"High Definition Benchmark" BD Edition by Stacey Spears and Don Munsil - Page 32

Just ordered an Oppo Model 93 BR player; the test disc wasn't included, so I bought it. It better be worth my money...

-thts

It was free with the BDP-83, but not with any player since then.

-Bill

...oh, ok. Still better be worth the asking price. Already have too many "test" discs that have failed to live up to their hype one way or another. Just sayin'...

-thts

Frank,

If you have not had a chance, I would read the more in-depth articles on our website. We have an intro article coming soon, but you probably won't need that one.

Oh, man...just recognized your name!

Yes...would like to read the intro article; will it be available on the website?
Please direct me to your website. Thanks!...

-thts

...never mind; found the website...

-thts

Tried the Benchmark BR Edition test disc via an Opp0n 93 player last night; what is the easiest way to turn off comments from any given patter when so prompted?

Perhaps is my very limited exposure with both the disc and player as just got them in, but am finding it a bit troublesome having to push remote buttons more times than I deem is necessary. Thank you...

-thts

The only time the help will display is when you press the up arrow on the remote. Press the down arrow to dismiss them. You can navigate between patterns with the left and right arrow.

Which buttons do you have to push a lot? Press enter on a pattern, from the main menu, will select the pattern. It will stay on this pattern until you navigate away from it. From any pattern, you can press menu to return to the main menu. The menu highlight will be on the pattern you were on. A faster way to navigate between pattern is to use the left and right arrows while on a pattern. This avoids having to return to the main menu to go to the next pattern. It makes navigation much faster.

Ummm...ok, will try that. Thanks!...

-thts

Before the tornado blew all of my home theater away with everything else on April 27th, I had been meaning to ask about setting color and tint on my Panasonic plasma, which will hopefully be replaced soon with a newer model.

When setting color/tint with the blue filters, I noticed that they affected each others' settings when one was changed. Or at least one of them was.
If I get the color and tint set to the pattern and realize that maybe color is a little too high, if I were to lower it, would tint also need to be adjusted?
I have noticed on a couple of TVs that the color bar setting was just a bit too much and made people a little too red, and that bumping color down a bit made it look a whole lot better.
But then I started wondering if that affected tint. It looked just fine, but of course bugged me.
When I get everything set up again I can test it myself. But I thought I might ask some people who know while it is on my mind. Thanks.

I am proud to say that the Spears and Munsil disc made it thru the storm!
It destroyed the house, cars, and killed two of our neighbors - but once we cut away a section of the roof - there it was with Avatar.
All two hundred blu-rays were demolished and/or missing. I found my copy of AIX sound calibration disc a block away.
Just happy to be here. Can buy them again.
-Phil

Mr. Spears (or anyone else kind enough to answer),

I have a question on what my setup, please.

When sending 1080p to my display, the two highest frequency boxes on the far right second row and fourth row of the luma multiburst pattern are pink in tone, no matter what color space is used, yet all of the lines are still visible. The edges of the luma zone plate patten and the center rectangle of the image cropping pattern are also pink in tone.

If I send 1080i to my display, the only thing that is still pink is the highest frequency box on the on the far right of the fourth row of the luma multiburst pattern...everything else is now black, white and gray.

Any ideas what could be causing this and which resolution would you use given this situation, 1080i or 1080p? I should mention that my display is capable of displaying 1080p/24 and I have always utilized this resolution and frame rate and have not noticed any anomalies in program material. I'm concerned sending 1080i to the display may introduce deinterlacing problems, etc.

Thanks.

Phil, sorry to hear about the Tornado. Not even sure how to respond to that.

Color and Tint can interact. With HD, and a well designed display, you should never have to touch tint. It should not really even expose a tint control, though most do anyway.


What is the display technology? Usually when things go pink, it is one color clipping before others. Not sure you would only see this on the bursts you mention. What does the center of the image cropping pattern look like?

Some display technologies, like LCOS and Plasma, can't fully resolve single pixel high frequency information. It is much worse on a checker (image cropping) than it is on the luma bursts pattern.

Its also possible another, advanced, setting in the display is causing this. Can you list your picture settings?

Mr. Spears, thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, it is a LCOS-based display...a Sony A3000 SXRD.

The center of the image cropping pattern is pink when sent 1080p.

Display is in custom mode with all advanced picture settings off...motion enhancers, gamma, etc., off. I have cycled through all of the settings to see if anything has an effect, but the only thing that seems to remove the pink tone is to send the display 1080i. Unfortunately, the display doesn't deinterlace 1080i particularly well.

Please let me know if you need any additional info.

Since the disc has 1080p patterns, could the player be at fault when converting to 1080i?

larry

Converting 1080p to 1080i is really easy.

The discoloration is something I have seen from LCOS and Plasma more so than anything. It would be interesting if a grayscale calibration was performed to see if it improved it.

I would keep the player in 1080p mode.

Mr. Spears and Larry,

Thanks for the replies and the help. I am using an Oppo BDP-83 and the grayscale is tracking at D65.

After researching this issue a bit on the A3000 threads here it is suggested that most of this pink/magenta tint can be removed by disabling a convergence setting in the service menu which is "on" by default.

I would look at the geometry pattern and see how it looks with and without the convergence setting to make sure it is worth turning off.

I just wanted to give a shout out and thank you for your BD! I just got a Onkyo 1009, and the combination of its ISF day and night modes the High-Quality HQV® Vida(TM) VHD1900 Video Processor and your disc, makes my 4.5 year old Panasonic 750 PDP look Amazing! It's like having a pre Kuro Pioneer!

Thank you again, and Happy New Year!

I also posted this in the PS3 sticky but, I can no longer bring up the HD Color Bars Pattern. Everything else works fine just not this one! Any suggestions?

I have sent you a PM.

I read the online instructions for the Clipping pattern, but I have a question. My projector is clipping red. Do I turn down contrast until "ALL" the boxes are visible in the red box or just until "ANY" of the inner red boxes are visible? Thanks.

All of the boxes are visible.

WOW. The image may too dim if I do that, I'll see. When looking for color shift when adjusting contrast, is the Contrast pattern the best one to use? Thanks.

What do you mean by color shift? If I am looking at what I would call white field uniformity, I would display a gray field across the entire image to see how uniform it is. Front projectors perform the best at this with DLP being the leader by a wide margin. LCOS and LCD have pretty noticble color shifts.

If your display has different modes (vivid, standard, thx, etc...) try each one of them out. I can tell you that on the Panasonic VT20 plasma, only THX and custom are worth using. The others clip at different points and have additional banding that is not present in THX or custom. This is just one example.

I have a 32" Vizio 3D TV, the 50" VT20 3D plasma, and a DLP projector. I have color clipping boxes visible with plenty of light output. The Vizio has a backlight, so that is what really controls the light output.

Same here. The innermost boxes in red never show up no matter how low I turn contrast down. (Samsung D8000 plasma).

Are these inner boxes incremental levels of "whiter than white"? I mean is the outer box 235 white; first inner box 236, etc? There are so many steps above 235 but only a few inner boxes, it seems that each box would represent several steps. Can you tell us what they correspond to if they are above 235? Then there must be a minimum inner box to shoot for to get white right and maybe another one to go as far beyond 235 white as we can. No?

The YCbCr values for the concentric RGB boxes are all within 16-235 for Y and 16-240 for CbCr. Only the concentric white boxes go above 235 in YCbCr.

The RGB boxes can be clipped by color and tint set incorrectly, by a color decoder that is not to spec, or grayscale not properly calibrated. Clipping in the RGB boxes is worse than clipping in the white box.

By "color shift" I mean the contrast test pattern turning pinkish when I raise the contrast. It's hard to tell at what setting the pinkish starts. I'm trying to get the correct contrast setting between the lack of pink color shift and the clipping pattern. Any advice? It is a DLP projector, by the way. Thanks.

Ah, gotcha. When you see a color shift when contrast turns up, that means that one color is giving out ahead of the others. By one color, I mean red, green, or blue. You can use either dynamic range high or the contrast pattern and look at the color of the steps. When you see it turn color, you will know at what level it is occuring.

Thanks. When setting contrast, what is more important: 1)Turning down contrast until Clipping is gone(mine is clipping red) or 2)Turning contrast up until pattern turns pinkish? This is the dilemna I have. To get rid of the red clipping I have to turn contrast down to (-10). But I can turn contrast up to (-4) before it turns pinkish. What setting do I go with?

I have all of my displays set so there is no clipping at all. That is where I would set contrast, unless its too dim for you. If it is too dim, then turn it up until you are happy.

Its worth noting that a lot of displays have short comings. The idea is to get the most out of it as possible. This might mean making a comprimise in your case.

I originally set contrast to 42 on my 32" LCD. After the grayscale was calibrated, I was able to raise it to 60. The reason is because blue drive was pulled down to 16, from 100. It turned out that I had to pull contrast down so low because blue would clip before everything else. After the full grayscale calibration, blue was no longer being overdriven and clipped around the same time as red and green.

Normally you adjust contrast and brightness, then adjust grayscale, then revisit contrast and brightness, and then possibly grayscale again.

In the days of CRT, contrast controlled the light output. On a digital display, its not the same. One thing LCD has is a backlight, which does control the light output. You set contrast to maximize bitdepth usage and then backlight to control brightness. My Plasma is still really bright w/o clipping any colors. Its also odd, I have contrast low and brightness high per the menu settings.