Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Calibration Thread (Updated first post) - Page 18

that actually makes a lot of sense to me.

well, on the flip side, everyone says once it calibrated its a vast improvement. The before and after results Ive shown folks impressed them. I dont see turning them down, its not like it keeps you from doing a good calibration on it.

my question doesn't have to do with the results, but why the cost difference, despite seemingly (I could be wrong here) so much less work? I'm not debating whether it's worth it or not, just the cost per the amount of time and work performed.

ISF Calibration on the two sets:

My Sony 36" HDTV CRT
greyscale
geometry [can be very time consuming]
gamma
user menu settings [picture, black level, color, tint, sharpness]
many individual setting tweaks buried in the service menu

vs.

My Panny 50" Plasma
greyscale
user menu settings [picture, black level, color, tint, sharpness]
?? anything else ??

I was quoted quite a quite bit more $ for calibrating the Panny plasma.

If you can handle the user menu adjustments yourself, then I don't think ISF will be a big improvement.

shpankey,

Let's try answering your question: if I were you, I'd call another calibrator.

this was one from the company that was recommended by almost everyone here, many, many times over

How is messing around in the user menu yourself going to help Chris? Each unit is different and so is the environment they are in. There aren't cookie cutter ISF settings, if you want that go buy a 800u with the world renowned THX mode.

shpankey,

Have you asked this particular calibrator the same question?

Also, you can try the calibration forum. See how other calibrators respond to "grayscale only" calibration.

EDIT: some calibrators do charge less for when there are fewer things to tweak: example

If I get my PZ85U calibrated and a new firmware comes out and I upgrade, will I have to get the set recalibrated?

Thanks

Seems to me the general consensus in the calibration forum is that grayscale is one of THE most important aspects of color calibration, I don't see why it wouldn't be worth it. You could always do it yourself if you aren't intimidated by it.

As for the firmware I wouldn't hold off for it.. I doubt Panasonic is going to fix Standard/Custom, of course this is IMHO only

[quote=shpankey;14150364]

Just out of curiosity, I don't really understand what all there is to calibrate on this set other than greyscale [huge I know] and the very basics: picture, color, tint, sharpness and black level. Your cuts are at the defaults of this panel [80, 80, 80] so it was your gains he changed. By the way, where did he set your Sub-Brightness, Color, Tint, etc. in your service menu, if you don't mind me asking? Also, post calibration, are all your user menu settings now at 50, as is typical after a calibration? If not, where are they? Thanks for any info.

Believe me, I have learned what little I know from these forums and people like Doug, Tom, etc. I was unaware that the cuts are set at the defaults, or what was else was changed during calibration in the service menu. I can tell you my user settings post calibration:

Picture Mode: Custom
Picture: +74
Brightness: +53
Color: +54
Tint: -2
Sharpness: +14
Color Temp: Normal
Black Level: Light
Size: 2 when possible
All other settings: Off

This is my first venture into Home Theater and Plasma panels, but I must reiterate how happy I am with the picture on my 46PZ85 both before, and especially after calibration. Sorry for the poor use of quotes from the threads. The company I used in San Diego, Coast Calibration, was very reasonable price wise, and the end results were certainly worth it.

At least one traveling calibrator will only take jobs that include calibrating a video display and the surround sound system in the same trip. Fees are higher for this combined service than for a display only. Not sure if that's the case with you or not.

Not many people (around here anyway) will pay a lot for direct view CRT or CRT RPTV calibration any more so each calibrator has to decide what the bottom line is... keep the CRT business and charge less, or let the CRT business die and focus on newer displays. I don't know what all calibrators are charging for recent model digital displays. But I think it's fair to say that fees are probably in the $250 to $450 range depending on what's being done and how difficult or easy each model is. I find the 80U/85U bust my ass every time. I keep thinking I'll be able to get done in less than 3 1/2 hours each time I get another one to calibrate, but every time I get wrapped up in finding just the right settings to minimize gray scale errors and time just burns up because you get what you think may be OK, but viewing reference material shows the dip that seemed small at 80% and the error at 10% that seemed small enough were both easily visible so it's back to experimenting with settings that will make both 10% and 80% errors less obvious. This can take a LONG time on these panels - very stubborn. And 10% and 80% do seem to be the 2 problem spots most of the time though there is some variation unit to unit.

So even though there are only cuts/gains to adjust in the service menu, they interact a fair bit with user menu controls and alter gray scale results. And even though there are no gamma adjustments, gamma does move around a bit as you make adjustments to cuts/gains, brightness, and contrast. You have to keep watching gamma so your adjustments don't push it below 2.2 - it can be a hell of a balancing act to keep gamma close to 2.3 while avoiding visible errors in the gray scale, keeping the black level right, and keeping the white level set where it needs to be to avoid the black level jumping up too often (or at all). Everytime I do one of these I feel like I've earned every penny of my fee. If everything didn't wiggle around when you adjusted something on these displays, they'd be a lot easier to calibate.

FYI, ive tried both sets of service menu settings posted in here on my 85u and they looked way off.

Does anyone know how to set the Black Level on my TH-42PZ85U Panasonic Plasma HDTV? It seems to be "greyed out" when I go into the Picture controls. Thank you for any suggestions.

ditto

If it's grayed out then it's not applicable to that input. Don't worry about it.

Alright, after a couple weeks viewing and tweaking my 50PZ80U, here are the settings I am running (for anyone who cares)

Picture Mode: Cinema
Picture: +70
Brightness: +50
Color: +38
Tint: -2
Sharpness: +50
Color Temp: Warm
Black Level: Light
Color management: (varies)

I keep going back and forth on color management. With it off, skin tones look a bit unnaturally reddish and oversaturated. Turning it on makes faces look great, but then greens get a HUGE boost of blue, so that grass or other plants look unnatural. Lately it has been on more, as I figure faces are the most important thing to display well. If it could only get both right at the same time, the picture would be near perfect. Oh, btw when I switch color managment on, I also bump the tint down to -4.

Another thing- there must be significant differences between models (and perhaps specific units as well), because there is no way anyone would ever think color @54 looks good on my TV. It would make everyone look like oompa loompas in willie wonka's factory.

Carry on.

They're rare but it happens... and they can't be fixed as easily as LCD because of the glass panel (can't use pressure/tapping methods) - can only use software and it didn't work on mine.

Anyway, somehow I got lucky, Panasonic is going to replace the panel for me on Friday .

I entered the Service Menu and pressed 1 twice to go to the WB-ADJ menu.

Then by mistake, I pressed 0 a number of times not realizing I was changing the METHOD value.

Could a member please help me obtain the default value for METHOD and if possible, explain what the values for 00,01,02,03 represent.

i believe the default value is 3

Trust me...I've got one stuck/dead pixel, but fortunately, it's about 1/4-1/2'' from the top left corner and my eyes don't even focus on that area. If I use Size 2, the area isn't even visible on either TV or BD.

If it was right down Broadway, then I wouldn't have hesitated to do something. It's good to know that Panasonic is willing to do soemthing if I change my mind. At least I've got 3-4 years with my Mack warranty.

Mine's about an inch from the bottom and 7 inches from the right, but I use my screen as a PC monitor so a black dot on an often white screen when you're only 3-4 ft away is *very* noticeable >.<<br />
I had my screen less than 2 weeks when the dead pixel developed which might have been why they were willing to replace it (I could have taken it back the store for a refund, but not an exchange, as mine was open box, so I figured why not see if Panasonic would replace it. I have until Wednesday of next week until my 30 days for return is up so even if Panasonic falls through I can still return it.).

Hey everbody, been lurking for awhile now and finally bought an 85 50 inch. I breaking it in using a SD card. Anybody know how many seconds to set each frame. thanks

How about trying the following:

1. Select Menu
2. Select Picture
3. Select Advanced picture (page 2 of 2)
4. Select Black level: LIGHT or DARK

Select Return, Return.....Works on my 42PZ85U

The break-in DVD changes the color frame pattern about every 30sec, so thats what I set the Panasonic slideshow interval rate to as well.
I got a cheap 1GB SD card and PC universal card reader/writer today, copied the colored frame images to it and am using it now as well. The past few days I used the DVD but now I don't need to be putting more wear on the DVD player too.

thanks

I generally leave the image enhancement choices on the Panasonic plasmas off because they typically do more harm than good. I had always followed this rule with respect to the color management option, but I had frankly never noticed that it did much of anything.

So I finally decided to sit down and actually spend some time measuring the "feature" to see what it did. I looked at the color performance from every perspective I could think of.

As I suspected, the color management feature does very little. All I was able to verify is that it moves the hue of cyan towards blue, making the image a little less accurate.

The display is in Cinema mode and has had the grayscale calibrated, but is otherwise close to out-of-the-box performance.

Gray Scale



There is a small difference at the low end, but this could just as easily be a measurement anomaly.

ΔE (CIE94) Performance



There is a difference in cyan only.

CIE Chromaticity



Here you can see the cyan error. It is shifted towards blue. All other colors look essentially the same.

LSH Error





This is the most detailed break-out of the color performance. The data confirms what was earlier reported. The only significant difference is in the hue of cyan.

Color Decoding



No change here.

You're the man Tom!

Tom, the blue shift is very obviously seen, but how do you explain the not-so-subtle change I'm seeing in reds? Turning color management on really desaturates faces, making them look less orangy and much more natural to my eye.

Tom,

Mind explaining some terminology for us?

I understand saturation to mean distance from the white point, hue to be angular error about the white point, but what's lightness? Is that Y?

From reading your calibration guide, I took Y to be the same as color decoding, as in "set Y of red to be 21% of white by using the color control."

So it would be great if you could clear up the difference between lightness and decoder performance.

Thanks!