The Official Pioneer 9G non-Elite KURO Owner's Discussion Thread - Page 56

Originally Posted by Brago

Had I known this place existed before I pulled the trigger I sure would have.

Another question: Would SM access likely improve PQ significantly or is it a complete unknown what benefit it may have?

Originally Posted by The_Hun

quick question. I was glancing through the manual. and Ironically, they show a picture where they are doing brightness/contrast etc. adjustments under the "Performance" mode. Is this just a false picture misprint? Because from what I have seen/played around with, i was only able to do adjustments under standard mode.

And hey D-Nice, are you using the settings from post 2 in this thread for regular TV viewing? or just blu ray HD movies?

Originally Posted by D-Nice

RGB controls WILL NOT improve the color points of the 9G non-Elite Kuros. RGB controls will only move the grayscale up from roughly 6300K to 6504K (D65).

Originally Posted by The_Hun

quick question. I was glancing through the manual. and Ironically, they show a picture where they are doing brightness/contrast etc. adjustments under the "Performance" mode. Is this just a false picture misprint? Because from what I have seen/played around with, i was only able to do adjustments under standard mode...

Originally Posted by SubArctic

I'm intrigued that there might be the possibility of using one of the new Pio players to "correct" for the XX20's lack of settings. Is this possible?

Originally Posted by D-Nice

RGB controls WILL NOT improve the color points of the 9G non-Elite Kuros. RGB controls will only move the grayscale up from roughly 6300K to 6504K (D65).

Originally Posted by SubArctic

Last night I did some more experimenting with DVDs, and I’ve settled in on my preferred settings. They’re pretty much exactly what D-Nice recommended, but I felt the need to play around myself. Panels, taste, and lighting conditions vary.

My Gear for Watching DVDs: Oppo 980H feeding Denon 4308CI feeding 5020. All HDMI. Player was set to YCbCr 4:2:2; all picture, color, gamma, etc. options unused. Denon configured to pass-through signal untouched.

DVDs used for evaluation: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gladiator, The Queen

Player Resolution Selection: As the expert opinions suggest, 480i to the Kuro turned out to be the winner compared to 1080p sent from the Oppo. In the Gladiator scene “Battle in Chains,” during the speech Pospero gives to the new gladiators, at points you can see dust motes suspended in the air within beams of light. Particularly when the focus was on Prospero and Maximus, I could see more detail in the motes. In the scene “A Soldier’s Death,” the details on the forest floor were much cleaner. Overall, the advantage was slight. But with Raiders of the Lost Ark, the difference in having the Kuro do the work was significant. Perhaps because it’s an older film? During the opening scenes in South America, you could see more detail on the jungle floor, in the face of the stone idol exposed by the machete wielding member of Indy’s team, and in everyone’s faces—especially if they were partly in the shadows. Even my wife noticed the difference. I brought her in to make sure I just wasn’t seeing things, and didn’t tell her anything about the change in setup I made—just that I wanted her to look at Version A vs. Version B and focus on the small details in the image. In her words, she had to “strain” to see the details when the Oppo was doing the heavy lifting, but not when the Kuro did the work.

Going into this, I was actually hoping that the Oppo would do as good of a job or better than the 5020. It would have alleviated the minor annoyance of having to change the setting on the player to something other than 480i when listening to my SACDs (quirk of HDMI and DSD, in case your not familiar with it). But I’ll live.

Originally Posted by chaos888

D-Nice,

Having never accessed the RGB controls before, I'm assuming they would also allow you to adjust color balance? Which is essentially what Color and Tint controls are doing already? Is that, right?

Originally Posted by bigtom4prez

The RGB controls in the service menu would allow you to control white balance. Basically, it is for grayscale calibration. So your whites are white and grays are gray. As noted, you cannot fix or adjust the colors on the non-elites because it does not have a color management system. The color control is need to lower lightness to control the saturation of green and red. The tint is helpful to get cyan correct but it might make magenta and yellow worse.

As D-Nice said, movie mode is really close to D65. 6300 is only 3% difference which in theory is good enough. The 8G non-elites were close to 6000 with low temp out of the box which represented an 8% difference which is really noticably bad.

Originally Posted by surap

So if you choose "movie"-mode, and then access the RGB-cuts and gains in "personal" it is impossible to adjust the greyscale?

Originally Posted by Nambit

That's BS!!

HDGuru should have compared the 850 to the Elite since they are true competitors
based on FEATURES. The stock non-elite doesn't have the colour accuracy of a stock
elite when you consider how well you can adjust the colours, gamma, and such outside
of the Service Menu. How can they compare a relatively souped up TV to an entry level
TV? That's just wrong. Forget the price thing, we're talking features. Let's not even talk
about referring to last year's TV! The part with the dark tint kills me... that's part of the
anti-reflective coating (well, not so anti-reflective) doing a good job. Heck, I recall the
2007 1080P Panasonics weren't all that bright either. Perhaps HDGuru should have compared
the ansi contrast of both TVs before jumping to conclusions that the coating makes the
Kuro darker. Besides, you'd figure Panasonic improved the brightness this year, just like how
Pioneer did. Let's compare apples to apples folks.

Sigh... I wonder.

Originally Posted by D-Nice

RGB controls WILL NOT improve the color points of the 9G non-Elite Kuros. RGB controls will only move the grayscale up from roughly 6300K to 6504K (D65).

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

Couldn't agree more with most of what you said Nambit.

Originally Posted by Kennf

But the Elite 50" would be about $1500 more than the panny. How is that a "fair" comparison? And how is a Pioneer Elite considered an "entry level" TV? It's one of the most expensive panels out there.

Originally Posted by hdp203

Hi
My 6020 will be delivered on Sat. With the buzzing problem with the KUROs, I decided to go with a local dealer with a 30days return policy. A few questions for the KURO owners here:
1. Does the TV remember the screen size that you set for each input source? For example, if you set 1080i to DotByDot, 480i to Zoom, 702p to FULL, when you switch the channels, will the TV auto adjust the screen size?
2. Do you know where I can get the KURO demo video that we see in BB (with all the flowers). I think it looks really nice, and could be used to "demo" the TV to family/friends.
3. Any other tips are very welcome.

Thanks.