The Official LG xxPK950 Owner's Discussion Thread - Page 42

I was aware (I thought) of which signals would be in Dolby Digital and which would not when using the optical out on the LG. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to find that Dolby Digital did come through the optical output when watching movies via VUDU. Nice!

I think I read that Hulu is supposed to be added next. It is already on some tv's I believe.

I posted this on the PZ950 forum, but the panels are the same so i hope to get more ideas/feedback.

I am quite disappointed and wondering if this will be fixed with firmware, if there is something I am doing wrong, or if it is just the tv, but there is just a LOT of noise anytime I adjust the brightness setting above 45. Basically there are a lot of green/red dancing pixels if you stand close to the display that gets worse as you increase the brightness, which makes it near impossible to calibrate correctly. Does anyone else notice this or is there anything that can be done??"

im sure you are aware but a downside of the technology is grain...some tv's are better at cleaning it up (i.e this years samsungs) and some arent that great, like this LG....really depends on the source, feed it good and it spits out good...

I don't believe this is graininess. Again, if you look at the screen you can see the red and green pixels where it should be black. You don't notice it when just watching tv normally, but when I put in the calibration disk or if there is a larger area of close-to-black color, you can notice the green, red and blue pixels dancing.

Edit:

So I do a little reading and find out that yes, this is called graininess. So my question changes- why is it that plasma's suffer from this problem when displaying blacks and is there anything that can be done? I'm a little surprised this panel is that bad, because I would think this is a major fault because instead of displaying one color pixel, it just displays rgb colors. I'll do a little testing tomorrow with different sources to see the varying effects of this tomorrow.

if you see this on blu ray, something is wrong...just a note

no, grain is better cleaned up by some sets then others, i had a panny 85u that was grainy, but only with a bad source, or a source that was meant to be grainy, like certain blu ray

Ok thanks a lot that is what I am going to test tomorrow. I have a Marvell video upscaler in the receiver in between the FIOS tv box and the tv, so I'll adjust settings and see if I can minimize the effects of the graininess.

We talked about this quite a bit a few pages back. Some of us have panels that are fine and with our preferred setttings, the green and red dots only show up in very specific situations and are overall, not a problem. It is not a problem that I would call grainyness. Noise is a better term for the issue.

But there are some who also have had TVs (somtimes swapping them with no success) that the issue just can't be minimized enough to their liking.

which is why i steered from this tv, the one and only reason

Is there something you have to enable in the menu for optical out to work? I have an optical cable hooked up to my processor but it's not working. Changing from the LG to my dvd the cable now works.

I have LED, LCD and now this TV at the same time.
"grain" shows equally on ALL sets. It strictly depends on the source.

It is very prevalent while on some HBO HD broadcasts . I must say though, it looks slightly less noticeable on the LG 50pk950.

Bad source bad picture......plain and simple.

What you are describing is easy to fix.

If you see any pixels dancing around in areas that should be black your brightness is set too high. This TV is very sensitive to this adjustment.

Simply turn it down until they disappear. there will be one click (somewhere around 52-56) where the black suddenly becomes clean. Leave it there.

rpauls has it right and you will need to find that perfect level for each source. My cable is set at 56 and my blu-ray is at 53.

I had an ISF calibration done to my PX950, but it might apply to the PK as well. Check the PX950 post for it and see if it works for you guys. It looks amazing now.

Dithering pixels are minimal with this calibration. Brightness does play a huge factor in it.

*start with 2 point, switch to 20 point and adjust, then switch back to 2 point and lock it into the ISF Night mode (hit 8741 on the remote).*

But I am very satisfied!

When I bought a 58" Pioneer Elite 610 RPTV 11 years ago I was thrilled. It was noticeably better than 99 percent of sets being made and the picture was stunning for that era. Still have and it still has great picture in many ways.

When I bought a Pioneer Pioneer 500m a year and half ago I was thrilled to get what was arguably one of the best plasmas ever made. Again to discerning eyes the PQ was noticeably better than almost any set out there.

This year I found myself wanting a sleeker set than the old monster 610. After a little research and price comparisons I decided on the pk950. Yes, there are some better sets out there; but not at the price I paid. Yes, I can find fault with it; who can't when you have a 500m in the same house.

But I can say I am very satisfied. At my viewing distance (12') many of it's faults are not noticeable. When I start concentrating on the content and not on the set, I am very pleased with the PQ and my decision to buy it.

I could have been as pleased with several other sets but they would have cost more and had different issues. I could have afforded any of them, but the law of diminishing returns would bugged me.

Will I want a better set a few years down the road? H^ll yes; but for now this set is just fine at a very decent price, especially considering what the 610 cost me 11 years ago.

Happy viewing to all,

Greg

Its true that having your brightness set correctly is one of the steps to help minimize the green/red noise. Setting Gamma to "High" also helps, since it crushes the last couple shades of black (though overall, I think "High" gamma looks better).

Certain color settings also seem to slightly affect this.

As it stands, I have it minimized. But it likes to show up in low lit scenes with haze/fog/smoke. and just occasionally, I will be watching something where the last shade before black is at just the right value to have the noise in it. I actually usually don't notice it when just watching TV or a movie. I only notice it in games, where I have control over the camera and am usually just looking around at stuff. Or if I got a new Blu-ray that looks especially good, so I may pause it a lot or repeat scenes to get a better look at the transfer.

Has anyone figured out how to get into the service menu yet?

Thanks

Why? The expert calibration controls are in the user menu.

DelJ

Now the last shades before black are something completely different. The original question was about the red and green pixels showing up in areas that were supposed to be black. This is correctly addressed using the brightness control.

But the dancing pixels you see at other brightness levels (especially nearly black, but even some much brighter up to 40%) are just due to plain poor video processing that LG uses in these sets. The pixels are danced around off and on to create gradations of brightness. The idea being if you get far enough away from the TV these fluctuating pixels will average out to the right brightness level. All plasmas do this, but Samsung and Panasonic do it much better than LG. Too bad about that. But you have to cut some corners to make it less expensive.

To get into the LG service menu I downloaded a long hex sequence to my harmony remote and assigned it to a button. Here is a link explaining what to do.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post19144672

Don't mess with anything unless you fully understand what you are doing. There is NO RESET to factory settings here.

Hi everyone. I just have a quick question about the 60pk750. I purchased this TV last Sunday and have it in my living room. My question is about the picture on the set. When watching movies on the TV anytime the camera pans left to right up/down, etc. the picture goes very blurry until the panning is complete. It is SOOO distracting it has actually started to give me headaches while watching movies. My question is 2 fold:

1) Other than this issue I love the TV, is there anything I can do to help with this issue (I notice it mainly watching HD channels on Comcast -- haven't watched many Blue Rays). The TV is connected to the cable box via the cheap HDMI comcast supplies with the box....could this be the issue? Or is there ANYTHING else I can do?

2) If the options to reduce this blur when the TV pans do not exist, can someone please recommend a large 60"+ TV around the $2k range that eliminates this issue? The reason I went with Plasma was to make sure I didn't get this issue with the 600hz, but after further research it appears this TV is actually 120hz...is that possible?

I am truly open to Plasma, LED, LCD, TV's I just really want something that will get rid of this issue and have a decent quality picture. The issue is so distracting that I would give up image quality to get rid of this problem....

You could start by turning off all noise reduction and see if that helps,it worked for me.

Hey guys! I have been doing lots of reading & skimming of this thread. Very informative i bought a 60PK750 for the bedroom on black friday. Massive for the bedroom but i love it! I originally had a 55" Samsung LCD i bought but returned it for the 60pk750. I have always loved plasma's being i am a fan of the "glass" front. And i could not believe how skinny this thing was! Anyway..

Is their anybody who would like to share their PS3 calibration settings with me? I have been playing around with the settings alot. When i play Grand Theft Auto 4, it seems to be a little dark and dull for my liking. I do like some pop in color and such just not blinding. I have the Dynamic Color & Dynamic Contrast turned off. However when i play games like Fifa 11 i think it looks alot better with Dynamic Contrast on low. It's just a pain to have to keep going into the setting to change it. I am using a Sony Home Theatre system with a HDMI repeater. So technically i am only using "1" HDMI cable going to my TV. Which helps being with the low profile wall mount its impossible to get a HDMI back there without it hitting the wall.

Last thing. So most of you guys are turning you Edge Enhancer option's off? I have been testing and cant seem to tell if i like it or not. It does minimize the grain a bit. But as somebody stated before. Some sources put out lots of grain. Blu Rays seem to be nothing short of amazing on this set.

What are you guys running your sharpness & contrast at. Im still playing with them a bit.

Thanks!

Well you have a 750 and this thread is about the 950. But, it seems like all of LG's upper TVs have a similar panel and processing, so trying some settings for a 950 on a 750 may end up with pretty good results. It could also be WAY off. BUT ALL THAT SAID, I'd give CNET's PX950 settings a try. I use it slightly tweaked on my PK950 and love it.

I like the edge enhancer for most DVDs, HD transfers that are on the soft side or have lower contrast, and for some games. It can also be nice for 2D animation.

But its too sharp on really good HD transfers, especially if they have a lot of native contrast. It can really mess up the look of someon's skin, making it appear dry and cracked. Some HD transfers also have a good deal of native edge enhancment. applying more over the top of that can make something like The Dark Knight look really terrible, like an over sharp hand cam.

Thanks Toptube. Yea i actually tried a members "PX950" settings. It was pretty close to the THX cinema but looked a bit better.

Yea i have been playing the the edge enhancer with different games, DVDs, Blu rays & such. It just sucks that i have to keep changing it. But i guess that its not that big of a deal.

Vcolassi--

Thanks for the response, I know I'm gonna get ripped for this, but can you tell me how to turn off noise reduction? Sorry, I'm not as much of an expert on televisions as I pretend to be...

Thank you!!

Oops, sorry I got the wrong person...geared4me, would you mind exlaining how to turn off noise reduction?

Thanks a million geared4me!

While you are going in you may as well set a couple other things also. Go to the menu then picture settings,turn off energy saving,scroll down and click on expert control,turn dynamic contrast off,noise reduction off and edge enhancer off. Pm me if you need more detail.

FYI, these won't work with the TV because the jack going into the TV isn't long enough.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

These will probably fare better.