The Official Pioneer 9G non-Elite KURO Owner's Discussion Thread - Page 89

If you mean a blu-ray player, you really can't lose with the PS3. Had it from day one.

If you mean a blu-ray disk, there's plenty of good choices but I'd go with Galapagos or Planet Earth. They have excellent HD quality with a wide variety of scene types.

Pioneer elite series receivers and Onkyo all can be had in your AVR price range.

Sure. Very blue color temperatures and oversaturated primary colors are more or less the norm because displays that look this way out of the box can appear more appealing on a brightly-lit showroom floor. Gary explains quite very well why a manufacturer would intentionally engineer red push into the design.

I would try this myself before I call anyone crazy

I will be trying this for sure on my 5020 mounted on a cart. I will also try to mount my current (heavy) center speaker above the TV pointing down. If all else fails my center will go on the bottom either on a shelf or attached to the mount so it moves with the TV -- I may or may not remove the TV speakers if doing this.

It will take me a while to get to this point so I haven't planned it out yet - but to use the 5020 speakers as center I would have to feed the plasma the center-audio-only from a decoded source and set the TV to playback in mono. The 5020 may have features to facilitate this, but I don't know that at this point. I imagine it would sound okay.

Posted in wrong thread... sorry!

I was thinking of more subtle cases, not focused exclusively to bright showroom floors.

Pioneer for instance doesn't appear to be focused on sets that look good on a highly lit Best Buy floor (if they are, then they are failing).

Put another way, to what degree are the display manufacturers targetting an ISF calibrated type standard with the end goal being NTSC standard measurables vs. targetting standards based on their own marketing research?

To whom this subject is interesting, I've played with different HDMI cables and Digital Optical cables and managed to make Pioneer 6020 to pass digital out to AVR from two HDMI sources - STB and Sony Blue-Ray. My 7 years old Onkyo AVR detects a signal as PCM Dolby ProLogic II, which I understand is upmixed 5.1 channel. If I connect HDMI directly to AVR I am getting DTS and probably better audio quality than when I pass signal through 6020.

I am trying to use this strange pass through setup because I have only two digital in in my AVR and I need to connect TV (for to use with DLNA), and computer audio out to it. I don't have enough inputs to connect STB and Blue-Ray and seriously thinking to upgrade my AVR to the one with HDMI. Btw, it looks like Pioneer 1018 hit the market now.

I am not privy to the marketing strategies of the manufacturers, but you can bet they are doing whatever they believe will maximize shareholder value.

So far, most manufacturers have decided that marketing displays that adhere to standards for color is not the way to go. Even the Pioneer Elites, which are capable of a nearly flawless image, don't come that way OOB. Their default state is a bluish whites and oversaturated primaries. Pioneer's problems making money with their plasmas seems mostly based on the high manufacturing costs of the Kuro technology.

weren't they losing money before the 8G/1G Kuro came out?

Does the COLOR control in the basic USER menu of most TVs control the saturation of the colors by providing a first-order correction across-the-board to the Y values associated with the primary and secondary color points?

Slight OT rant for a moment...

I thought choosing a panel and forking over the money for it would be the hard decision....wrong.

I believe I am now on my 5th choice of TV stands. The first one wasn't wide enough. The second one was too high. I forget what was wrong with the third one. I was very happy with the fourth one until I realized it wasn't deep enough to accommodate the receiver I want. Now I am on number five. It is short enough, wide enough, and deep enough.

This had better pan out or I'll sit the damn panel on the floor instead.

Whatever...I believe that this will be worth any struggle I may go through in preparing for it.

The Color control will affect all of the color's brightness and to a lesser degree their saturation.

Do you or does anyone you know have the ability to take a picture of a ISF Calibrated Elite image and a 5020 Image? I still really have no idea just how drastic the colors are off on the 5020, I read about the values but cannot put that into a real picture in my mind.

I would really appreciate any source material to compare the 5020 images with what the colors should "really" be looking like.
Let me know if you think this is possible
Thanks so much!

I dont know if it is just me, but it seems that I can get darker blacks on regular Analog cable then on blu ray.. am i missing something here?

"Pioneer for instance doesn't appear to be focused on sets that look good on a highly lit Best Buy floor (if they are, then they are failing)."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


+1

I went out of my way to take a look see at a 9g Pio at my local Best Buy and to say that the set-up was lacking would be a huge understatement. Pitiful would come to mind
I walk in through the front doors and right out in front there sits a 5020 with all the bright lighting that could possibly be had, in store and out, shining on the panel.
And the kicker was the panel is sitting there with a static image of a ps3 control mode on screen that looks like IR was a soon to be reality
I messed with the settings and sure enough ,they were locked some how. So still curious as to see an image first hand I inquire to a sales person about a demo with any blu-ray movie that would be convenient, he tells me that they don't have a player to hook up(a player to hook up???) and then just shrugs his shoulders and goes back into his daydream stupor.
I look around the store in disbelief to what just happened,walk out mumbling to myself and vowing not to go back there again.
So does Pio need to make adjustments as to there display methods at BB, I'll let the consumer make that choice. Me ,I think I'll stick with the specialty dealers.

They didn't even have the xx20 models or even knew what they were at my local best buy...all they had was the 5010 and a couple older elites in the magnolia section....

The elites looked good considering the open box units were only around 3,000 but my viewing distance is around 14 feet and the 60 inchers is what I am shooting for.

I guess what I am asking is how much better picture is the 6020 vs. the 6010 I'm really looking forward to a pro calibration but someone said if I bought the 6010 and had it pro calibrated it still wouldn't look as good as the newer 6020..

Is this true?

[quote=markrdee;14372099
I went out of my way to take a look see at a 9g Pio at my local Best Buy and to say that the set-up was lacking would be a huge understatement. Pitiful would come to mind
I walk in through the front doors and right out in front there sits a 5020 with all the bright lighting that could possibly be had, in store and out, shining on the panel.
And the kicker was the panel is sitting there with a static image of a ps3 control mode on screen that looks like IR was a soon to be reality
I messed with the settings and sure enough ,they were locked some how. So still curious as to see an image first hand I inquire to a sales person about a demo with any blu-ray movie that would be convenient, he tells me that they don't have a player to hook up(a player to hook up???) and then just shrugs his shoulders and goes back into his daydream stupor.
I look around the store in disbelief to what just happened,walk out mumbling to myself and vowing not to go back there again.
So does Pio need to make adjustments as to there display methods at BB, I'll let the consumer make that choice. Me ,I think I'll stick with the specialty dealers.[/QUOTE]


Fortunately for some of us not all BB are that careless in displaying the Pios. Our store realizes very much the fact that the Pioneers are the best display they have in the store, and are all to glad to demo that fact.

And it is true that Pioneer really dosen't focus on how well the display looks in an environment such as BB ...... however, with that in mind, when ever I stop by and have them hook up a blu-ray to a 5020, just about everyone that walks by stops in their tracks and is amazed at the picture

This would be easy to do, but you would have to have access to both displays being fed the same source. I don't.

There is a local dealer here that has a very good Kuro demo area set up with low ambient light and blu-ray sources. They have had several models set up and occasionally calibrate one (seems dealers don't like to pay calibrators). You can see there just how good the Kuros look with a closer aprox to what you can get at home, although it's not as dark as you might get a home environment.

Specialty dealers FTW when it comes to floor viewing although you might also do ok in a BB Magnolia viewing area.


See that question a lot.
My 2cent on last year vs. this year Pio.

I've only viewed the 6010 on dealer floors and I was very close to buying one but I felt the value proposition didn't hold up at the time and went with a steal on a JVC 70" LCOS. When the 6020 came out I recently added that since I like the bang to buck ratio there.

I run the JVC calibrated set (not a 6010 comparison of course) in the same room as my 6020. I'll just say while I can detect the variance from standard, depending on the content and scene, the 6020 still has beautiful color and guests have commented the same. Skin tones to me are critical and the 6020 passes that muster for me.

Short of finding a calibrated 6010 and a calibrated-as-much-as-possible 6020 in a position where you can do an A/B comparision it is difficult thing to say definitely what you'd like better. I can imagine trying to capture this difference with a picture btw, good luck. You're left with doing your research at places like this forum and considering opinions and the academics of it all. D-Nice has apparently had both last years Pio and the 6020 at home and is on record as picking 6020 over even a calibrated elite model of last year.

You're weighing in this case the difference in a 6010 pro calibration that includes color points vs a 6020 that is reviewed to have a very good quality in it's movie mode but not adhere completely to NTSC standard on primaries.
I won't get into the variability of source content itself when it comes to adhering to NTSC standards but certainly you'd like to have the capability of adhering the set to it.

On the other hand you have undisputed better black levels and brightness levels along with any other improvements made to Pio processing over the last year. Keep in mind also that you will have to live with XX20 primary color points as Pioneer set them but the XX20 Grayscale can be fully calibrated according to D-nice. This should mean XX20 is not completely limited to OOB state (although that's not a bad state IMO). Some consider Grayscale the most critical aspect of a calibration.

On the whole it would seem the XX20 wins short of moving up to a Kuro Elite for the consensus leader of this year's PQ.

Correct me if I am wrong but.....PrologicII is what your avr is applying to the incoming signal, which is a 2 ch. carrier I believe. Does your Onk show you, with the display button ,what the incoming signal is?

Thank you Dahlsim

After going through the whole elite v. non-elite threads, that seems to be the consensus.

I just couldn't justify forking out $1300 to 1600 more for the elite. So goes that difference saved for a projector down the line, and the rest goes for the 6020.

Congrats, many are happy with Elites and non out there

Agreed,

Having seen an 8G next to a 9G running the same content that was applicable to my viewing (HD satellite), the difference in contrast (brighter white & near zero ft/L black levels) reassured my decision having pre-ordered a 6020. So to me it's an easy decision to purchase the 9G over the 8G.

Regarding Elite vs. Non, I must admit I was dismayed to find that Pioneer had crippled my new set in the name of profit. Being the type who likes to fiddle with my panels/monitors to achieve perfection that I may not even see, I was soon looking into the Elites. After doing further research which displayed the fact that mechanically the two sets were comprised of the same drive components, and nearly identical panel modules, I realized there wasn't close to $1,300 added value in the Elite models.

However, I am strongly considering a 141, being a tech junkie I like IP features, slimmer design, higher binned components, and it has a drive change (benefit unknown). Considering my install/application it does have added value to me over the 6020. My disgust with Pioneer for their slight to consumers like myself who have been purchasing their products for over a decade (for quality components not some name or "Elite" moniker), has me waiting for the release of the new Samsungs and other manufacturers. If I can get a 63" with equivalent or better color, and close blacks for $1,000 less than an Elite I will happily show Pioneer the door.

For now I am anxiously waiting to see the results of D-Nice's hard work and experimentation which should be released in the coming weeks along with his Elite to Non comparison. It is my guess that he will find a way to calibrate not only greyscale, but rather a more comprehensive calibration, hopefully including gamma and color points.

Personally, I think we should start a Pioneer BDP-xx fund for the guy who has spent countless hours helping total strangers achieve the best possible picture/HT experience from their panels.

If anyone has access to both displays and would not mind taking a picture for us to see the color differences it would be much appreciated!

Such pictures won't tell you anything worthwhile.

If you do go thru with the 6020 one thing I suggest is don't underestimate the Kuros excellent User Picture Controls when it comes to adjusting the color and tweaking the PQ of the various modes.

As I posted in this setting thread I was able to compare A/B to my calibrated set and dial in excellent adjustments to color using the tint control. Tint, Color, Brightness, Contrast. Non-Elite owners could do a little research on the basic picture controls (manuals are useless for that info ) and do quite a bit of tweaking on each of the A/V modes if so inclined or if they just like to tweak thier sets. I'm still tweaking, and having fun do so. It's not as though the Non-Elites have no color and picture controls.
Incidently, although many can do better from movie mode and with their own the user adjustments it should be note that you can pick Optimum and watch it automatically adjust the RGB color as well as main Color control, brightness etc. It does at least a fair job on autopilot

I think they should also consider firing the guy in charge of designing the shipping containers. I'll bet all the units they get back damaged in shipping doesn't help the bottom line either.

Ken

Dahlsim, sorry if my post wasn't clear but I currently own a 6020, it's still hanging in my living room. I actually had it sold to a friend of mine, because I was going to move up to an Elite. However over the last week I have decided to keep it for now, instead of rushing in and pre-ordering a 141, like I did with my 6020 just to feel I got burned. If the contrast ratio is even 1/4 of the 1,000,000:1 Samsung claims, based on the it's peak luminance of 1,300 cd/m2, that would equal .0015 ft/L black levels (= Kuro Black), and then of course you have a true CMS, hence my current status of waiting.

I do agree however that the stock picture is nothing to shake a stick at on the non-E's. I set mine up using an i1 and ColorHCFR and therefore have maximized it's capabilities up until now. With a little tweaking in the user menu you would be surprised how well Movie mode tracks on the charts, just not on the Rec. 709 marks.

Just got and hooked up my 6020. Everything seems great so far. I did run into one minor snag maybe someone can assist? I attempted to search the forum but didnt find anyone with a similar problem.

I tested and was using Home Media Gallery without any issues yesterday. I went to use it today and although i can get to the home media gallery menu once i am there it appears the enter button doesn't work. It seems very bizzare for a few reasons:

1. enter button works elsewhere
2. enter button worked here previously.


Any ideas?


UPDATE


It looks like The problem is fixed if I turn off AV Audio through hdmi control and use TV audio. This seems to be very strange. Did i miss some sort of copy protection in the documentation? It would seem odd they would implement such a thing for copy protection. Maybe a limitation in AV out? The funny thing is audio still comes out of the optical out when this option is off.