The Official Pioneer 9G Elite KURO Owner's Discussion Thread - Page 233

There are some that are 1080i, but most are 1080p. A test disc would include 1080i material to test the interlacing capabilities of your display or player.

This has to be a setting in your BD player. Be sure to toggle VIDEO FORMAT on your Sony until you've selected either "Source Direct" or "Auto." (The 24p parameter is a separate setting.) That indicator on the Kuro only tells you what the incoming signal is.

I have never seen a gray bar on my 151.

Only black bars for me...top/bottom/left/right.

Definitely a setting in your bluray player.

Have you ever been in the service menu to set this? I never was with my 150 and your experience would suggest that it isn't necessary for the 9Gs contrary to recent comments by progprog.

I had gray bars originally, but changed some settings to get black bars. I don't remember what exactly I changed, but it was NOT in the service menu. You do not have to venture into the service menu to change the bars from grey to black. I'll look when I get home to see if I can remember what I changed.

Ah, thanks! It took me forever to actually find that setting, but it was under Easy Setup, then it allowed me to select video format.

Has anyone done an A and B comparison with a PS3 bluray feed or a standalone bluray player connected to an Elite 111 , 141 , 151 ? I have a PS3 and enjoy bluray on it however if getting a standalone like a pioneer 51 or 05 can get me a better picture id go with it.

But how can u get more detail out of bluray? PS3 passes blacker than black and whiter and white. How can the PS3 not get the detail out of the disc like others claim standalones do?

Thanx Chris

The vast majority of live concert BD discs are 1080i.

Actually, he did take a look at my audio set-up, but I did not comment on it because I did not contract with him to do it. However due to his passion and since I had some good audio equipment he said that he couldn't in good conscience atleast not take a listen. He did wind up making some improvements with a few adjustments to the level and equalization of my sub and speakers. Unfortunately he pointed out a deficiency in my set-up with the sub. This was not a problem with the sub itself but rather with my set-up of using analog for audio from my blu-ray player to my receiver. I actually was already some what aware of this issue but it was good to have this confirmed by a professional. By just switching to the digital connection for sound which I already had connected, resolved this problem.
Thanks,
Mike

It certainly can be specific to the disc. I have a number of blu-ray disc's that are just 1080i. A lot of music concert blu-ray disc's are this way. Also some times the extras are also not 1080p or even only 480.
Mike

I don't mean to be argumentative about this, because I'm certainly not immune to error. However, in this particular instance, I think there is some confusion about the status of the masking bars and their color. Maybe we can clear it up a bit. (Sorry in advance for the crappy photo quality.....just snapped them quickly to illustrate what I'm talking about. )

When watching 4:3 content, there are two different devices that can/will mask the sides. The source, such as your tuner or DVD player, can retain that ratio and add side masking. Alternately, the Kuro can be set to detect the aspect ratio and add the masking. All my sources have either black masking bars or allow me to choose the color. The Kuro has gray masking bars by default, and there is no setting in the regular menu that allows you to change this.

So, for example: When I watch 4:3 material on my 151, I can easily watch it in its native aspect ratio with black bars. But those bars are provided by the source, not the Kuro. If I set my Tivo to its Panel setting and leave the Kuro on Full, I get the correct AR with black bars on the sides. (Again, sorry for the poor photo quality, but the bars are actually black.)

Hey Chris...welcome to the Kuro thread!! There are many who believe that the PS3 is the best BD player on the market. It definitely has the best load times. Two (little) drawbacks are that it uses that funky bluetooth remote, so it requires a workaround to integrate it into most existing remote systems, and it cannot bitstream lossless audio; it must decode them itself and send them LPCM. Go check out the comments on the Pioneer BDP-09 anticipation thread- the PS3 has some rabid fans!! (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1054544)

Thanks for the added information. I've added a "Part II" to the calibration list.

Is there an hour counter somewhere on this set in the menu?

Here is how I changed my annoying gray bars to black and this is with direct tv as my source. setup to option to side mask to detection and set detection to off. no more gray bars,

No, only in the service menu.

This is another example of what I was trying to illustrate earlier: you didn't actually change the Kuro's bars to black, but you basically turned them off and your DirectTV box is now providing them.

It may be helpful to other DirectTV users to share the settings in that box as well, so they can replicate them if they want.

what is the remote control code to access the service menu?

Thanks in advance

There isn't one (at least not that anyone has published). There is no code, even hidden, built into the Pioneer remotes. Service people need a different service remote that has the codes. ControlCal is the only way to access the service menu at this time.

Chris, I have both the PS3 and the Pioneer Elite 05 BD player. There is no difference in PQ when playing BD movies. However the PS3 is far faster in its navigation.

Hey buddy , good to see you on this thread. We both have good taste in AV electronics. Thanx for replying about this. I guess its a hard question to answer unless you delt with both players on an ISF calibrated set. But because we have such powerful pioneer kuro elite TVs and they do 24hz processing best. Therefor i believe PS3 is capable of performing just aswell as any other player on the market connected to any pioneer elite kuro for video quality.

Can anyone prove this to be false?

Thanx Ken , you saved me some money.

No.

Here is my report for a calibration performed by Michael Chen (Michael TLV) on October 11th at my house.

Michael arrived a bit earlier than expected and proceeded immediately to the room where my Pioneer Kuro PRO-151FD sits. For your information, my room is not dedicated and light control is minimal during daytime but I can enjoy an almost pitch dark room during evening viewing. Michael performed the calibration between 09h00 and 13h00 so light control was less than ideal. Michael did bring with him a dark sheet that he used during critical steps of the calibration process. Also, a calibration job has been performed on my set 3 months prior to Michaels visit by another ISF-certified technician but I found the former results to be unsatisfactory.

The first thing I have to say is that Michael is not calibrating your TV; he teaches you the basics of the science of calibration and gives you interesting tidbits of history while calibrating your set. The format he chose to perform his calibrations is really appealing because not only can you watch what hes doing but you can understand quite a bit of the magic hes performing on your set, and also why things are that way. The speech hes giving you is standardized, meaning that hes not improvising and that every customer gets a similar lesson. You can, whoever, unlock bonus stories all the while as long as youre a good student and asks the right questions.

Michaels knowledge of the ISFccc interface and features of the Kuro were OK. He did calibrate a few Kuro before mine but I felt that knowledge of the specific features of the Kuro were not mastered.

Michael took great care calibrating the ISFccc Day/Night/Auto settings of the two inputs Im using on my Kuro (one components and one HDMI). He also did calibrate the Movie mode (to avoid modifying the Pure mode settings that I set as per D-Nices specs) so that I can play around with a calibrated user-modifiable mode.

Michael was very efficient and did let me actively participate in the process. One thing hes doing though is to keep the control of the calibration session. As he explained to me, he has good reasons of doing so and he does this to ensure a maximum of satisfaction (and understanding) from his customers. That also means that he will not be very receptive to some aspects he doesnt feel are pertinent, such as the having a specific light output for daytime or evening viewing.

Michael also gave me two demo DVDs to show the capabilities of my set to friends and to validate that the calibration he performed was still accurate as time goes by. A-B comparison of his settings versus the ones used in Pure mode are significant. The calibration reports he provided me a proving that there is a real improvement and only for that, I feel that Michael did a great job. Michael also demonstrated to me why calibrating in the ISFccc mode versus Movie mode is making a noteworthy difference. It was great to see with my own two eyes the differences between a calibrated Movie mode and an ISFccc mode on the same set and environment.

All I can say is that I would recommend Michael to perform anyones calibration job. I expect to use his services again within the next two years to perform another calibration job on my set.

 

Stephen bourque - Detailed Calibration Summary.pdf 70.755859375k . file

Thank you for your report.

Can you attach the calibration reports to your Post?

How about you follow these instructions and attach a screen cap of the Info that is Displayed?

Thanks for your calibration report. I've included it in the flat panel (Post#2) list that's linked at the bottom of my post.

Not to start an argument. I respect your results, BUT, I tested a ps3 in my home to a panny bd30. The BD30 looked slightly less noisy and slightly deeper,richer colors on my isf(umr) calibrated Sony 70" Qualia. I kept the Panny,sold the PS3. Now,with my umr calibrated Kuro 151,I see the Pioneer 05 as superior to the Panny BD30. Even richer colors and a overall cleaner more natural,pleasing picture. I would play a section of a movie in one player, then on the other etc,etc. I just came across a review at http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/dvd-p...benchmark.html on the new Yamaha 2900 Blu-ray. It uses much the same electronics and drive as the Panasonic BD30. They compared it to the PS3. Here is some of what they found.

. "I felt that the Yamaha had a deeper, richer presentation and one that was cleaner than the Playstation 3: When I switched to the Playstation, I could easily discern a little more noise in the image. Obviously the BD-S2900’s noise reduction, video processing, and core video performance were all contributing to an exquisite Blu-ray image"

Then again,many in the Pioneer 51/05 threads have issues such as freezing and lip-sync errors even with the latest avail firmware. I haven't had any of their issues with any disc, including new releases, with my 05 player.

Funny, because there was a shootout done with all of these players, and there should be no discernable difference visually according to all the graphs presented.

do any of you guys have a good scene to test out advanced mode from the pure cinema menu? thanks