Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Calibration Thread (Updated first post) - Page 3

But that's from the CRT age when many CRT set can't go beyond 0 and not have distortion/ringing. By leaving it at 0, the TV actually softens the original picture.

I'm with ya, I trust what my eyes tell me on the calibration disc. Tom went with 50 also, so I dont feel we are crazy.

I am a first time HDTVer but I do pride myself on having a very discerning eye. I have the TH-42PZ80U. Right out of the box, I changed from Standard to Cinema (which looked much much better). I keep on reading posts about Tom's and everyone else's settings, I try them, but they never look anywhere as good as I have. I wish I could find some settings that made my tv look even better than great (but great isn't that bad now is it?).

What I am using is:
CINEMA
Picture: 100
Brightness: 58
Color: 41
Tint: 0
Sharpness: 50
Color Temp: Normal
Black Level: Light

We watch in a room that has two lamps behind us. When we turn off the lamps (not often) to watch a HD movie like Dante's Peak, the pq is even more amazing. Believe me if I could complain, I would.

I am not saying that my above settings are optimal for anyone but me (who knows, maybe Picture: 97 would be .3% better), but so far I haven't seen posted other settings that, in total, improve upon my settings.

Maybe PZ80Us are different from 85Us.

Picture is not necessarily bad, I'm just a little concerned with the brightness. With DVE, the brightness was right at about 51 with 100 hours on the set. You may be lightening a little too much. Not saying it doesn't look great, just putting it out there for others. The high Picture may also give you an issue during sports.

Picture at 100? Doesn't that increase risk of burn-in?

according to the "fabled" airhostess (that's her userid) in the burn-in thread, burn-in is just a myth.

Ditto for my set.

It can be Hit-or-Myth!

What are the ideal calibration settings on a Panasonic TH-50PX80/85U plasma?
I just bought a Panasonic TH-50PX85U plasma tv and it looks solid but I'm not convinced that I have the right calibration settings (e.g. picture, brightness, color, tint, etc). Can someone please share their experience and/or point me to a website that is a good resource for this?

Answer from Panasonic TSR
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No one can really tell you for sure what the settings should be as all models - even those from the same product line of the same model - will not look exactly the same in...
1. certain viewing conditions
2. based on service menu settings from the factory.

There is no strict guideline for the engineers to calibrate by - it's all independent - so the best way to properly calibrate your set at home is to...
1. Purchase a calibration disc - such as AVIA or Digital Video Essentials.
2. Hire a professional calibration expert.

A lot of the settings that others have come up with for the best picture will probably give you a really good reproduction on your set - but there's no way to guaratee that it's going to be perfect. If I had the same set and we put the same settings on both side by side - they may still look differently, basically.

Hope this helps. I'll try to find something about optimum settings just to get you started (a guideline, basically) and that should definitely help but may not be exact.



[["Whatever you do with the settings, make sure to turn the picture setting from vivid to normal or theater."]]

Exactly - this is part of the break-in period. Proper calibration would have you set the amount of light output - also - which would basically mean changing to these settings, anyway... or changing the settings manually for each mode so that changing the default mode wouldn't matter. I should have mentioned that the television should be in Standard or Cinema/Studio Reference mode for a minimum of the first 100 hours, but preferably the first 150 to 200 hours to help alleviate image retention in the future. This is just a guideline, however, as you can effectively change the settings in each picture mode to be equivalent.

Also, it's obviously best to wait to do a proper calibration on the television until after the break-in period has been exercised. Also, allow the television to be on for at least 20 to 30 minutes before calibrating it (if you so decide) to allow it to "warm up".


[["Vivid will burn in before the first 200 hrs."]]

Not true. The break-in period helps to alleviate image retention in the future and to keep the phosphors from aging so quickly - it doesn't mean that it will cause "burn-in" (which is the wrong terminology, btw) within the first 200 hours.

Burn in is different than image retention. There is a bit of confusion about the terminology. The term image retention is where an image is temporarily "burned" onto the screen - usually alleviated by normal viewing over a short period of time. Screen burn is when this is permanently fixed onto the screen and requires service to correct. Burn-in is a testing period the sets go through during manufacturing to help determine the failure rate - of which Panasonic has the lowest, btw at less than 2%.

[["Always make sure you have the picture zoomed in at all times also and never leave stationary images left on and never pause the screen."]]

This, also is not completely true. You can leave stationary images on the screen as long as it's not for more than 15% of the viewing week after the break-in period. The viewing week is based on an average of 7 hours per usage a day - so at 49 hours, 15% is equivalent to about 7.5 hours. Quite a bit of time, truthfully.

[["I called Panasonic and they told me to switch vivid to normal or theater and the other features were just a matter of personal taste. I don't know about calibration dvd's I just didn't find I needed them"]]

This is a bit ironic that these statements SEEM meant to almost contradict mine when it's quite possible that I may have been the one you spoke with when you called Otherwise, I completely agree. The picture settings should be a matter of personal taste and many people get way too caught up in the calibration game concerned with getting everything "accurate". The DVDs only serve to make it worse. Put it this way - the televisions are calibrated out of the box. The cinema/studio ref. modes are calibrated to make the picture look as closely as possible to reference monitors used in professional studios for video editing. Other than a few minor adjustments needed based on your conditions - this is an accurate reproduction of that. In the case of calibration, this service is meant to get your picture looking as close as possible to that which meets the standards. However, you may not like the way the picture looks when it matches the standards - which is why the settings are adjustable, anyway. If calibration is supposed to be the almighty way to get the best picture and ideally all manufacturers built their sets to absolutely conform - then what would be the point of even including the adjustments?

Thanks for supporting Panasonic.
• 1 day ago
Source(s): Panasonic TSR

I just bought the 80U version of this tv and am in the break in process now. I am approaching about 20 hours now.

My settings are:
(Custom)
Picture: 50
Brightness: 40
Color: 45
Tint: 0
Sharpness: 35
Color temp: standard
HD size 2

Everything else off.

I am running the break-in DVD that was posted on this lovely forum and don't plan on watching any TV on it until I hit 100-150 hours...

Do those settings look okay? I plan on bumping the Picture and Brightness 2 every 24 hours until I get to 100/120 hours or so...

The reason I was going to do this is because one of the users mentioned that you could lose shadow detail by leaving it too low for too long.


Am I doing the right thing??


Little freaked as I want the best picture I can haha.

Oh and I am running the DVD from my PS3, so I've seen my PS3 now in glorious 1080p and I have to say... truly amazing picture even in the break-in process!

You can go ahead with Brightness at 50 to 52, just leave the picture down around 60 until its done.

Cool, thanks man. I bumped brightness to 52 and picture to 60 and will leave it there for the remainder of the break in.


It's almost painful breaking in (previous LCD owner), but I'm really looking forward to using it, especially with GTA next week.


Good things come...

Once you are done, picture changes from 60-80 wont yield you much more and I settles on 70. WHen you get 90 and above its too high.

I was surprised to see "Game Mode" uses 100 picture. That seems like overkill to me!

After wall mounting my 85U, I realized that I had been watching the TV in standard mode for a few days.

I dialed in the settings in this thread and popped in ratatouilli for the babygirl and wow, I mean WOW! I was mezmerized.

I was going to wait to adjust the set until I got bored with it, but it is so easy to get a great pic on this.

Firedog just left the house after doing a SpyderTV calibration on my Panasonic TH-42PZ80U. The copyright on the SpyderTV was 2005 (so I don't know if it is the most recent version of the hardware/software). They used my DVD player, connected by component cables.

I had liked my PQ a whole bunch before they came, except maybe the reds were slightly overcooked and the yellow was slightly undercooked, and the whites had a slight gray tint to them. But this calibration was a free service that I got, so I was interested to see if they could make the PQ even better.

I asked them if as part of their service they were going to go into the Service menu and make needed adjustments that they couldn't get to from the user picture menu. They said there wasn't a Service menu. When I showed it to them, they said that no adjustments could be made through it (even though they were cycling thru adjustment settings). I sure hope they didn't change anything!

I told them that the (picture or brightness) adjustments in different modes did different things. They didn't say anything, but they thought I was wrong (or nuts) until I later showed them that putting the exact same Standard-mode settings onto the Cinema mode did not produce the same PQ by a long shot.

I asked them if they were going to use the Warm, Normal, or Cool setting. They said that for Panasonics, they always used Warm.

I told them that my Cinema mode looked best and asked them if they were going to use that mode to do their tests on. They said that on Panasonics they always used the Standard mode.

During the middle of their tests I mentioned to them about how on some channels (like NBC) there is a slight white noise line or two at the top of the picture and I asked them picture can be moved up to cover the noise line. They said that it was from having the cable on the wrong setting or from having the Format set to Full or Just or etc. I showed them that HD Size fixed the problem, but cut off a bit of detail. They didn't know about that.

They did their calibration using the Standard mode. After doing the calibration (maybe 40 minutes), they then manually adjusted the picture (to suit their eye). When they finished they compared it to my Cinema mode. They readily admitted that in their newly-adjusted Standard mode the picture was too vivid and that black level details were lost, so they switched the picture back to Cinema mode.

They were set to leave when I asked them if they were then going to adjust the Cinema mode with Spyder TV since I had already told them that it was the best PQ. They didn't say anything and they didn't seem to like the idea (put them off their schedule), but they sat back down and calibrated it using the Cinema mode. This calibration was done faster. Again after they were done doing the official calibration, they did some quick manual adjustments. And left.

After they left I discoved a off-air channel showing color bars. Darn it, because the red is still slightly overcooked and the yellow is still undercooked. I wish I had remembered to show it to these guys.

This is the before and after settings.
CINEMA
Picture: 100...71
Brightness: 58...42
Color: 41...43
Tint: 0...-6
Sharpness: 50...50
Color Temp: Normal...Normal
Black Level: Light...Light

I still don't think the picture is optimal and I'm not sure yet if it is better or not. But it is still excellent.

Im very surprised with their brightness, seems like it would be crushing that low. Everything else looks about like what we've seen.

Here is what Firedog calibrated for Standard mode:

Picture: 91
Brightness: 1
Color: 43
Tint: -4
Sharpness: 50
Temp: Normal
Color Mgmt: On

Brightness of 1??

Yup, 1 (one).

Also, I don't know what you mean by "crushing", but you suggest that I up the brightness to like 48?

Crushing blacks is when someone has one say a black suit in a dark area. If brightness is set properly you can the suit details and lines, if its crushing all you see is a black blob.

I'll up it to 48 and give it a try. Thank you.

The very best thing, is that in Cinema mode, most any reasonable setting still gives a great PQ.

I know that PQ is very subjective but it is fun trying to find the elusive perfect optimal settings (especially when the PQ is always near great).

Any idea of how to turn down the overcooking of red (on color bars)? The red has just a touch of flourescent in it.

I really like the brightness of the other modes, but the noise is annoying. I wish standard yielded as good a PQ as cinema.

Hey everyone. I've been lurking for awhile but just decided to post. I just got a 50pz80 and am breaking it in. I am a big time gamer (really looking forward to gta4 even though the tv won't be totally broken in yet).

Does anyone have good looking settings for game mode? I called panasonic and they said the mode helps reduce ir from stuff like static hud in games so I'd like to use it for my marathon sessions, but it doesn't look as good as cinema to me. Anyone have anything good?

Thanks,
s

Here are my stats after 200hrs. of usage:

CINEMA
Picture: 61
Brightness: 53
Color: 44
Tint: 5
Sharpness: 48
Color Temp: Warm
Black Level: Light

My conclusions at this point are there are still levels of overstaturation of red & greens. Black levels seem very good and stable. Very Very hard to notice any changes in adjustment of the Sharpness Control, that has me puzzled? Overall the Plasma displays an excellent picture! I'm waiting to see if the reds and greens calm down overtime, or if I will seek professional calibration. All calibration done with DVE Blu ray.

If you want to get rid of the over saturation of red and greens you need to turn down your color. I used these settings from tweak TV and the results are great. Greens and Reds look natural which is very noticeable when comparing a black persons skin. When having my color at 41 their skin always had a reddish tint to their skin and varying black actors and actresses skin all looked similar, but when using the below settings the red tint is gone and varying degrees of light to dark pigment are present in the different actors. Also grass in movies has varying degrees of green now instead of everything looking really green. If you want a accurate true to life picture try these settings. The only thing I changed was HD Size 2 instead of 1.

http://www.tweaktv.com/tweak-my-tv/1...1&model_id=255
User Menu Settings

* Picture Modes
o Picture Mode : Cinema
o Color Temperature : Warm
o Aspect Ratio : Full
* Picture Settings
o Picture (Contrast) : +70
o Brightness : +50
o Color : +34
o Tint : -6
o Sharpness : +18
o Color Temperature : Warm
o Color Mgmt : Off
o x.v.Color : Off
o C.A.T.S. : Off
* Advanced Picture
o Video NR : Off
o MPEG NR : Off
o Black Level : Light
o HD Size : Size 1

Ive decided to go ahead and pony up the $500 for a prof calibration. Will be curious if I can actually notice a difference when he's done.

I'm also on the fence with a Prof Calibration

Im about to fall over the fence when I get the bill