Panasonic 11G/12G/13G black levels have seemingly doubled overnight? - Page 4

Do you have a g10?

Yes. 50G10.

I'm curious to see if this happens to the V10 series as well.

I've got a plan and I'd love to have other forum members participate. What I'm going to do is utilize my dSLR and a canon L series lens locked on a fixed manual exposure setting in the darkest possible room lighting to take pictures of the same spot, from the same perspective of my V10 as I use it, and catalog the pictures by service menu hours posted.

They should provide a testable and quantifiable measurement of black level... IE if the first (dark) black level pics expose at RGB values of ~10 at a 5 second F/3.2 ISO 400 exposure and after 500 hours expose at values ~30 at the same exposure, we know we have a huge problem.


Again if you've got a fully manual control camera or SLR, I'd suggest a few of us do this same. Make sure your exposure is set precisely the same (no matter what the light meter reads). I suspect alot more of us have SLRs or manual cameras than calibration equipment.

-Nate

This could be a major deal breaker, as I will be looking for a set in the new year for my entertainment room in the basement. I own 2 Samsung plasmas, and am very happy with their performance to date. I was thinking of going Panasonic for the media room, as my father purchased a 50X1 recently, and I was very impressed. I am looking in the 58"+, so I dont want to get this wrong. Now I may be sticking with Samsung.

So has anyone seen a similar change on the S series or other 2009 models?

Yeah, seeing the difference first hand, the increase is truly surprising. The blacks go from being really dark and hard to notice the black bars during normal content, to seeing them very easily. It literally doubles, from .008 to probably .016 it is a very noticeable increase and it is unacceptable. If I wanted these crappy black levels I would have gotten a Samsung.

Luckily just doing a factory reset fixes this issue since it resets the internal clock and makes the set forget that this increase has already happened. Next time this happens I will call the tech and get something done about this, because this is ridiculous.

Wondering this as well.

I did the reset and than went into the service menu and checked the hour count to see if it was reset back to zero but after looking i found out that it didn't reset the internal clock, It still says i have 200+ hrs on the set. I will have to wait til night fall to see if the black levels are back to normal.

Maybe it was because of the removal of the input board (the A board) that caused the full reset, but the tech called it a full factory reset.

The internal clock must be reset for this to work.... wait, I thought this didn't happen until after 300 hours?

Nope, i noticed the change yesterday unfortunately. I thought this would happen much later, i am pretty disappointed now.

EDIT*

"hold the menu button on the remote and -Vol on the TV it's self than unplug the power cord for 30 seconds" is this the correct method of resetting the set to it's factory defaults?

Perhaps if enough people complained about this to Panasonic they will address it via a firmware update.

Orta, have you managed to reset the black levels on your g10? My father recently purchased the 50x1 and I am wondering if this will happen to his as well. How many other models have experienced this? Someone with the px80u has also seen a rise in black level performance. I hope this isn't a trend.

Well as i said in my earlier post i did the reset and it seems that my black levels are back to normal. Could this be some sort of glitch?

How did you do "reset" it?

Is this only with Panasonic? Has anyone experienced this with Samsung PDPs? This makes absolutely no sense to me... why would they do this? I was almost set on purchasing a 54G10, but now I'm having second thoughts.

hold the [VOL-] button on the TV and the [MENU] button on the remote for 5 seconds a menu will come up, hold the power button on the TV it's self til it turns off than un plug the power cord for 30 seconds and plug it back in and turn it on.

my blacks on my 54s1 have rose pretty noticibly, i only have about 250 - 300 hrs on it, should i call panasonic, or maybe trry the factory reset?

I dont like where this is going. I will tell my father to keep an eye on the black levels on his x1, and I will also check whenever I visit, as his set is approaching the 200hr mark.

i did the reset, it seem a somewhat better but i wont really know until tonight when i can have a completely dark room

well i tried testing it out with a bluray with black bars and the black bars dont look even close to looking like the benzel still look like a faint grey but whats funny is when i did the reset, the black seemed to look pretty dark when it was in the menu then i shut the tv off and back came the faintly grey black bars again. anyone know how to fix this or if i should call panasonic? oh and i just checked, i only have 163 hrs on the set

thanks. I did the reset. It doesn't seem to help. I still see the black bars greyish. This is not to discourage other G10 owners/prospecitve buyers. The set puts an amazing picture and everyday it surprises me.

Want to report 1 more finding. Before I did the reset when I switch the set on it would transition from a from light gray to dark grey. After the reset it would transition into 3 shades. light to dark grey to black....So the reset did something.

I noticed this too, it has to be some kind of a hiccup or glitch that can probably be fixed through a firmware upgrade i just hope Panasonic does something about it.

What exactly is reset using this "factory shipment setting" method -- as it is called in the service manuals? Does it effect all the user menu settings? What about the service menu settings?

Has anyone measured the base black level just before and right after performing this "reset"?

Larry

Is this seriously an issue on all the 2009 models? We really need to get to the bottom of this. If the Panasonics are going to rise to Samsung black levels, then I might as well buy a Samsung or at least wait until next years models.

I own a 46 S1 and have commented on the black levels on the S1 thread, and unfortunately I think I'm seeing the same thing. Watched Iron Man on Blue Ray and was so distracted by the cave scenes that I fast forwarded through it. Black bars..yes, I'm very dissapointed at the difference in the bars and the bezel. I would never have imagined the blacks getting lighter as it ages though.

I'm going to also try the reset and hopefull see a difference.

I think that's normal for that scene.