Samsung PN**B450 Picture Settings - Page 2

Just got my PN42B450 mounted today and IMO games look like crap compared to an LCD. Although HDTV seems to have more detail and contrast, it seems to be gone while gaming. Everything just looks flat, and text (in CODWaW Menu's for example) is a lot grainier than LCD. Is there any fix for this, or is this the trade off for having 1024 x 768 vs 1366 x 768 on the bigger model. Any suggested settings for gaming?

are you using a computer or a game console to game on?

I have both Xbox360 and PS3. I wouldn't run a PC from my plasma without a 1 minute screensaver due to the risk of IR. Although I played TDM on COD5 for 3 hours last night with contrast set somewhat low, and experienced no IR.

On Xbox360, using a gamestop brand (probably really madcatz) component cable everything is flat. There is a major lack of detail. Pixels look big, and text fonts are grainy with component. After trying my Mad Catz HDMI adapter on Xbox360, and HDMI on PS3 I can safely say everything looks a lot better. Still not quite LCD sharpness but definitely playable.

You set the consoles to the proper output resolution in settings menu right? On the 360 you shouldn't notice too much of a difference between hdmi and component. Can't speak for the ps3.

I'm assuming you mean 720p? If so, then yes, both are set to 720p. On the 360, with component, it almost looks like theres stuff moving behind the screen. It could just be a crappy quality component cable (noise). Mad Catz has had some hits, and some big misses when it comes to accessories.

Also interesting to note. I'm having audio dropouts playing xbox 360 over HDMI. It's through the above mentioned Mad Catz adapter, as my Xbox is an older model that has no onboard HDMI. I never had this problem on my Sony LCD, with the same adapter, and I don't experience it on PS3. The cable is a new, 10FT cable from monoprice. I guess it could be to blame. I haven't tried it on the PS3 yet but will definitely do that.

Alright. I picked up the DVE Blu Ray disc for like $15 bucks and tried to go through the calibration. I'm a novice to this so it seemed a little confusing. It wasn't easy to have the guy talk, and then try to calibrate to what he said. Sometimes his explanation seemed more complicated than they needed to be. Either way.

I tried to calibrate both Standard and Movie at the same time, to see what would happen. Standard still looks better than Movie. Movie gives everything a yellowish tint it seems. Whites aren't white, etc.

I'm not home so I'm going off memory for my settings. I'll fix anything that needs to be later.

Couple notes:
No Reciever
My PS3 runs HDMI to my tv, that's for games/movies.
My Cable runs HDMI to my tv, some SD watching, mostly HD channels.

I didn't really understand the contrast test. I couldn't get the top to be clipped as he stated. I always saw individual steps of white to the edge even at 100. 95 was the Standard mode default.

The color test confused me as well. I wasn't sure how to use the filters (call me an idiot, k). I used their test image, held the filter up to my eye and tried to tell if the Blue on the tv blended with the color filter. It seemed too... soo, k.

The Gamma setting I'm confused on as well. After I calibrated I threw in a movie and kept going back and forth from -2 to 0 and -2 looked a little better, but there was nothing on the calib. disc to help me understand what it should be set at.

For what it's worth it was a very basic disc it seemed, but maybe that's its intention.

Picture Settings

Mode: Standard
Cell Light: 10
Contrast: 95 - I didn't understand the contrast calib. I tried to put it all the way up until the image was clipped, but it never happened.
Brightness: 43
Sharpness: 0 - The DVE test image didn't seem to be affected when I changed this.
Color: 50
Tint (G/R): G50/R50

Advanced Settings

Black Tone: Off
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Gamma: 0
Color Space: Native
White Balance: -----
Flesh Tone: 0
Edge Enhancement: Off

Picture Options

Color Tone: Normal
Size: 16:9
Digital NR: Off
HDMI Black Level: Low
Film Mode: Off

I just got this TV last night, and i plugged my PC into via HDMI. The windows background / fonts / and fine detailed things looked grainy and i was a little upset. Then i played an HD video and it looked fantastic. I was puzzled, i tried world of warcraft, that looked good too.

I unhooked the HDMI cable and put my desktop PC back in its room. Then i plugged a laptop into the PN42B450 via VGA cable and the background / font/ everything was SUPER crisp! i tried multiple resolutions over HDMI but they all seemed noisy/grainy on font and such. over VGA is really crisp.


I think this requires more troubleshooting, an HDMI cable should have equal if not better display IMHO. Im so happy with my "out of the box" settings i dont plan on tinkering with the TV until this winter when im stuck inside and bored.

I haven't tried this with mine because well... not really needed. What resolutions were you using? I might try this tonight just for kicks.

I tried several resolutions over HDMI and while it shrunk/stretched my picture it did nothing for picture quality. I played HD videos at 1280x720 over hdmi which looked great. just the font/text looked grainy/noisey.

Over the VGA cable i tried multiple resolutions and every single one was crisp and clear. I think the HDMI PC issues should be something we can fix with video driver tweaks?

far as the guy with an XBOX i dont know...

Damn I didn't try it last night, forgot sorry.

But I think I overlooked a small detail. You're going from your pc through HDMI to the tv. I'm not really sure how text is supposed to look. Most of the time I think people use VGA or DVI. I'd do some searching to see if you can find any comparisons.

What video card do you having in the computer with the HDMI/out?

My PC has two hdmi, two dvi, two vga outs. It has an onboard ATI 3300 with its own VGA,HDMI,DVI, then my video card an ATI 4650 has a VGA,DVI,HDMI out.

I prefer the HDMI because its suppose to be the highest quality while also passing sound reducing the amount of cabling required. My panasonic plasma did excellent with HDMI from the same PC. This samsung though only looks good with VGA cable. I mean the picture is really crisp with VGA while its somewhat irritating to look at using HDMI.

I'll be calibrating my 42B450 tonight or tomorrow and will report back with my results. I'll show the gamma curves, Color Gamut, and Greyscale tracking after my calibration is done.

Dan

What tools are you using for the calibration?

Nice....Looking forward to your results.

Eye-One LT meter and HCFR software.

Dan

stereomandan think you could post all your settings also, would really appriciate it, thanks

I'll be working on it in a little bit. Not sure if I'll get the whole thing done tonight. We got home late, and we still want to watch "Taken" on the projector tonight also.

The first calibration will be with a DVD 480P source through component video. After that, I'll try to get my PS3 unhooked from my Epson 1080UB projector and hook it up to the Samsung to calibrate the higher resolutions thru the HDMI input. The PS3 calibration might take a day or two before I get a chance to mess with it. I'll post up the full settings when I'm done.

Dan

sounds good to me, be looking forward to it. great movie

EDIT, These settings are outdated now. Please refer to my post #362 for a better setting. 8-31-09 The link is here:http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post17091636

Here they are, as of 11-28-09 for convenience sake: On my set, these settings are FANTASTIC!
Movie Mode, Warm 2 setting
Cell Light: 10
Contrast: 85
Brightness: 50 (this can vary from 48 to 52 depending on what input or source you are using)
Sharpness: 20 for standard definition content. I use 5 for HD content (Blu-Ray, or High Def Channels)
Color: 38
Tint: G42/R58

Advanced: Everything off or zero except:
Gamma: 0 (or -1 if you like)
Color Space: Auto

White Balance:
Red Offset: 21
Green Offset: 25
Blue Offset: 15
Red Gain: 25
Green Gain: 0
Blue Gain: 27


My meter was not measuring correctly for the settings I listed in this post...

Dan

Dan, appreciate the time with the calibration and posting of settings.

Does "Tint - 0" mean G50/R50?

I thought gamma was supposed to be about 2.2?

I'm curious to how you reached the 20 sharpness. Using the DVE test I saw no impact when I changed the slider.

No impact as in the image didn't change at all to my eyes.

Thanks

I updated my post a little now.

Yes, "Tint - 0" mean G50/R50

I left sharpness at the default. I didn't get a chance to mess with sharpness all that much, but I saw edge enhancement all the way down to zero sharpness, so I need to play around with it and get a better understanding of where sharpness needs to be set.

Dan

Roger.

I'm going to try and keep my posts constructive. I tried your current settings on my display and when I checked the DVE color calibration screen with the color filter they provide, it was off.

I understand all sets might not be the same (even same model) and viewing conditions, plus break in all apply. So I've adjusted a little (gamma helped a lot I think) and we'll go from there.

Thanks again and I look forward to your updates on your friends calibration.

Thanks for taking the time to post your settings after calibraton, now these were done with component cables and 480p right? Will be interesting to see the difference using hdmi and also after your set has a couple hundred hours on it, if and how much settings change. I was wondering if when you have an all black screen up(like at end of movie before credits appear)does it seem like the back light goes off or tv appear to be in stand by mode and then as soon as color changes or anything appears on screen it comes back on. it only does this in movie mode on mine. Standard and dynamic mode are fine, only happens in movie mode. Once again thank you for taking time to post after calibration settings

That may very well be the case. Using a blue filter to adjust Hue and color only tells you one thing, blue tint (Hue) and blue color. You don't get to see what that does to the rest of the color gamut. I spent most of my time on the greyscale tracking, and didn't get to spend much time with the color and tint setting yet. This is mainly due to the fact that the primary and secondary colors (except yellow) were overly saturated, even after reducing the color setting. Tint wise, the blue and red looked fairly good to begin as well as yellow. Swinging the color setting up and down in fairly large steps didn't seem to impact the saturation as much as I hoped. It seems that it may be impacting the color brightness more than color saturation.

On my display, there is a marked improvement from my previous settings, but I do need to understand the color management of the Samsung a little more before I share a calibration that I take as "best case". Like I said this is only the beginning and a quick first pass. I'll provide updated calibrations as we go. Did the settings look off on your display to your eye?

As far as gamma is concerned, 2.22 is targeted in many occasions, and it is what I use for my 1080UB projector, but on a very bright display like these plasmas a higher gamma can be utilized. At a gamma of -1 on the Samsung, the gamma was up around 2.6! Too high. CRT tube TV's gamma is typically in the 2.5 range just to give you a reference. On this plasma, with the 28-32 ft-L of brightness, a 2.4 is more pleasing, and less washed out looking while still retaining shadow detail. I'll look into this more as well on the Samsung as I try out different settings.


I'll try to check on the movie mode "stand-by" mode anomaly tonight and see if I notice the same thing.

Dan

Hello, back to you regarding my 50B650, running ok to 150h on the Break in DVD "and I look nice information on the calibration of this beautiful screen, because in France, with me there (very) few user of this set ...... Your forum m'ayant good progress during the calibration of my old plasma (Panasonic 46PZ81) I turn to you for my new "baby "......
Regards, Sédric.

I just wanted to give an update to my PC HDMI -> tv picture quality. Last night i sold my ati 4650 and started using my onboard ATI 3300 over HDMI. My issue is fixed, i have no idea if it was a driver issue , or something wron with that ATI card, but over HDMI my text/fonts etc look crisp now.

This is all over a 480P DVD signal, so I haven't had a chance with DVD or Blu-ray over HDMI. There are about 30-40 hours on the TV at this point:

O.k., so I spent more time with the TV last night, and my gains and offsets above in post #49 still provide a very good greyscale.

However, I'm not too thrilled with how the Samsung handles color. All of the primary colors (red, green and blue) are oversaturated, and the saturation can't be fixed with the color control. The hue(tint) of red and blue is pretty good though, and green had a slight blue hue but not terrible. The tint setting only seems to affect the secondary colors to any significant degree, but you can't get all three secondary colors to line up properly. You either get yellow looking correct, and cyan and magenta will be off. Or you can get cyan and magenta correct, but yellow will have a red tint.

The problem with the color setting is that it's not adjusting the saturation of the colors, it's adjusting the brightness of the color. Getting technical, color is made up of three components. Saturation, Hue(tint), and brightness. The color setting should adjust saturation if it is working correctly, but on the Samsung it adjust brightness much more than it does saturation.

Does this mean that the picture will always look bad or incorrect? Not necessarily. To correct for oversaturation of a color you can reduce it's brightness. This fools the eye into thinking that the color is desaturated. The settings I posted above are the best comprimise I could come up with for color and tint. This will have everything looking o.k. except for cyan and magenta, which will have hue off a little. (probably not noticeable to a lot of folks)

If you want magenta and cyan to look correct, but have yellow with a red tinge, you can try this setting also:
In the advanced menu, turn colorspace to Native, and then set the main tint control to G26/R74.

Those are the two options, but keep the color setting around 40 to help tame the oversaturated colors in general.

EDIT I've included charts above with my measurement results to show what I've been describing.

Dan

I am a total noob when it comes to calibrating but would changing the color temp to something other than WARM2 have an effect on improving the color issues?

In another thread folks really liked the NORMAL setting but I thought the colors looked a little too washed out and settled on WARM1

Does callibrating on anything other than WARM2 screw everything else up?

Typically the color temp only affects the greyscale, and not the gamut. That is a great suggestion though. I'll check into it when I get a chance. Who knows, maybe the color temp on these Samsungs will impact color saturation and hue in some way.

Dan

stereomandan last years model A450 had custom in color space so you can set all your colors (red, green,blue, yellow, cyan and magenta). I think those would be secondary colors right? for some reason they left that mode out this year. not sure why maybe cutting cost. I had the A450 but it had the pink hue issue so they gave me the B450 I think the pq and blacks are much better this year but the user menu lacks. I noticed in the A450 also when smeg36 calabrated his using component it was different from hdmi settings, so maybe that will even the colors out. On the A450 33ft.L gave the best settings. Oh did you check out the all black screen in movie mode yet?