Official LG xxLD550 xxLD520 xxLD650 Owners Thread - Page 101

I know what you mean. I've tried most of the calibration settings here, and I'll probably keep trying them and tweaking them, but what I settled on last night was Standard with some User modifications and it looked nice

Not at all

hey phase700b.

of all your settings, which would you recommend for an all around calibration since i have just one hdmi cable going into the tv from my receiver? keep in mind i have the 47ld520 and not 550.

thanks!

I know that.

However, on my 550, those settings do not cause severe black crush. I also increased luminance. I don't know if that played a part or not. Any perceived black crush was minor to the point have having to study it in order to see any at all. In some instances this may be an acceptable trade for dull or soft images.

Medium dcr looks really soft and almost fuzzy. No dcr, depending on the signal, looks a bit better than medium.

I did this last night, in a completely dark room, using Nick's HDMI Cool settings. I was attempting to get more "pop" for those who perceive the picture as too dull.

Just for the record, I tried Csamos settings on my 550 and they don't work at all. There were some points where it looked fabulous but the final result is unacceptable. I know that he would never even suggest using his settings on any set other than a 520 and that he would not suggest that one could even expect the same results on another 520 either.

A professional calibration should never be a miss if it's done right. Calibration is an objective thing, not subjective. It's adjusting the TV to match the Rec 709 spec (or 601 in the case of SD) as close as possible to produce the most accurate picture as possible, meaning as close to what the filmmaker intended. Whether someone actually likes the resulting picture is another matter altogether.

That is a very good point. Most people will not be able to justify the cost of a professional calibration, especially for lower cost TVs. However, I often recommend a lower priced model to someone to allow them the room to get it calibrated right. Personally I only charge $200 and do it free for my friends. And I will never accept money from someone if they don't think I have improved the picture quality, but I have never not been paid.

I love the fact that everyone in this thread strives to get the best picture out of their TV. Nick has been a huge help in creating this thread and continuing to offer excellent help. I'm just glad I can contribute as much as I can.

Me too.

I guess I'll post to the Calibrators thread to see if anyone is going to be in my area because I'm not going to let BB or trust just anyone with my money or my sets.

This is really interesting. I'm going to have to find a 550 here in Austin to calibrate and compare the resulting settings with my 520 and Nick's 550 settings. From the various posts from people with 550 sets, it looks like there are some inherent differences in the panels that make sharing calibration settings between the two unusable.

So if you're in Austin and have a 520 or a 550 series TV, pm me. I'll calibrate it for free, just so I can understand better what's going on!

I'll raise my cup of tea in toast to that (can't do a beer cause I'm at work
).

My backlight seems to look good, on the Standard (User) mode, at 42.

Hmm, Medium dyn. contrast messes up gray scale and gamma? eh, I don't see it... With the settings I have, the blacks were looking nice and black, but I could see details. It didn't look overblown... though I suppose it was a little intense. I'm sure I could turn it off and still like it, but sometimes you just want the "pop"

Dallas close enough?

Ooh, free calibration I wish you lived near D.C.!

Csamos, I'm in VA, Hampton Roads.

Nick, I was watching White Collar while I made those changes. There are a lot of shadows and dark suits, as well as high contrast with bright whites and dark suits & hair. I was able to see pin stripes and dimension in the shadows.

There was an instance when one lady's hair went from being a sort of strawberry blond to a sandy color when turning dcr to off or medium. Although that hair seemed to have more detail (strands?) it looked soft too, almost fuzzy like the edges of a cat's fur when photographing with the light coming from the back, sort of halo-ish but not quite. Is this a case of me trying to make the picture look like I think it should? BTW, she was a well groomed woman and not a wild haired one.

Nick, can you pm me your Sony settings? I'm not sure that I have my S350 set up right. I know they might be different but I can wag it once I see yours.

Come on now, the least you can do is swag it - this is the A/V Science forum...

Any device that itself can be used to generate the test patterns (grey scale, R/G/B/C/Y/M) will result in a proper calibration for that device. I always use the blu-ray/dvd player attached to a tv (directly or through an a/v receiver, however it is connected) to calibrate the tv, as that is the device that will be used for source content (movies). It doesn't make sense to use a different blu-ray player to generate the test patterns than the blu-ray player that is used to actually view movies, or to directly connect the blu-ray player to the tv for the calibration if it is normally connected through an a/v receiver. The signal path should be left as is it used.

But for devices like a cable box, DirecTV receiver, etc., there may not be a way to have them generate their own test patterns. The optimal settings generated by the use of the blu-ray player can be applied to other HD sources, like a DirecTV receiver, with the assumption that the DirecTV player is also outputting a Rec 709 HD signal. I have never seen a case where the settings generated by using a blu-ray player to generate the test patterns looked so far off when applied to other HD input devices as well. Granted the content from channel to channel on DirecTV can be drastically different quality, but that's a completely different issue.

If a blu-ray player has its own video settings (like our BDP-S550 does), those settings should be nulled out prior to calibration anyway since they would of course affect the results.

If I had a system where there were multiple source devices that could generate test patterns (say a blu-ray player and an Xbox 360 with an HD DVD drive), I would do an initial calibration with one device, and then check the data with the other device, making any adjustments as necessary, of course. But it's not often people have multiple devices like that anyway.

In my theater, I have another BDP-S550, but I also have two 400 disc DVD changers that are run through a Pioneer VSX-1120 and upscaled from 480i to 1080i. In my own case, I use the blu-ray player to calibrate my projector for it and my DirecTV receiver, but I used a DVD with test patterns from the DVD changer to calibrate my projector for the DVD changers, thus giving me 2 sets of projector calibrations even through everything runs through my a/v receiver.

Ah yes! I was also thinking about differences between panels types themselves. I know mine is an S-IPS panel, but another 47LD520 with a different panel will very likely require different settings.

Of course! I will upgrade my USAF wag to an AVS swag.

You also have a standing invitation for San Jose (of course so does Mr. Phase)

I'd actually like to see her wag it

thanks. i have tried csamos and like it but will try yours tonight. can i ask why it matter is you have one hdmi going to the tv from a receiver with things plugged into that compared to each device going into the tv separately? in the end, isn't the screen producing the PQ and not the device? just confused why you need an individual setting in your case.

thanks!

do some of the 520s not come with the IPS panel? i thought all LG 47ld520s did.

My goodness, I go on my three hour lunch and come back to a hundred new posts . Hard to keep up with you guys!

Carl, by "miss" I meant that not all calibrations are done the same, of course. If you get someone with the proper equipment and who knows what he's doing, then yeah, it will be worth it.

In regards to Dynamic Contrast, the three levels all have an impact with Medium being the most subtle. Low and High are crushing pretty much everything. Even at Medium you lose detail, like sheshechic mentioned. It's a trade-off - more pop or more detail.

Nick, remember my backlight is only so high because of the energy saving feature. At night I watch at Medium with the lights on and at Maximum (zero backlight) with only the ambient light behind the TV on.