2011 LG XXLV5500 SMARTTV / Impressions - Page 20

When you're in "User"/Standard mode, there are no color temperature choices like Warm, Cool, etc. It's a slide bar where you can go left/right on the scale. Mine is right at 0 on the scale.

Ok so you are just basically on normal. When you get a chance turn yours all the way to the left (for warm) and tell me what you think. Everyone suggests the TV be on warm but I dunno...

I wouldn't do that because the color tone looks spectacular (and normal) where it's at. I don't need to "color" it any more. There is neither blue nor red in my picture that I can easily discern.

Flesh tones are perfect, and the colors do "pop". Now, of course it's always a "garbage-in/garbage-out" scenario with video. If some station or service is airing material that's not properly set for color/tint, that's what you're going to see on your set.

That sounds like a case of letting other people's preferences making you wonder why you don't like what you see. Go with your own eyes.

Now, all of the above said, does that mean that my set couldn't benefit from an in-depth 10-pt calibration? Of course not. But in the absence of that, my basic calibration looks pretty sweet.

I don't know if my settings apply to your IPS panel, however.

I am certainly bummed that my panel is the AUSDLUR. I honestly Don't notice much if any color change across angles, but just knowing its inferior drives me nuts. If nothing else I am going to get a partial refund from amazon, and try to take it up with LG. This kind of switching crap is super sketchy. How are you Non-IPS people holding up?

Couple of things.

1) The only reason I made the change was because I have OCD...I am not normal. If you are, just live with your VA panel because it is terrific. When looking straight ahead it looks the exact same, in fact from what I remember the colors were even slightly more vivid and brighter on the VA panel. It's only at angles that you will notice any difference.

2) Don't waste your time calling LG, it will only lead to further disappointment. Trust me they have prepared speeches ready to give about how they don't guarantee what panel you get, and both panels are comparable.

Bottom line is just check the TV, if black levels are good, no excessive black light bleeding, no dead or stuck pixels, be happy you just got a great TV at a great price. In a few months time you will forget all about this discussion...

....Unless you also have OCD.

Hmmm...Too bad I suffer from this kind of OCD with all electronics. But its true I generally stop caring in a month. Sadly I'll be staring at this TV for years. Oh well, got a partial refund, and it does look great to my eyes, with very very minimal screen angle problems. I am not even convinced they are there. More than anything I am worried about ghosting/slow response times and input lag. How much will the PVA affect that?

You are not going to get any ghosting on either panel. I even think the VA panels haave a lower ms response time which is better.

Has anyone tried playing .VOB files via DLNA? I can play them, but rewind and forward do not work. Firmware 04.02.12. The DLNA server is Mediatomb. Rewind works fine on last year's LG 55LX6500.

Aha. So now I see the color shifting. I sat in front of my TV and realized things were...different. Does anyone have any experience with newegg and HDTV? I am wondering if I can specify the AUSY model number with them, or if I have to go to a B&M store. It's really unfortunate, because I really love this TV otherwise, far better than the Panasonic l42e30 I had which was possibly the most ugly piece of screen I have ever seen. I saw it mentioned earlier on - definitely pass, it had the worst flash-lighting, and the vertical angles were insufferable. This was with 3 different replacements as well. I just can't get a good tv...

Can you elaborate on the partial refund from Amazon? On what basis, and what exactly did you say? Did you email them or speak with them? Do tell...

Is there a way to see how many hours LG TV was in operation? I know some other brands offer this option. However I looked through Service menu and cannot find this information. Is it not available at LG sets?

I think I saw something like this the other night. On the Setup menu, toggle down to the "?" Support at the bottom. Select "Product/Service Info." It shows was version of software and what I thought was possibly the time the set has been running. I've only had mine for a month, and the count was pretty low. Not home now to verify, but I think that is where I came across it.

I spent the afternoon looking for an AUSY model, and have so far come up totally empty. No best-buy in my region has any left, and if they do, they are all AUSD. Anyone have any advice for finding the IPS?

I think I got one of the last ones left. I called about 15 different places (not counting about 10 different Best Buys) half the large online places couldn't be bothered with checking (places like Vanns & Tiger Direct) and the other half didn't have it. I got lucky with the place I found in the middle of NYC that had a box left.

Oh there was one other obscure place that had one left as well but it was a display/floor model.

At this point you just have to hope and wait for some other new IPS panels to be made, maybe they will start showing up again in the next month or two. After that it's off to next years models.

LOL. The whole "IPS vs VA" thing is hilarious. But it is entertaining to read.

Well to be fair I think some are blowing it out of proportion but it can be a big deal for others.

For instance I live in a studio apt where my TV and computer (which I am on most of the time I am home) sit back on the same wall. Meaning 3-4 hours a day I am playing on my PC I am also watching my TV at a wide angle. For me having the ips panel made a very big and noticeable difference.

But for most others who watch TV 99% of the time straight ahead it's certainly nothing to get worked up over.

I´m going to buy the 42LV5500 next month. Do anybody know something about the input lag with a ps3? And another question is about the cable tuner...how is the quality? Or should I better use an extern one?

Sorry my english is not so well :-)

Kind regards

Sven

Welcome to the AVS Forum.
The input menu allows you to ID an HDMI port as "Game" or "PC" (select "Game" in the "AV" mode menu as well.) That seems to eliminate input lag. The XXLV5500 series does not have a cable card slot, so if you want any premium channels, you'll have lease a box from your cableco.

This is correct. In that section, it says "Used Time" with the number of hours listed.

Thank you for the fast answer :-) I have meant the Digital TV TunerVB-C. I want to use a CI+ Modul in the slot so i can use the integrated Tuner.(hopefully)

Finally, after a few months I've been able to get my 47LV5500 dialed in as best as I can. After trying a number of settings from online, i found the ones on lcdtvbuyingguide.com for the 55LV5500 which has the same processor. I basically used all the settings including the CMS settings. I tried the 10 point settings also, but didn't like the result, so eliminated them. The picture looked especially good with my blu-rays & dvds. I decided to try the AVS disc for white, black, & color patterns to check for my particular viewing conditions (not a dark room, but with low lighting) to see if there were any differences.

I came up with slight differences in contrast, brightness, color, and tint. Tint was the furthest off from the recommended. The AVS disc has NTSC color bars with flashing squares that make it really easy to adjust color and tint. The white & black level patterns are good too. So, my final numbers (I'll just list the ones that were different from the site).

Contrast 88
Brightness 53
Color 51
Tint R1
Real Cinema On
Color Gamut BT709 HD

For a final check, I used a friends HD Essentials disc to check everything (has a nice pluge pattern for black levels) and my settings were exactly the same as the AVS disc results. The AVS disc, of course, has a ton of other patterns if you happen to have calibration equipment and I'm sure if I did, results would probably be a bit different, but I'm not sure I could see the difference from what I have now. I also had turned on the THX modes for the set (which look very nice with blu-rays/dvds) to compare and like my settings better. The AVS disc also has a series of videos from HD Nation that actually show you how to use the disc using the main patterns.

When I watch cable, via my HD Tivo, I use a different input mode with the same settings, but kick up the backlight to brighten up the picture - especially helpful when watching 480i programming.

I also checked streaming video from Amazon and tried to change the settings there to match as best I could, but the options are limited. I did watch a free movie via Vudu and it looked very good.

Of course, these settings are for my room environment. If you watch in a totally dark room, your black levels & contrast will be different for sure. And perhaps you color adjustments might be slightly different depending on the color of your walls. But these might be a good starting point for anyone who has recently purchased this model.

One other thing, if you look at other reviews of current LG televisions at the lcdtvbuyingguide site, you will notice that many of the recommended settings are the same as the LV5500, even the 3D sets. I'm guessing this shows that the processing engines in those models are very much the same as our set.

jks seems like many are using numbers close to those. (At least I am) Contrast around 88-90 brightness around 50-54.

Only thing different from the cnet site is I use normal color tone over warm. (I still say warm kills too much of the pure white color of the set) and I bumped the led backlight up to about 50.

Where does everyone else keep there backlight color? I find in the 30's to be too low.

For my blu-ray/dvd's, I use 38 for backlight, but for most cable programming 55.

Hi Folks,

I have to say - there's a pretty stark difference between the IPS and non-IPS panel in the 42LV5500.

I ordered it through Amazon last week and received the "D" version that most folks on the thread have been seeing recently. From straight on, the picture was great - but starting around say 35 degrees off center, the picture started to fade. By the time you got to 45/50 degrees plus, everything looked washed out. Even my wife noticed it, which is saying quite a bit :-) If you're watching the set from straight on you'll be fine, but this was a major disappointment for us based on our room configuration.

I didn't think I'd have much luck, but after going to 3 Best Buys, I got lucky at the 4th with a "Y" IPS panel. I will say, despite my strange request to check the actual label on this TV in their stock room, each Best Buy employee I spoke with was exceedingly helpful and polite. One of the employees I spoke with had heard of this problem in the last week or two from another customer, and another jotted down the model number in case other customers came to inquire.

Now that I've got the IPS panel setup setup, it's clear that its viewing angles are vastly superior - it's like a completely different TV. I'll also mention that for those of you who like the soap opera effect, IPS would be your only choice. Raising the TruMotion setting up to "High" on the "D"/non-IPS panel produced almost no change whatsoever, whereas even the "low" setting on the "Y"/IPS panel produced a stark soap opera like view. I was happy to turn this off :-)

To wrap up - the IPS panel makes this set pretty fantastic; without it, I think I'd only be happy with it for direct/straight-on viewing.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the Dolby audio to work with Vudu streaming on my 47LV5500. Supposedly, the optical output only sends PCM to my receiver, but when I try to play a movie, the dialog is muffeled in the mix and all I can hear clearly is the effects track. If I turn up my TV speakers pretty loud, I can hear the dialogue better, but it's not a very good solution (maybe there isn't one). I came across one of the posts here that someone says they can get Dolby Digital to pass via an AC3 tweak in the EZ Adjust Menu although it may be only from their cable box. Since the streaming apps don't pass through the cable box, only the TV, does the AC3 tweak pass the Vudu audio through? My receiver should be able to process it. If so, what are the specific steps in doing this tweak? I'd like to try it, but be able to switch it back if it doesn't work. Anyone have an idea??

Wow Chambemb grats on finding one. Maybe this givees others hope to keep searching Best Buys. Actually surprised you found one there.

BTW I agree with what you said about the viewing angles (obviously) but I didn't notice a difference (between panels) in regards to tru motion. It was very noticeable even on low on the VA panel IMO...Oh well no biggie.

Also getting back to calibration for a second, using the Picture Wizard to set something like contrast, I was in the range I was supposed to be between 87-91 so am I supposed to be in the middle of those numbers or on the low end (87) or the high end (91) ???

Hand76 - - again, the only way to know for sure is to use some kind of pluge pattern to set contrast and brightness for your particular viewing conditions. The difference between 87 and 91 is pretty small. If you are just eyeballing it using the Picture Wizard, I'd use 88.

I would just use the free AVS 709 DVD I linked to earlier. Watch the HDNation video compilation on the DVD (under the top menu item "HDTV Calibration"). After watching those videos all the way through, use the screens from the DVD that they used to tweak everything you need. Simple.

You need a Harmony Remote, or a compatible RCA Remote. Here's a list of cheap RCA remotes and the proper setup code to get to the EZ Adjust Menu: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post20711976

Here's CRKPOT's instructions on how to do various things in the EZ Adjust menu:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...9#post20540589

Here's specific instructions on how to get AC3 (aka Dolby) passthrough via Optical (which I have confirmed does work). By the way, the tweak is for ALL HDMI inputs, not just a cable box. I can't say as to whether it will work for apps, though, as I haven't tried it:

When you are in the "EZ Adjust" menu on-screen, scroll down to the "AC3 EDID D/L" menu item and press select on the remote. A sub-menu will appear. You want to press select on the "Start" menu item. It will sequentially go through the list of inputs and enable AC3. After it's done (takes seconds), it will say "OK". At that point, TURN OFF THE TV AND TURN IT BACK ON. You'll then have AC3 passthrough to a receiver. No DTS, though...just Dolby.

Edit: AC3/Dolby passthrough DOES work for apps. I don't have a Vudu account, but I just watched a 2-minute "HDX 1080p" preview for a movie, and it was most definitely Dolby 5.1 on my tuner. I had no problem with center channel dialogue.