Official LNXXA550 Calibration/Settings Thread - Page 105

These are off of a home calibration by the TTV guys http://www.tweaktv.com/tweak-my-tv/c...ln-46a550.html .

hmm idk about those settings i was using cnets settings..

hey does any1 kno any good calibrations for call of duty modern warfare 2 for xbox 360 thanks

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-19410_10...hreadID=333246

why are these settings so different? which ones better?

I have a question that involves firmware.
I own a 40a550 which I brought in may of 2008.
It has the older firmware on.
Should update to 1006?

Don't touch it if you don't need to. Firmwares are released only to fix someting wrong with the unit, if your unit is not defective in anyway with it own OEM software then I wouldn't touch it.

It depends. I upgraded to 2006 and I was pleasantly surprised. I had a firmware version 1000 which was weird. Some have reported that it made things worse, others that it was better. Its not going to break your TV if you do it properly (read the info carefully, you have to apply 1005 first). The general advice is that if you have no issues, don't.

My upgrade went well.

Chances are that if you are happy with your TV now, it will not change much for you.

Thanks for the info.
I talked with Samsung and the techs at Best Buy (the ones who repair the sets) and they told me as long as I follow the directions it wouldn't hurt the set.
I did the upgrade and maybe it was just me wanting to see a improvement,
but I did notice a slight improvement on the picture (the tv had a better good picture already) It seems cleaner, especially on the edges which seems to improve the picture overall.
Like I said maybe it's just me, anyways I did notice one thing when I check the tv for the firmware it said 1005 not 1006.1.
I checked the downloaded firmware I used and noticed that 1005 and 1006 are the same.
I contacted Samsung and told me they have no control over that and to check back later to see if 1006.1 is there.
Any information on this?
Thanks for your response.

The firmware upgrade is a two-step process and both 1005 (main processor) and 1006 (sub-processor) need to be installed to complete the update. Each updates a different area... they are not "successive" updates.

Both 1005 and 1006 are listed and available on the A550 FW upgrade page, along with the instructions indicating that both files are required to be loaded.

I believe that all FW versions prior to the 1005/1006 version suffered from the "red motion blur" issue. We know of no particular issue that resolved with FW versions newer than 1006... just that some color calibration changes were made which shouldn't matter if you do your own calibrations.

Thanks jcalabria for your response.
I logged on to my account at the Samsung website and went to the download area.
I downloaded both 1005.1 and 1006.1 and unzipped them.
They are both 36.5 MB and have the same 17 files and 1 folder (image).
I also downloaded the files from your link and they are the same (I know they should be) as the one I downloaded for my 40a550 account.

I just downloaded and compared... the files in the two archives have different date stamps and the text files with the version info are different as well, clearly indicating that one is 1005.1 and one is 1006.1. Although they do have the same file/folder layout and overall size, they are NOT identical file packages.

They should both be loaded as per the instructions.

Thank you for clearing things up for me.
I appreciate the ability to tap into the knowledge of others.
I will check once again what the latest firmware my tv says is loaded and reload the 1006.1 again if needed.

Thanks for your calibrated settings mahlerfan999,looks pretty good in my LE46A552.
Do you thinks that is better if i use avs hd709 to set gamma and brightness for my xbox360 gaming?Regards.

I recently purchased DVE on Blu-ray. Its a great disc, and has definitely augmented by learning when it comes to calibration. The test patterns for the most part are easy to use, but I have a couple questions that maybe someone who has experience can answer.

First, is there any discernable way to properly adjust gamma? Without the equipment to actually measure the gamma, it seems like a shot in the dark. DVE says that you'll have to tweak "by eye", and that the 2% above black bar on the Pluge pattern should be "just visible", but shouldn't be "much brighter" than the black background.

In reality, I really have no clue what that means. I'm not sure how bright this 2% bar should really be. The optimal Brightness setting on my display, where "below black" material is no longer visible, turns out to be at Brightness- 46. Contrast is properly set at anywhere from 85-90. Color saturation was dead on at 50, as was tint.

With those variables set, I'd like to tackle gamma, but without the equipment it seems almost impossible to tell. Right now I "feel" like Gamma +1 provides the best transition from dark-light. However I'm not sure if I'm losing shadow detail (I can notice more detail in shadowy areas at Gamma +3, but I think its doing wacky things with some colors, especially red which seems to just be off at higher intensities at this setting.).

Does anyone have any tips in regards to setting Gamma, keeping in mind that I only have my eyes and the DVE BD? Obviously I don't have the equipment to adjust the primaries or grayscale, so for now I've got Color on Auto and White Blance at default.

That's pretty much the way I have to do it. I have all my devices connect to a Sony soundbar first then one cable HDMI cable from soundbar to tv. Everything has to use the same setting.


Too bad the presets can't be edited at all.

I recently built a new PC, went with Windows 7 64bit, ATI 5850 video card, and now with it set to 1900X1080 i don't get a picture that fills the whole screen like i did with my old Windows XP rig that was pretty old.

Just scan or 16.9 setting leave about a 1inch boarder around the picture.
Not a huge deal, but it's kind of weird when your using HDMI connection with a modern PC and 1080p TV that it's not playing nice with each other.

Anybody else have this issue?
Maybe it's the ATI drivers that have been a little buggy lately.

Not sure but just wanted to help because i think i had the same issue before like you (connecting a new PC to my TV). Have you tried 'Auto Adjust'?

Use the Auto Adjust function to have the TV set automatically adjust the video signals it receives. The function also automatically fine-tunes the settings and adjusts the frequency values and positions.

This function does not work in DVI-Digital mode.
Preset: Press the SOURCE button to select PC mode.
1. Press the MENU button to display the menu.
Press the ▲ or ▼ button to select Picture, then press the ENTER
button.
2. Press the ▲ or ▼ button to select Auto Adjustment, then press the ENTER
button.
Press the EXIT button to exit.

I think this can also be accessed if you press 'Tools' and then it should be the last selection at the bottom.

Interesting, but i'm hooked up over HDMI and don't see an auto adjust option, naming the input or not i'm not seeing it.

But, like i say it's not a big deal, it would be nice to get full screen though.

Have you checked the Over/Underscan slider in the ATI Scaling Options:

• Right click on the Desktop and open Catalyst Control Center
• Switch to Advanced mode if you are not there already
• Click dropdown menu Graphics in the top right
• Select Desktops and Displays
• Right Click your currently activated display under Please Select a Display' on the bottom right
• Select Configure
• Click on the Scaling Options tab and your there
• Now just move the scale to the right (overscan) until you get full screen (in my case that was 0%)

http://www.aoclarkejr.com/ati-catalyst-9-9-overcan-and-underscan-options.html

That did the trick, i haven't bought and a new video card in about 4 years, so i'm not used to the new ATI catalyst control center.

Thanks for the info, it looks much better now, made a bigger difference than i thought it would.

Would anyone be willing to input CNET's settings for the a550 and do some measurements and see how they fare? Not sure how much trouble that would be (since I don't have any calibration equipment), but I just wanted to know how accurate they are as far as CIE diagrams and gamma and such. If anyone could do that that would be great!

Also another question regarding calibration using DVE. When setting black level, I understand that the "below black" material should not be visible. When I set the Brightness to the point where the "below black" bar just dissappears, I get a value of 46. However, this value seems too low for most applications- i.e. it seems like I'm getting black crush in games, movies and TV. Could this be because the Gamma is off? Or is it more because I'm used to a brightness value that is too high?

Also, do most of you use the value you get when the below black bar dissappears, or do you increase the Brightness one or two clicks from there? It seems that a brightness value at 50 or above is just too bright on my display and makes the below black material completely visible against the background.

If there was one setting I would refuse to ever change from what the test discs tell me, its brightness. Black is sort of the foundation on which everything else is based. If your black looks crushed to you it could be that your gamma is off (affected by not only the gamma control, but by Black Adjust, Dynamic Contrast and Power Savings modes as well). It's also possible that you are correctly setting TV black with the disc but you have another source that uses PC greyscale... in which case you might have to change the HDMI Black Level to match (or change the grayscale the source uses.)

Finally, you may be correct that you are just not used to it. A quick test for this would be to make sure you can see all of the bars in a grayscale stairstep, or even better, look at a test source with a near black grayscale... ideally you should not see any BTB but still be able to discern all of the steps above black.

Personally, I like the Spears & Munsil test disc for setting black levels... it has extra bars closer to black than most pluge patterns, and it also has a checkerboard area that alternates between level 16 (reference black) and level 17 (just one step above reference). If you can eliminate the BTB bars and still see the 16/17 checkerboard, you can be pretty confident that black is set correctly. I've had no trouble attaining that with my A550.

Thanks for the response. I had been using custom settings I found here at AVS and also those posted by CNET for the a550, so I had been using a brightness setting of 48-51. When I check the brightness in DVE, the BTB bar is visible with those settings. I guess this lends creedance to the point that each display performs differently and will have different optimal settings, as 46 seems to be the ideal black level value for my set (32a550).

Maybe the slight black crush (or perceived black crush) I'm experience is indeed a result of an improper Gamma. Right now I'm using Gamma= +1. Grayscale ramp patterns look the best to me at this setting. Of course, increasing to Gamma= +3 really increases the visiblity of darker areas of the scale, but I'm afraid the Gamma is inaccurate and is washing out the image, especially in higher intensity reds and blues where sometimes the colors just look off (almost like they are "running out of juice" at higher intensities, if that makes any sense). This causes things like high intensity reds turning slightly pink (think the pants for the New York Rangers looking punkish instead of reddish).

Again, without a way to quantitatively measure the Gamma, I'm left to using my eyes. My eyes tell me that I'm seeing more detail in shadowy areas at Gamma= +3, but the rest of the image tends to suffer (read: desaturated and washed out). But from your advice, I should be sticking with what the disc is telling me in regard to optimal Brightness, and realizing maybe that details in shadowy areas are not meant to be clearly visible in all cases.

I'm sure there isn't an RGB scale levels mismatch, as I'm aware of that issue and know how to correctly match the source to the TV. If there's one thing I've learned, its that just copying someone else's custom settings is a helfpul starting point, but probably isn't the ideal settings for your particular set.

Hey guys I don't know how it will look for you but i took Clicq's 995 calibrations and Ellisda's calibrations and mixed and the picture is ridiculous it looks like I'm looking out a windoW. Here is what I did:
Warm 2 Setting
Backlight = 7
Contrast = 86
Brightness = 51
Sharpness = 0
Color = 38
Tint = G50/R50

DETAILED SETTINGS

Black Adjust = Off
Dynamic Contrast = Off
Gamma = -2
Color Space = Custom
Red: R33 - G0 - B0
Green: R18 - G52 - B0
Blue: R11 - G0 - B51
Yellow: R49 - G53 - B0
Cyan: R22 - G46 - B56
Magenta: R37 - G0 - B43
Flesh Tone = 0
Edge Enhancement = Off
Xycc = Off

WHITE BALANCE

R-Offset = 26
G-Offset = 25
B-Offset = 22
R-Gain = 30
G-Gain = 25
B-Gain = 25

PICTURE OPTIONS

Color Tone = Warm 2
Digital N/R = Off
HDMI Black Level = Low (actually it's disabled when playing Blu-ray) <-- set this according to your source! If you use a PC, or a PS3/Xbox360 with expanded RGB levels, you might need to set this to normal!
Film Mode = off (disabled)
Blue Mode = Off

Energy Saving = Off / For me anyway but this can be your preference.
Entertainment modes = Off

Can I ask why your optimum brightness is different when you used DVE (47) as opposed to AVS (54)? Thats quite a large difference in brightness. Is the "AVS" setting for when you have energy saver on AUTO? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if 47 was the optimum setting when using DVE (where BTB bar dissappears), shouldn't that setting also not "clip black levels 17+", since its set at video black (16)?

I am not sure if this is the right thread.
My sister purchased this model last weekend from Best Buy, the
LN40A550, I think, and when I plugged in those numbers, I got a number of people reporting that after a year, the tv started exhibiting an auto turn on, turn off problem. To anyone's knowledge, has this been fixed by Samsung?
I told my sister not to buy the BB warranty, but if she wanted one to buy something like Square Trade's 2 year warranty, as this problem usually doesn't crop up until one year of ownership.
She receives the tv on this weekend. I don't know if I should tell her to
call BB and not buy the set, or not.
I can't help much, as I am way out here in Utah, and she is in Missouri.
I also told my brother, who does live nearby, to use the best calibration settings from this thread. I hope that was a good idea as well.
Thanks for any suggestions,
Lyndon

Welp, after a few months filled with a lot of reading and learning about calibration, and ramping up my calibration forays from copying other's settings- to calibrating with downloaded patterns and blue filter- to finally purchasing DVE Bluray and trying my hand at my own calibration, I think I might have finally arrived at settings I'm happy with.

Its funny, looking back at previous posts I've made, I think I represent the general novice calibrator who's trying to learn and making the jump into TV calibration. I've learned a LOT from this forum, as well as other forums on AVS, and also by reading any and everything I could about calibration on the internet. JCal has definitely been a huge help, as he has been to others in this thread, in helping me understand the science behind calibration and what all of it means. People like he, Mahler and Clicq are the reason us novice levels love coming to this forum.

Anyway, here are the settings I've settled on for my LN32a550. I don't have equipment, so there are no adjustments to pirmaries and secondaries or the grayscale, so I realize these won't be absolutely accurate, but they are the best I could do in basic calibration using DVE. Hopefully they can help someone with the same screen size and model to improve their picture from the default.

Settings
Backlight = 3
Contrast = 92 (even 1 or 2 clicks above this, and high intensity colors start to go funky, as JCal had suggested)
Brightness = 46 (as JCal had told me, I checked the optimal level at all different settings with DVE, and it always comes out at 46)
Sharpness = 0
Color = 50
Tint = G50/R50
(color and tint were dead on, with what looked like perfect color decoding according to the DVE patterns)

DETAILED SETTINGS

Black Adjust = Off
Dynamic Contrast = Off
Gamma = +1 (I'm pretty sure this is right for my set. My set tends to struggle with low end shadow detail, and bumping gamma by just one click seems to solve the problem)
Color Space = AUTO

Flesh Tone = 0
Edge Enhancement = Off
Xycc = Off

WHITE BALANCE

R-Offset = 25
G-Offset = 25
B-Offset = 25
R-Gain = 25
G-Gain = 25
B-Gain = 25

PICTURE OPTIONS

Color Tone = Warm 2
Digital N/R = Off
HDMI Black Level = Low (set to source)
Film Mode = off
Blue Mode = Off

Energy Saving = Off

NOTE: I think the reason why I feel satisfied enough without color or grayscale adjustment is because the A550 has such accurate color temperature and decoding by default. As per CNET, Warm2 clocks in at just about 6500K (~6580) for the A550, so the grayscale is fairly accurate. In comparison, the LNT-4061f we have in the living room clocks in at ~7000K for Warm2, and the different is definitely noticeable.


As I continue to read and learn more, I'm starting to feel that inner pull towards wanting to purchase some basic equipment and jump into proper calibration. However the fiancee would probably kill me With the wedding a month away, trying to buy a house, and starting a family, I can't really justify it right now...but someday....

I too enjoy checking into this site from time to time to read and learn from those of you who are knowledgeable in the calibration of this model as well as many other subjects covered in this forum.
My white balance seem to be off by just a little (it could be just me).
Without equipment how can I adjust or know if the white balance is accurate?

I read awhile back (not on this forum) that by turning the color back to a black & white picture, then adjust the set to make the picture look gray.
I never tried this but was wondering if this will work.

Also on the 'WHITE BALANCE' control section it makes sense that the
R GAIN-G GAIN-B GAIN means to add more of these tints.
So does the OFFSET take away these tints?
I know this might sound dumb, but if I don't ask I won't learn.

Thanks

You can TRY to do it by eye, but the chances of getting it RIGHT are very slim... but you might get it better if there is some glaring issue.

The Gain controls set the relative levels of R, G & B at the white end of the grayscale... the Offsets do the same at the black end. They are interactive with one another and it typically takes several iterations of adjustments to get where you need to be.

A great place to start the learning process is here: Greyscale and Colour Calibration for Dummies. It is geared towards using a meter and software, but the basic information and sample pics are great for developing a basic understanding.