ok guys, wanted to post my impression of the TV. after approx. 166 hours of break in, I put all my speakers back in place and connected everything. and really, all I can say is wow. my previous TV is a Sony SXRD 50A2000. while it is no slouch in its own right, but the color accuracy and its deep blacks of the 600m really trounced the Sony.
I only had the chance of using 2 sources so far. a DirecTV HR21 HD DVR, and a Oppo 981 upconverting DVD player to 1080p resolution. for settings, I am using a combination of PBJunior's settings in post 961, which was posted by another user, and also the combination of the home theater mag's settings for 141. I also felt that at color for +8 on the home theater mag's settings, is just slightly oversaturated for my taste. I am having the settings on either +5 or +6 for now. when playing the oppo, I am using Pure mode, which I felt it had great color accuracy. the test disc was just a "the dark knight" standard dvd. and it looked great with the upconverted image. (trying to acquire a blu ray player in the mean time too).
I also have a home made bias light sitting behind the tv, and to me, and this is just my opinion. it is definitely the "blackest" tv that I've own. I certainly cannot make out where the bezel start versus the screen image, since dark knight is 2.35 : 1. could the TV be darker? sure, it can, but I can honestly say that everybody that is a 600m/500m owner would be very happy. I certainly am. of course, we are all still interested with d nice and elite's settings when they have them. but really, out of the box, especially in pure mode, there really isn't too much for everyone to tweak, at least not to me, the pioneer n00b.
I am having a hard time however, decide between standard and optimum mode for viewing directv content. standard gives is more pop, whereas optimum gives a more natural skin tone. But to answer the RGB settings question, on my HR21, you do not need to fiddle with the rgb settings, as D Nice was right on this. when I watched "harper's island" last night, there was a scene where they were near the dark water, the person literally looked like they were floating in that "dark" water on tv. and when I see 4:3 commercials in between, the borders were very dark, so I wanted to confirm that with everybody. I have to say this is the most expensive purchase I've made to my home electronics so far, but a worthy one to be sure. And now I just need to get to that 700-800 hrs threshold so the tv can get even that much better.
