Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Calibration Thread (Updated first post) - Page 68

Well...after a couple months use, I did a THX DVD "eyeball" calibration and came up with the following settings, per the THX disc...which appear WAY OFF to what I have seen others post:
CINEMA WARM
Picture.......65
Brightness...26

STANDARD WARM:
Picture..... 62
Brightness.. 6

Now...the picture looks a lot better...but I am curious if anyone else came up with similar settings?

Your brightness is WAY too low, you are losing detail and crushing blacks.

My picture is 65 but my brightness is 53.

That is what I thought...but according to the THX Test Pattern on setting the brightness...that is what I came up with. Could that be a DVD player issue?

These sorts of problems can depend on a number of factors: Picture Mode, Color Temp, ambient light etc. The THX patterns are ... weak. Black level is a lot easier to set by eye with moving bars than with a static pattern unless you can get the pattern to overlap a no-video area (say a black border letterbox or pillarbox).

I wound up on 58 brightness both using the AVSHD blu-ray disc as well as by visual observation last night on Lost where one of the characters (head creepy dude "Ben") is wearing a black jacket. Anything below 58 seemed to lose some details. This was after gray scale calibration using CalMan and an i1 LT.

Yeah it's funny cause I did one of those 'maximize your home theater' tests on the Wall E blu ray and I came up with 58 for brightness also, but most of the time that gives me a gray haze to the picture so I've stuck with 53.

Maybe I'll set it to 55 or 56.

Blueray HDMI in dim room- Cinema Warm (60 Pic 52 Bri)

Upscaled DVD from same BD player same settings as BD above.

Regular Digitial TV from COAX with most lights on - Standard Normal (65 Picture, 50 Bri).

XBOX 360 HDMI - GAME @ 80 Pic I believe and I left the rest at default. Looks good to me.

I gave up calibrating cable TV because every channel is different. You are not getting what the "artist" saw in the first place. All the channels have been re-processed and passed on several time before you ever see it. I just do my best to keep flesh tones as natural looking as I can and leave it alone.

Only place you can count on for some level of original signal and consistant signal is your BD player as long as you have not enabled a bunch of crap on oit like SOFT PICTURE or something.

C.

Please excuse me for the newbie question. Playing PS3 someone told me to make sure my TV is set to 720 to optimize a specific game (MLB 09 The Show). Can this be done through the TV menu? I thought it's the PS3 that pushes the resolution to the TV. Any comments are appreicated.

The TV will always upscale the video it receives to 1080p. The PS3 will send the video game resolution as 720p, but it will be upscaled and you won't notice anything.

I just bought new 46PZ85U and close to 80 hours of burn-in window. Overall it's great TV esp. for the price. However one thing I am noticing is lot of red push esp. for skin tones. The effect is more pronounced for SD but also clearly visible for OTA HD broadcast. My color setting is currently 41 (while picture and brightness are below 50). To remove the red push (without lowering the color value too much), I tried to change the tint to +ve value and it seems to work. The skin tones look much better now. Has anyone tried this? Will increasing tint affect anything else? Thanks for the help..

Adjusting tint can't fix red push. You'll just end up with a slightly greener overemphasized red.

Reducing the red cuts and drives in the service menu also won't fix red push - it'll just throw the greyscale out of whack.

From everything that's been said about these sets, there is no way to fix red push in either the service or the user menus.

The only thing you can do is reduce the colour control to tame the reds - of course doing that gives you undersaturated greens and blues.

With my color at 37 and tint at 5, I have no red push at all.

I was going to readjust my calibration because there appears to be a bit too much red and I was going to try these settings. My tv is about 2 weeks old.
I have the owners manual in front of me but when I go to menu and go to the right as it suggests ..I get the DISH tv schedule. If I cut of the dish, then nothing comes on the tv.

If I go to tv video I can get all the settings like tv, hdmi1 etc...but when I push the buttons for 1 or try to use the up and down button nothing happens.

How do I get to the settings to change the calibration?

Thanks....

However, I learned tonight that if I use the sub menu button that I can get the DISH program schedule and I don't have to use the DISH remote anymore.

Now, if they would hurry up and release the new Panny blu rays I can complete the set.

You're using the wrong remote or you don't have it set to control the TV. This is an operational issue so it should be in the owners thread.

What are some of the settings you guys use for playing PS3 on your 85U? I love 'cinema' for TV and blurays, but it's just not quite bright enough for me when playing video games. The dark scenes tend to be a little too dark and harder to see, and when it's supposed to be bright with a lot of lighting effects it just don't pop enough for me either. I've been playing around a lot with the 'game' and 'custom' settings but I was interested to know what settings you smart AV people and gamers use to play on your PS3. My set is not professionally calibrated btw.

Sorry to ask a question that has probably been discussed. When searching, all the stuff I found were in regards to the settings on the PS3, not the 85U. Thanks in advance!

Xbox 360 and viewing settings?

I've read through most of the posts here, from the calibration thread, break in thread and owner thread.

Here is what my settings are atm for a 42PZ80U

Cinema
Picture 60
Brightness 48
Color 44
tint -2
Sharpness 50
color temp warm
Black level Light
HD size 1

Does anyone recommend anything different for viewing channels and for gaming on an Xbox 360?

Also, I just got done with the break in today and started watching Tv. Looks amazing but should I worry about staying on one channel for too long? Or is it ok on an HD channel for long periods?

I've got the 46PZ85U, so disregard this if it isn't the same on the 80U, but I'd recommend putting the brightness up a little bit. I've got mine usually between 52-56. I'm no expert, but anything lower than that and it seems like I'm losing out on a couple shades of gray. Definitely up the brightness a little when playing games IMO. I've got a PS3, not a 360, and I've been playing on Custom instead of Cinema (use that for TV and movie viewing). Usually have the Picture around 70-75, Brightness around 54-58, and color in the mid 40s while playing PS3. Cinema is a better picture quality, but I like it a little brighter when playing games so I use Custom.

I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this TV/movie and video game settings comparison also. As you can see a couple posts above this one, no one has responded to my question yet either.

Same here. I use a higher picture & brightness setting on Custom and Normal temp when playing games on my PS3. For movies I switch to Cinema and Warm with slightly different settings.

Ballpark here so I don't have my TV in front of me, but for PS3 games: Custom, picture 70, brightness 54, color 46, tint -4, sharpness 50, Normal temp. All other settings off and black level light. For BD movies I use Cinema, picture 65, brightness 52, color 44, tint 0, sharpness 50, Warm temp.

I went through proper break-in up until 100-125 hours and I'm now around 500 hours. My only "con" is that my panel seems more prone to minor IR than others around here. With the settings above I get letterbox IR when watching just one BD movie, and minor IR with PS3 games even if I've only played 20 minutes. The ESPN logo will produce IR in less than 10 minutes. The I Am Legend pop-up menu on the BD gave me IR on top of the letterbox IR, and that menu was pulled up maybe twice during the movie for a total of 1-2 minutes. This IR occurs regardless of whether the pixel orbiter is set to Auto or Force 1. Luckily the scroll bar and/or 10 minutes of full-screen TV viewing wipes it out.

Overall I'm willing to live with the IR tendencies rather than having to endure the motion blur, gray blacks and input lag of an LCD panel.

Your TV sounds exactly like mine. I use Cinema when watching TV and movies, with very similar settings as you. I also use similar settings in Custom for playing PS3. In regards to the IR, I also see icons, logos, etc on my screen after only a very short time. Granted I have to turn the lights off, put the TV on an empty input and stare from about 2 feet away to see it, but it's always there. From my normal 12 foot viewing distance it isn't noticeable. I usually use the scrolling bar for 5 to 10 minutes, or leave it on an HBO HD channel b/c there are no letterboxes or logos on the screen, or put the PS3 on some music and use the visualizer for a couple songs and it usually fades away fairly quickly. I haven't had any IR last longer than a day so I'm not overly concerned about burn-in yet. I've had the TV about 2 months and have probably 3 or 4 hundred hours on it.

As long as all that IR doesn't eventually start to burn-in, I can live with it b/c the picture quality is amazing!

I got a hold of the Panny tech and it was an easy fix.

All I had to do was hold down the tv button for 3 seconds and everything came back to normal. Then I went to menu and I changed the settings !

I also learned that if I hit the DBS button for a few secs then I could return to use the sub menu button to get the DISH schedule.

And she told me that the new blu ray players from Panny would be out in early March.

Life is good now.

I use my same Cinema settings for everything. TV, Blu Ray movies, and PS3 gaming.

How do I tell if I have Image Retention?

I've had food channel on and when i turn off the TV or go to channel 4 instead of 3, I see no image that stays.

Guessing I don't have it?

What setting do you all recommend to make the colors "pop" just a little?

I noticed if you have the black level set to dark the colors look more vibrant, I actually noticed this watching football. However, I noticed it crushed the blacks to much so I put it back to "Light" but I still miss the colorfulness..lol.

Funny you should mention that. I too have reduced color to 37 (sometimes 38) and added tint to +3 to +5. I also have very little red push if not none at all. And, adding tint to +5 does not give me greener skin tones as has been mentioned.

I have always calibrated my TVs based on settings on the AVS Forum and the results were always good. However, I have relocated to Asia and the setting does not appear to work anymore.

I split my time between Hong Kong and Beijing and have two panny sets. The HK one is 42PZ850h (ridiculourly expensive as they are some Euro model for HK only and pany does not make pz80/85 available in HK) and the Chinese one is 50pz85c (appears to be a stripped down version of the pz85u to get the price down for China).

For the 42PZ850h, I find the factory default to be too cold and too bright and the calibration setting commonly used in this site give me the best picture. However, for 50pz85c sitting in Beijing I find the setting used in this thread to be too warm (most people use warm setting here). After playing with it, the factory default actually gives me a more comfortable picture. It's a bit cold but I find it to be more natural than the warm setting, especially if I turn the auto brightness sensor adjustment feature on (the function does not exist on my HK set). Panasonics China told me the PZ85c had nothing to do with the PZ85 elsewhere and it is already color calibrated out of factory according to Chinese HDTV standard (it is a big selling point on the pamphlet, kinda useless since there is almsot zero Chinese broadcast hdtv content). It is the 'offical Chinese Olympics HDTV' or something like that, for whatever that's worth. The 50pz85c is a brand new model that came out just before the Olympics while the 42pz850h is a 2007 model.

The source materials are all contents from HTPC running Nvidia graphic cards (one is 8800GT and the other is 8800GTS) so they should not make a difference. Is there a way to make my pz85c just a tiny tiny bit warmer? Or is it possbile that the factory default is correnct and the reason I find it a bit cold is because I am used to the warm setting on my HK pz850h?

I couldn't agree more, There is no way I could have tint in the - and the high color # some peeps use, way to red. Been @ +2 all along with color @ 34,I hit 200 hours so switched to DARK upped pic-80 bri-60 and the picture just blows me away (cinema,Normal)

How come the settings in the first post of the thread recommend HD Size: 1?

Re: the Warm v. Normal debate

Is this mostly a personal preference or is one definitely considered more accurate?

Also, is there the same debate on Standard with Warm/Normal as there is on Cinema with Warm/Normal?

In some configurations Size 2 will show video noise at the edge of the screen.

I don't know about considered but Cinema/Warm is the most accurate for watching content made to SMPTE cinematic standards. Many people are not so interested in image fidelity.

What is size 1 and 2....... is that a reference to cinema and game etc....

where they fall on the lineup?