces (it looks clean when they stand still, then in motion it looks like they suddenly put on a bunch of make-up - so I call it the 'make-up' effect). That's when I think I have too much NR on. My usual setting is Mpeg=Low and DNR=auto.

Then I went to the NHL game - and there was no noise I could detect at all. I turned DNR=off and Mpeg=off, and everything still looked perfect to me.

It just goes to show the variation in signals...if they feed me enough noise, I sometimes decide to smooth the heck out of it so it looks a bit better - given the chance, I turn it off.

Best,

-Aaron

Check post # 1 on this thread and you'll get your answer.

I did read that before posting my question. I guess I was more concerned with the significance of those values seemingly "changing" on their own and me not being able to change them back. I haven't noticed any performance issues, though, so I assume there is no impact.

Ok, I am working on a 32 backlight level calibration, but I got the Red drive too high for my first attempt.

I found out what happens with a Medium 6500 calibration with Red drive at 80H. The Cool setting gets added picture noise. And the only time Contrast test panels are correct is just after you turn the set on. It appears that the Math monster is going into the weeds with that high of a drive. I will try again with Red at 78H to see if I can get good results.

Here is some information that some of you might find interesting.

The calibration meter I use is very accurate when light levels climb. But the reason these meters are less expensive is that these don't do as well with very low light levels.

HCFR knows this is a limitation of the meter, so it takes multiple readings and averages them when the reading is very low.

HCFR takes less than a second to measure the 20% white patch and over 30 seconds to measure the 0% white patch.

There are much better meters out there for low light conditions, but my budget is limited. Meters that do well in low light cost much more than our TV.

So when I post something about performance in the dark, remember that my meter may not be reporting absolute light levels that will agree with a better meter. I was very encouraged that the meter appeared to be doing very well in reporting relative light levels of 0% white screens with backlight level changes.

thank you LeRoyK for all your hard work! You're my hero. I'm going to try your settings and see how they look.

OK, I still think these are a work in progress, but here are my settings for Satellite TV via Dish, and my 6 year old standard DVD player over component.

Model 46xf550
Settings Date 4 23 08
Firmware 4.2.31.0 Feb 4 2008 FW: 0F
I did not want to enter the service menu - I'm not sure what my default settings are - can you tell me how to see them without voiding the warranty?

Item Dish DVD
----- ----- -----
Contrast 100 100
Backlight 35 24 (notice these are much lower than other folks!)
Dynalight On Off
Brightness 40 37 (also lowish - I think you guys need darker rooms or something...)
Color 50 45
Tint 0 0
Sharpness 15 50(I think SD DVDs look massively soft on low sharpness...I'm sure I'll change this with Blu-Ray or an upconverting player)
Dynamic Contrast Middle High
Static Gamma +2 0
Color Temp Med Med
B Drive +2 +2
G Drive -2 -5
Colormaster On On
Notice for DVD I use a lot of Saturation while pulling the brightness down a bit - I think it looks excellent on DVDs - seems way different than other's settings - but I have not touched the Service Menu...)
Red 0 2 -2 0 +3 -2
Green 0 -3 -3 0 +6 -7
Blue 0 0 0 0 +4 0
Yellow 0 -6 -3 0 +6 +2
Magenta 0 -2 0 0 -10 -3
Cyan 0 0 -2 0 +4 0

DNR Auto Auto (I change this around on Dish all the time, especially for sports...)
Mpeg Low Off (I change this around on Dish, esp. for sports or SD TV)
ClearFrame On On

Hope you find this useful!

For my light controlled room these settings look great.

Service Menu

R-Drv 78H - new
G-Drv 60H
B-Drv 5BH - new
BRTC 75H
COLC B3H
UVTT 75H -new
CNTX 7Fh
SHRC 15H
VBIS 01H
CC 01H
ID1 01H
GG 01H
OPT1 00
OPT2 00
OPT3 E0H
OPT4 6BH
OPT5 03H
SETID D2H
VOLX 64H

Regular settings
Contrast 97 - new
Backlight 32 - new
DynaLight Off
Brightness 57 - new
Color 42 - new
Tint 0
Sharp 0
Dynamic Contrast Off
Static Gamma -4
Color Medium - new
Blue 0 Green 0

Color Master On
Red
Hue 0
Saturation 0
Luminance 0

Green
Hue 0
Saturation -12 - new
Luminance 0

Blue
Hue 0
Saturation 0
Luminance 0

Yellow
Hue +8 - new
Saturation 0
Luminance 0

Magenta
Hue 0
Saturation 0
Luminance 0

Cyan
Hue 0
Saturation -6 - new
Luminance 0

As you can see there are a good number of settings that need to change when setting another backlight level.

I was able to clear up the problems I had when Red Drive was 80H by rebalancing for 6500 Medium with Red Drive at 78H. If you need to watch in a bright room, you can switch to Standard or Sports without seeing problems.

This setup has better blacks than the 60 backlight settings, and 100% white luminance has dropped from about 55 ftL to about 40 flL. 40 ftL is about the top safe Plasma output, it is still bright enough for me.



Color Master is on, and I am trying to bring Green in with saturation only. Cyan also needed a saturation touchup and Yellow needed a hue adjustment to climb closer to the correct position with Green off the triangle.



The temps look pretty good on the chart and by eyeball. I still want to adjust the cuts for the range 0-30%.

Here is a link to the full .chc file for those who have HCFR.

http://www.mediafire.com/?km3yyzrlutg

Space movies never looked better! Enjoy!

LeRoy, thanks again for the calibration work you're doing. I don't have the equipment or knowledge to do the calibration so it's great that someone like you is taking the time to do it and more imortantly sharing your results with the rest of us. I must say that your new settings are my favorite to date!

You're welcome!

I've updated the spreadsheet with the latest settings from you, Mikey and Leroy. I also removed a column that had partial information, in order to save space.

Regarding the Service Menu settings, I don't know how to get them without actually going into the Service Menu.

I'm anxious to test some of the new settings, but so far, kkail's (with a little variation) have worked out well with my TV.

Thanks everyone for posting.

-Jeff

Howdy all... Still confused as to whether we need to adjust Service Menu setting for each of the different modes individually {movie, standard, sports, preference}... Do we also have to adjust the user settings for each mode individually?

A step by step process would be nice for us HD for Dummies types...

Any help would be very much appreciated...

Dave

finn,

The Service Menu settings are global settings. They effect all inputs. But the user settings are specific to each individual input (DVD, Cable, Antenna, PC, etc). In other words, if you change something in the Service Menu, it affects the DVD input, the Cable input, the PC input, etc. But if you change a setting in the DVD input, it does not affect the settings in the other inputs.

Hopefully that clarifies this a bit.

jam2001,
in case you are interested for your spread sheet some of my original service menu settings were different from those of others. i have the 52xf550, and my firmware is the same version/date as those of everyone else. here are my original values:
r-drv: 73h
g-drv: 7ah
b-drv: 86h
brtc: 77h
colc: 8bh
uvtt: 79h
cntx: 7fh
shrc: 00h

while most of my values are pretty close to the original values of others on your spread sheet, the one i find interesting is COLC. my original colc was at least 10 notches lower (if i'm doing the hex counting correctly) than the next highest on the spreadsheet (9dh)

Thanks. If you give me the rest of your settings, I'll post them in the spreadsheet.

While googling to try to find out what the mysterious M mode is, I found something entitled Adjustment Instruction for Toshiba 8821 Super Chip and a related document. The two documents are quite helpful in that the decode all the codes in the service menu, and refer to a both a "D factory mode" to change all adjustable items, an "M factory mode" to make rapid adjustments, and our good friend the "S mode". It also tells you how to enter these moders. It seems that this chip is related to the various service modes.

So, I think that this answers several questions:

1. At Toshiba, they use the D or M mode to make adjustments on the set.

2. Items not changeable may be changeable through D or M mode

3. For the person who had an M on the set, the service center never properly exited.

Although the link is to a Chinese company that does something with advertising and LCD and plasma displays, a search of the part number leads to other references, so I don't think the Chinese company is involved in the manufacture.

I will leave it to braver souls then I to play with this. I have attached both the link and a pdf of the two items (in case the link is deactivated). Enjoy.

http://www.shiningltd.com/download/T...nstruction.pdf

http://www.shiningltd.com/download/T...1%20Manual.pdf

 

Toshiba 20TMPA8821 20Manual.pdf 179.275390625k . file

 

Toshiba_8821_Adjustment Instruction.pdf 143.6513671875k . file

kkail,

Good find!