The Official Panasonic G20/25 Owner's Discussion Thread [no price talk] - Page 130

Is it safer to get the 50G20 from BB as opposed to the 50G25 from Amazon? I am wondering whether the chances of receiving a cracked screen is less from BB compared to Amazon. With my BB coupon and sales tax holiday, the prices comes out to be the same.
Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.

Hydrogin,

I had been on the phone with Panasonic and am waiting to hear back from them. We tried a master reset a couple of times but no luck.

I downloaded the firmware, put it on an SD card and followed the directions exactly. The update seemed to load and the TV did everything on autopilot, even shutting itself off and turning itself on.

When it was all done, I pressed the Viera Cast button and got no screen, just an input label in the upper left corner. The I pressed Viera Tools and tried to access the Viera Cast from there, but again no luck. I put the SD card back in to try and redo the update, but the TV gave me a file error - "Error. Check file on card" (or something like that).

Thinking the file was corrupted, I formatted the card, downloaded a new copy of the file, then put it back on the SD card. When I tried again, the TV gave me the same error. It seems to be rejecting the file.

Now I'm stuck until I hear back from Panasonic. The TV flickers black and shows the input label on the upper corner every 15 minutes or so. It doesn't matter which input its on - game, HDMI, Component - it keeps happening.

The store I bought the TV from just placed the 50G25 on sale. I may just trade the 46" in and get the 50"!

Viken K.

I've been following this ongoing discussion about the black levels and graininess and hoping that it doesn't make me aware of things I don't need to know. Blissfully ignorant as long as I'm happy.

However, I have a quick question. How long does IR take to fade out? As I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I have been playing some PS3. About 3 hours a day for the 5 days. I've noticed that the IR from the score is pretty easy to spot once I turn off the lights, and it hasn't gone away yet. I've heard people say IR goes away in 30 minutes or whatever. Mine is still there a day later. I'm going to stop playing for a few days to see if it goes away.

Sounds like many of you at least play some games on this thing. Experiences? Words of wisdom? I'm running THX mode on my games as it is.

Here is a link to a post i submitted a week or so ago on image retention. It could take 4 or 5 days of solid TV viewing for it to fade and disappear entirely. Based on all my reading on this subject, the chance that you did permanent damage to your screen is slim to none. I dont know what game you were playing but I have also read that games with a lot of red static images cause I.R. more frequently then other colors. Others have recommended watching a solid hour or so of cartoons in zoom mode to fade the retention quicker.

Hope this helps.

Check out the two links in this post for some interesting info on I.R.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post18994870

Mike

Sounds like the FW update process bricked the set. This is the first time anyone's had that experience in this thread to my recollection.

Fortunately there's a silver lining here! I think a 50" will have better resale value in the future.

One of the options in my YT account is to use HD resolution whenever I play a video in fullscreen mode (if resolution is available for that video).

I just enabled the option, logged in to YT via my G20, then played one of my own YT 720p videos @fullscreen. The INFO button seems to be disabled in Vieracast so no resolution info that way. But I'm pretty sure my vid wasn't playing in its native 720p resolution. On my PC, it does.

I noticed videos uploaded to YT are available via PC very quickly as soon as they're transcoded. But it often takes many hours to a day before they're available via Vieracast (could be some caching going on with Panasonic servers). So maybe my settings change will take a while to show up via Vieracast? I'll check again tomorrow.

Its interesting the INFO button doesn't work in Vieracast ... it must be tied to the internal tuner and not to internet data (which probably bypasses the internal tuner).

Hey, if the firmware update did brick the set i would have to look upon that as a good thing. Although its annoying to have to go through the process exchanging it, its better to have things like this happen now as opposed to one day after the warranty expires. If he upgrades to a 50 inch for the same price he paid for the 46.. well that's the cherry on top of the sundae. I remember when i was a kid 20 years ago, my father bought an expensive RCA 32 inch CRT tube set. My sister and I thought it was massive and loved watching it. My dad who is a colossal fretter at the best of times would sit there praying to God something would break on it during the first year. That way the expensive repair would be covered by warranty and not come out of his pocket. I know its a weird way to think but sure enough a month later the set broke. I remember my younger sister and I being devastated knowing they had to take it away for a week to fix it. My father was over the moon ecstatic because the repair cost him nothing. That set is an antique now but still works and is in his bedroom today. To my knowledge, it has never been repaired since.

Hopefully VikenK won't have the grain issues with the new one.

Mike

Good point, especially for those who use a media player (e.g. WDTV, Roku, PS3) or an HTPC.

I use Sony Vegas to edit videos and have rendered to both computer RGB colorspace (0-255) and studio color space (16-235). The videos do look different when played on the same monitor.

I use a WDTV Live over HDMI. Do you know what setting is best for it by chance? I'm using Auto currently.

Is there anywhere on the menu that shows how many viewing hours or just left on? If so, i missed while doing a search.
Thanks

Hello Everyone,

I want to pronounce the grain issue dead! There *is* some grain in the panel, but it is completely normal and par for the course on these TV's. I have been to about 5 TV stores, including Best Buy, and checked out about eight G20/G25s in 46 and 50 inch sizes and they are ALL IDENTICAL to my TV. So I have deemed that, as far as the noise issue is concerned, my TV is behaving completely normally.

For those who are still curious, just put your TV into Standard Picture mode and bring up the menu or the input menu. You will see heaving speckling in the blue background if you come within three feet of the TV. It is not noticeable from a farther viewing distance. Standard mode is the worst, while THX mode is the cleanest.

I'm still waffling between exchanging the 46" or moving up to the 50". The 50" will cost about $150 more than the 46". Normally I would spring for the extra $150 but we have had two unexpected expenses that will set us back thousands (this tv being one of them) and money is a little tight. Also, the 50" is slightly big for the room while the 46 is perfect. Still contemplating.

Viken K.

I know how unexpected expenses can go, Viken, but if you can spring for the extra real estate, I highly recommend it. My 50" looks like an IMAX screen in my apartment, but that's part of why I love it. Movies look so good on it.

Congratulations on pronouncing the grain issue dead -- I've done the same with my incessant whining about floating blacks. Onward and upward, as they say ... with a big, beautiful television in tow.

Thanks, I did see your previous post a few days ago. It relieved me greatly knowing that it would not be permanent unless my set is completely defective. However, with most people reporting that IR goes away pretty quickly, I didn't know if my set is just slower to recuperate or if I was doing something wrong.

I got mine from Amazon, Rubik, and it arrived quickly and carefully in perfect condition. The Squaretrade warranty I got from Amazon was also a 4-year one, for cheaper than any retail store could match. I can't say enough about how easy it was to get the TV from Amazon.

1. Enter Service Menu (Hold Vol. - down on the TV while pressing the INFO button on the remote 3 times).
2. Press the {2} button on the remote 1 time, to go to SRV-TOOL.
3. Press the {OK} button. A blue grid will appear with the following information.
TD2Mictocode: 81c00011
Flash ROM: 1-227E
PTCT :00.00.00.00.00
4. Cursor down to the PTCT :00.00.00.00.00 line and then cursor over to the right to highlight the empty box.
5. Press and hold the {MUTE} button on the remote for 3 seconds.
The TIME / COUNT info will be displayed in Hours and Minutes of Operation.
6. To exit, press and hold the {POWER} button on the TV for 2 seconds.
The display will re-start by itself.

<<<< WARNING - WARNING - WARNING >>>>
The {VOL+} and {VOL -} buttons are used to change
values in the Service Menu. Make sure not to touch
those buttons anytime while checking the hours used.

One of the first things I noticed was the amount of ventilation on the back of the TV.

Does anyone have any tips about keeping dust out? Does anyone cover theirs with anything while it's not in use?

Dont use a air duster as it will just push dust into the unit more. Use a vacuum and run the hose over all the holes to suck out as much dust as you can. Other then that not much other than taking the back of the tv off which i would not do.

There is no fan in the unit also so just vacuum it out once a month and should be fine.

I have the 46 G25 using Directv. What settings do you use on your plasma for optimal viewing. I'm not too familiar with how it all works but I believe one setting you chose can make your TV do more work changing resolutions or you can have the Directv receiver do the work.
I'm currently using: Native:ON Screen Format: Original Format

Also I don't have 720p resolution activated because I rather the program up convert to 1080i.

I also have both 480i and 480p activated for standard def programming. Should I just go with 480p only?

Just curious how other Plasma Guru's have their TV's set up.

THANKS.

Thanks for your time and your answer -- I didn't want to shoot an air duster in there, and there's no way I'm ever attempting to take it apart.

Do you guys think I have a defective G20? I have had a burned image near the top of my screen for about a month now.. It was from a game that I played for only 30-40 minutes.. On top of that there is a very loud buzz.

And on that note, is my best buy service plan good for all that?

My Settings

Here's what I'm using in my video chain:

WDTV:
Display resolution: auto | 1080p 60hz | 1080p 24hz | etc.

Color space: auto | rgb high | rgb low | YCbCr

BD85 Blu-ray Player:
HDMI color mode: YCbCr (4:4:4) | YCbCr (4:2:2) | RGB (Standard) | RGB (Enhanced)

G20:
HDMI/DVI RGB Range : auto | standard (16-235) | non-standard

Denon AVR 1910:
No settings to make, but note batpig's FAQ:

http://batpigworld.com/fadq.html#video

says "recent model Denons will NOT pass full-range RGB unless you are connected to a DVI display." so care must be taken when attaching a PS3 or HTPC to newer Denon receivers with video gaming in mind (some video games use full 0-255 RGB color).

** Bolded options are what I'm using. Underlined options are those I suspect would work OK.

Below are some rationale for my settings. I'm writing it down because I'm not very knowledgeable on color issues and everything I know is just from reading and playing with settings. Anyone who spots an error in my reasoning, please correct me.


The Big Picture

The name of the game is to understand what colorspace and color channel levels are used by source's (e.g DVD or BD players) and the TV at the end of the video chain, then make sure there are no mismatches along the way.

All the related color options in the video chain are important if you're calibrating your TV or want to get colors in the source material (DVD, BD, ripped movie, video game, etc.) to display properly on the TV.


YCbCr Background Info

There are two variables to deal with in the video chain:

- Color space compression/decoding

- How color channel values are represented numerically

First thing to note is the color of pixels is represented in all DVD's and Blu-ray discs with a colorspace (a scheme) called YCbCr. RGB is not used!!! And YCbCr is actually a compressed color representation (think of it as the color equivalent of Dolby Digital and DTS). It takes ~60% of the space to represent a movie using YCbCr compared to using a non-compressed colorspace like RGB. So YCbCr is advantageous because you can cram more movie content on a disc with minimal loss in color fidelity.

Using YCbCr, not every pixel's color needs to be represented with a Y (luma) plus Cb and Cr (chroma) value. The color of some pixels are represented using only Y, or only Cb+Cb, or all three. This is how the space efficiency is obtained. The scheme leverages the fact that the human eye is more senstive to brightness (luma) than to color (chroma).

The last two paragraphs were necessary to explain why some owner's manuals refer to options such as YCbCr(4:2:0), YCbCr(4:2:2), and YCbCr(4:4:4). These options describe the level of compression or the amount of information contained in the pixel color representation (from least to most). DVD and BD discs use YCbCr(4:2:0). So its important to note that the numbers do not represent number of bits used for the Y, Cb, and Cr color channels! Just like regular 8-bit RGB, eight bits are used to represent Y, Cb, and Cr and their values are similar to Studio RGB in that they take on values from 16-235. **

** If the "deep color" HDMI option is being used throughout the video chain, then all color channels can increase to 10, 12, or 16-bits regardless of the colorspace used (that's another story).

Another important notion to carry away here is that DVD's and BD's have compressed/encoded color information that eventually needs to be decoded. Part of the decision making process is where you want that done. Most source devices (BDP's, media players) can do it, but TV's can do it too. This decision is analogous to the ones you make when deciding where you want video upscaling or surround sound decoding to happen in your system. When you ask a DVD/BD player to output RGB, or an audio device to output PCM, you're asking it to decode the source material.

Some good links that discuss YCbCr:

http://www.audioholics.com/tweaks/ca...vels-xvycc-rgb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
http://lea.hamradio.si/~s51kq/V-BAS.HTM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luma_(video)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrominance


Video Chain Matching Decisions

For the WDTV, someone has used a video scaler/processor to confirm that the default colorspace setting "Auto" gives the same results as the YCbCr setting:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...172446&page=82

Since I'm playing mostly DVD and BD rips encoded in MPEG/H.264 (which also uses YCbCr color encoding) I've decided to leave colorspace on Auto. I think using YCbCr should also work fine, but I haven't tested it yet.

I haven't been able to get my WDTV Live Plus to output at 24hz for any of my BD rips (using MakeMKV) so I have resolution set to Auto for now.

My WDTV and BD85 both drive my Denon receiver. The Denon just passes the YCbCr data through untouched, so nothing to worry about there. As an aside, I would have an issue if I had a PS3 or HTPC connected to the Denon and was playing games that use full range computer RGB (0-255) color because the newer Denon's won't pass full range values unless you've got a DVI input on the TV. I'd consider connecting the PS3/HTPC directly to the G20/G25.

For my BD85, I'm using the default color mode option YCbCr(4:4:4) to be consistent with the WDTV. I suspect that what this setting does is force the blu-ray player to up-sample the YbCbCr(4:2:0) data on DVD's and BD's to YCbCr(4:4:4) before spitting it out on HDMI. I "think" this is OK because the G20/G25 would have had to do that up-sampling anyways in order to convert to the native RGB it needs to drive the panel.

Using YCbCr(4:2:2) would probably be OK too - the BD85 would probably up-sample YCbCr(4:2:0) to YCbCr(4:2:2) and output that for the G20 to up-sample to YCbCr(4:4:4) before finally converting to RGB. That's what "Larry" implies here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archi.../t-780809.html

Basically, I prefer to have my BD85 offload as much work from my G20 as possible because the BD85 is reported to use a really nice video/chroma processor inside. I already know it does a much better job at upscaling DVD's than the G20 hands down.

So at the end of the video chain, my G20 should be seeing YCbCr from both the WDTV and BD85 via the Denon receiver. So what setting to use on the G20 HDMI inputs? Based on everything I've read, including the VT20/VT25 owner's AVS thread, Auto works well with YCbCr input streams so that's what I'm using.

I suspect the "Standard (16-235)" option *might* work although I don't understand how the G20 would know its seeing a YCbCr input and needs to do the up-sampling and conversion to RGB for the internal sub-pixel drivers. I don't think the HDMI specification calls for a colorspace flag that indicates YCbCr vs RGB. There is a color matrix flag but that's for differentiating between ITU-R BT.601 and ITU-R BT.709 colorspaces used by SD and HD content and is important for DVD's upscaled to HD by the player - yet another story!

I'm just now ripping my Dark Knight and Avatar BD's so will be able to test my WDTV settings against theory with some good material (when I get some time ). I don't have any color calibration sources/equipment.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope someone will correct me if I made an error somewhere along the way.

Just curious what most people have their retention settings at? I currently have my Orbitor set to Automatic but i don't know if thats a better choice then Periodic at 4 minutes. Anyone know what Automatic means in terms of how often in moves the pixels around? Would periodic be the safer choice?

Thanks.

Mike

I have done some more looking on my own into this. My grain gets worse with out of focus shots/backgrounds. These have SIGNIFICANT static and noise, while foreground has very little. Noise can be seen on faces though which drives me bonkers. The worst times are bright background colors, particularly lights. I compared various scenes from The Dark Knight on my Samsung B550and several stood out as unwatchable on the G25, while others looked reference quality. When playing animated movies such as Monsters Inc and Toy Story this problem does not occur AT ALL which leads me to believe its a firmware issue as opposed to a hardware one. However I have the newest firmware for the tv (as well as the PS3 but the issue exists with NO inputs at all so it cant be the PS3).

My question is this: Has anyone actually tried to watch their tv in anything OTHER than THX? Standard, game or vivid? The noise makes all of these settings virtually unwatchable to me, at any distance.
If you are watching a movie, look at out of focus scenes and see if it is all black grain and static in the blurry areas (walls behind forground actors, lights, or horizons/sky areas). It would be much appreciated to me so I can decide whether to bring my set back or just accept it for what it is. I can't focus on anything BUT the noise which takes me out of my tv experience.

Do you find audible buzz at low/no volumes just with bright images, or on everything?

With me it's just the former at my viewing distance (about 7').

I'm curious if everyone hears buzz on bright images at low/no volumes.

Is the amazon square trade deal ok with the 50" g25?

Also, how does the 46" nx800 compare?

Certainly I hear it when the bright stuff is on the screen much more so but I hear it some on anything as well. But you're right I had a white break-in slide on yesterday & I thought I was going to have to kill some bees. Mine is from the back of the set not through the screen as some mentioned can happen without the outer glass the older models had. I'm sitting at about 8'. My tv is in an alcove with a corner wall on one side & I think that deflects it outward more too. In other words if were just against a straight wall I suspect it wouldn't be as loud. I'm going to inquire about it so they can tell it's another "feature" .

I work at BB and in our RSS system..inventory..it says the G20 is DISCON which means discontinued...whats this about?

YOu tell us...you work there. I wouldn't believe anything from that store, as they are all full of s#$t.

I work for regional retailer HHgregg. There are mysteriously no purchase orders on panasonic g25's, or s2 for that matter, this is strange as they've been selling well and we are practically sold out chain wide. Either our buyers are beating them up on price or panasonic has run into a manufacturing snag/revised a model.

Hi everyone,

In order to accommodate the 50" G25, if I go for it, The TV would literally be coming within 1/2" to 1" close to both of my Polk RT-10 speakers. I presume there's no problem with this? I know it's unlikely that there would be a problem with having the TV so close to my speakers, but I'm just checking to see if there's something that I may have overlooked or not thought of.

Viken K.