Panasonic PZ80/PZ85 Calibration Thread (Updated first post) - Page 28

longtime reader, new owner of a 46pz80 (coming from a 30" SONY XS CRT). Does anyone switch calibration settings according to input? For example, Cinema for DVDs and a modified Standard for TV. I haven't put in my DVE disk yet, but there seems to be a difference in color between Fios and my HD DVD player (planning to squeeze all the life I can out of it). Thanks in advance.

I use the same settings on my satellite hddvr and my bluray player.


Edit: I forgot to note that you are always gonna see a difference between broadcast and hddvd/bluray.

I almost hate watching some national hd programming now, bluray has spoiled me.

I use the same settings for all my sources, also.

Hey guys, thanks for all the great posts. The basic cinema settings I’ve read through give an excellent start.

I’d just like to say that I’ve got no problems with anyone suggesting their settings for Standard or Custom. Fact is, when I’m sitting down to watch a live-action movie with all the lights down low and the Ideal-lume backlighting the whole mess, I’ll use the Cinema setting. But when the lights are on and I’m watching Fraiser reruns, I’ll be running one of the different modes. After all, the lighting conditions have completely changed, so why not the setting to accommodate with a brighter picture?

And here’s another dirty secret…I’m going to have one setting set for CG movies. If any movies need to pop, it’s Pixar’s. These films…and most animated films…are not supposed to look real. They put an orange glow around Marlin, for goodness’ sake!

Just my humble opinion,

S

Whatever works for you is fine with us Shake

Color management, actually appears to do a decent job with taming the reds. It noticeably reduces them, allowing for a higher color number. While re-reading the cnet review, I noticed they stated it actually helped the innacurate primaries.

Here are some new ones to toy with(50" 85u):

Cinema (least amount of noise and has most accurate gamma out of the box)
Pic 65 (Tom Huffmans recommendation for proper light output)
Bright 53 (set with DVE bluray)
Color 44 (set with DVE bluray)
Tint +5 (set with DVE bluray)
Sharp 50 (best I can tell, 25-75 range is fine)
Temp Normal (warm does not look right to me)
Color Management ON (Cnet recommendation)

Ive still got red push on objects, but faces are not near as bad. I like the more vivid blues and greens the higher color allows for. Same settings with Warm just dont look as good, but Normal and maybe even cool are better.

It tames the reds but jacks up the blues and greens. Make them look like an LCD

Yeah, the blues are kinda WOW. I noticed on the color filter that the color manage. jacks the greens, I think normal pops up the blues.

ElwayLite, I see you have the same situation as me. With DVE blu-ray I set my tint in the positive, maybe around a +5 or so. But with AviaII DVD I have my tint negative around -2. I dont have the filters for AVIAII so I use the filters that came with DVE for both, is this OK or would I need to re-order AVIAII and use their filters? I also make sure to set it to 480i when using AVIAII so it doesnt upscale.

Right now I am using the 44 color and -2 tint because anytime I have a positive tint I seem to see green faces and it annoys me too much. I live in Wisconsin and cant find any reliable ISF calibrators besides crummy BestBuy ect, so I am just going to have to keep messing around with this on my own.

I use Cinema and warm because I thought this was best but now that I see others using normal color temp I might try it out.

Interesting choices- I'm still running temp at cool, but I'm playing with it a bit- the OTA from Fox tonight looks a touch greenish at cool. At normal, there's a bit of red separation in the flesh tones. Reds certainly pop, without flaring much.

In photo printing lingo, I think you've recreated Fujichrome (the reds and greens would pop) compared to Ektachrome... I'll keep watching it, but not bad... not bad....

Your selections aren't far where I was with DVE a page or so ago...

As I've said earlier, I've never been a fan of the negative tint values suggested. This set seems to cry out for a positive tint push- and granted, there's been no professional calibration, and I don't have the courage to muck about in the service menu....

And I've moved back to normal, from cool, at these settings.

Fujichrome.... very much fujichrome (a color balance I loved, fwiw).

Elway what happened to taming the color?

Back to 44?

Im just experimenting.

Im still seeing a green skin tone, especially with dark skinned people and people with dark tans, so I moved tint back to 0 which helped. Tuned color down to 42 and left color management on. Kinda happy with it, I can handle the red push because Im used to it. Every HDTV I have had had this problem.

Keep us up to date on your "experimenting". I tweaked my settings today to match up to the ones you detailed above to see what I think - going to use them for the football game tonight, so I'm officially along for the ride...

Will do.

Well like I said, with my settings there is no red push, or green in the skin.

The color setting and color mngmt is what is screwing with yours i think.

Well, all sets wont be the same either. A-Rod and Jeter were a green tint last night, but when I turned down to 0 they had a much better skin tone.

Just watched Sons of Anarchy on FXHD and it looked pretty good, gonna see how football looks tonight.

Just heard from LionAv, will hopefully get my visit by the end of the month.

How's your turf look on NBC right now??

Looks like good ole faded greeen ugly turf.

Really doesnt stand out as abnormal. The Giants hat that Couglin is wearing is a little saturated though. Im watching OTA and it looks real good, better than the crap ESPN is showing right now.

Nice.

Yeah NBC's HD is quality. Same with CBS.

Yeah, ESPN has had issues for a few years. I wish theyd figure it out.

Yeah, you'd think theirs would be one of the best.

I touched nothing in the SM.

I use to think this way also, but if you watch it in warm setting for a day or two, and then go back to NORMAL, on a screen with a lot of white in it, then you will see how blue the white is even in NORMAL model. Forget about COOL then for sure.

AS the calibrators have said, WARM gets you closest to what you SHOULD get for grayscale, but they are YOUR eyes in the end.

I find that with the WARM setting, you can turn down the color saturation and by using the +7 tint setting it balances the red push. These all work together and changing one changes the effect of the other settings. As I said, with my settings, I get all the Color Filters/Gels to match up nearly (99%) to perfect with DVE BD version.

I agree.

When I turn on the color mgmt, I had to go to tint at 0 because CM adds blue & green to stand out. When I used color mgmt and the NORMAL temp, I got close with the color filters, but not as close as using WARM with no CM and +7 tint and color saturation of 37. That is the only way for me to get all three colors to balance with the filters in the BD version of DVE.

All these changes effect each other sometime a lot. I guarantee if you watch it with the Warm setting for a day or two, it will be hard to look at white areas without seeing them as bluish. White should be white and that is a tell tail sign that the gray scale is too high with normal.

Another thing to remember about Tom's settings is that they are AFTER he changed the SM settings, so with changing those to what they should be for your individual glass, then his settings wouldn't work. There are variation in the panels as we have all heard before so any SM changes would be individual display dependent, not universal.

I am very pleased with my settings where they are and cannot imagine they could get much better with a pro calibration but who knows for sure?

I think what we are seeing between ours is the variation of a set.

I do agree Warm is better, but currently I dont like some of the channels I watch with the Warm setting. Im excited about the calibration because it seems that these tvs look REAL good once prof calibrated.

There is certainly some variation but it sounds like there is more than just panel variations with the settings when many people are using tint -2 compared to others at +5/+7 for tint. I know that the temp setting plays a big part in how that tint control should be set also.

If you could do me a favor and have your display setup close to my settings with warm being important when he takes the initial pre-cal readings with his equipment because I think my settings are close. It would help me to know if I need a calibration as money is getting tighter with the latest home heating oil fill up costing $997.00 alone. If I am close, then I can live with putting it off for a later date a lot easier.

No problem. I cant tell you this for a fact. I let two different home theater guys (one an installer and one a calibrator) look at two different peoples (on here) before and after color charting. They both concurred that the improvements will be very noticeable, especially flesh tones.

PFCS - What are your specific settings? I'd like to try them out. Are you using Tom's settings with Tint at +7 and Color at 37? Thanks.