Official LG XXPZ950 Owners Thread - Page 10

The tech came out, and determined that the z-sustain board died. He had every replacement board with him -- except the z-sustain, which, coincidentally, is on back order. Sooo... returning the TV for a replacement, and get to start the break-in period over. What joy!

Good one!

Ya, not too sure what's up with LG Canada, I was going to post the same observation as they have had it as discontinued since its release. Availability was non-existent here in TO and after waiting for weeks (months) I opted for the 50PX950 which was still available, which ironically is still listed as current on the Canadian site, mind you there are no 3D glasses for it anywhere in Canada.
Just checked on availability for the PZ950 and looks like Canada Computers is now stocking the 50” as well as Visions.ca which has the 50”& 60”but that’s all.
Love my PX but LG Canada has me me scratching my head.

Well, the TV is packed and being picked up tomorrow. Done deal, it was the end of my 30 days. Guess I'll keep an eye on the next batch of Samsungs and Panasonics.

Hope waiting works out for anyone else in the US with this problem. What a dumb experience.

The answer to your question is, yes, the panasonic GT30 has very noticeably deeper blacks, and, no,one, consumer grade hdtv,has it all, just yet, but, some, come closer than others.

My PZ950,
displayed an unnatural amount of judder with 1080/24p bluray content, a very good bluray to see this effect, on the PZ950, is, I ROBOT, on any bright scenes with a lot of white, when the camera is panning! It's not a pretty sight.
The poor black level performance,excessive judder,the dithering issue, and last but, definitely not least, high image retention (IR) All combined,to drive me crazy!!






The LG has a beautifully thin sleek
monolithic one sheet of glass design, that I loved, and a much better than average menu system with lot's of adjustment options, for fine tuning the picture and sound,and a very nice internet suite with wifi,and built-in web browser,and the cooler than cool,slick,magic wand remote, now that, I miss, along with, the very cool, twinkling, blue led lights!!




Unfortunately,in the end I could not live with the picture quality deficiencies, and, I really gave the 60PZ950 a fair chance, I, went thru, 3 of them, and had the 3rd one professionally calibrated, all to no avail. I am now, the very proud owner of a PANASONIC 65GT30. To read more about my opinion and experience with my 65GT30, check out, the Official GT30 series discussion thread, Just a hint, I LOVE,LOVE,LOVE IT !!!! Black's are deep and inky,image retention and judder are both absent,(R.I.P) and dithering noise is extremely minimal to nonexistent !!!!

I have a PZ950 and have a question that I don't know if applies to plasmas in general but do/can the black levels improve as the screen settles in over several hundred hours?
I was happy with the black levels out of the box but now that I've gotten 650+ hrs on the set, they seem to have actually deepened. I beg to differ when people comment on "significantly" better blacks on other sets because even my 12 yr old videophile in training son asked the other night "How much blacker can you get?" while watching a movie, I agree.
I also want to comment that after this many hours, IR is prettty much a thing of the past. I watched a 2hr letterboxed movie last weekend straight thru, then went to another HD channel and found the slight shadowing faded in less than a minute. Last night, I played a game over 4 hrs with a stationary image onscreen and, again, no noticeable IR. Being a gamer concerned about burn-in was the reason I stayed away from plasmas for so long but now I've definately learned better.
The 60PZ950 has exceeded my expectations on every level and I could not possibly be happier with it. I know 24p is an issue to some but I don't do Blue Rays as I bypassed that genre in favor of digital media, having 4TB (so far) piggybacked on multiple DirecTV HD DVRs linked in a network.
The 950 does seem to be phasing into another series but the change seems to be only that screen sizes will gain a couple of inches to 52 and 62 inches. If the rest of the set remains the same, I think they will continue to be one of the best values on the market.

Now that the 24hz issues have been cleared up in Europe I am only left with one more issue of note:

3D playback

Is anybody else having this AWFUL crosstalk issue in High Contrast or Dark colours / scenes?

To me this isnt a minor annoyance where there is the odd hint of ghosting here and there, I can only describe it as a major picture flaw. Shadow detail or shading in the backgrounds doesnt seem to hold together in a solid mass, and if lots of objects crowd a scene they all lack focus.

This is my second PZ950 so Im pretty certain its not a faulty TV as they both exhibited the same issue under the same conditions.

But to be honest I struggle to see how this issue would get past the testing phaze.

Some scenes in films are simply unwatachable.

Most of Tron Legacy

The Night time, fire-lit scenes in 'How To Train Your Dragon'

Darker Scenes in Shrek 4

Im trying to figure out if this TV is just a lame duck for 3D or whether switching out my player is the solution.

Iv tried watching Blu-rays on the PS3 and the Sony BDP-S570......both equally bad, however i was HOPING that there may just be an issue with how the Sony 3D players interface with the TV.

Long shot I know, but would be nice to cross that possibility off the list :-(

How do you like the pwm-noise near black?

There is none.

I know you have a predetermined opinion of LG based on your past posts but am curious how much time you have spent with the PZ950? Checking just now, I have 684 hrs on my set and I have tried my best to scrutinize the picture under every condition. This is my first plasma EVER, and I fully expected to find faults more apparent having been conditioned to what I considered top notch TVs in my last 3 Sony XBRs. I have gamed well over 100 hrs on it and the IR I feared would occur is absolutely not there. I did make the effort for the first 150 hrs or so to avoid static images of any sort, game or otherwise, but I no longer worry about it in the least. I'm not out here saying this is the absolute best set you can buy at any cost but, overall, I feel it is by far the best value in its class. It's great for gaming, it's great for movies, and it's great for overall viewing of any HD source. I'm sure Panasonic and Samsung (sorry I don't use "Panny" or "Sammy" but that sounds like the newest characters on Sesame Street instead of corporate names) make fine TVs but my experience with LG has been nothing but good.

Do you have the Blu-ray of "Jonah Hex". On my PK350 it looks horrible, so it would be interesting, what your impressions are with your PZ950 in that particular movie with it very dark shades of gry 90% of the running time.

How close do you need to be to see this, I have the PX950 not the PZ but the blacks appear to be quite uniform, also depending on the video some produce excellent dark scenes others are of a dark grey, which leads to believe it's the video (DVD, Blu-ray) and not the display otherwise all videos would produce the same results.
I'm more of an audiophile as apposed to videophile but there are parallel observations when it comes to digital processing, not all CDs are equal in their audio quality some sounding more grainy and digital, lacking bass, so so midrange and harsh treble, while others are excellent, prodigious bass, excellent midrange, staging and depth and treble, analogue in nature, I'll assume it's the same for the digital transfer and production of Blu-rays and DVD (broadcast is another can of worms).
Also the video processing in the PK350 may not be of the same caliber as the PX/PZ950s or the player itself may have inferior processing.
Not to sound elitist but all three; Panasonic, LG and Samsung are all manufacturers of low-end consumer electronics so maybe my expectations are of lesser degree than those in the know.
This is all just food for thought but coming from a photography back-round I find the overall picture quality of the LGs very good to excellent.

Just to demonstrate a case in point, Pioneer may not be considered high-end in the Audio world but still managed to produce some excellent audio equipment, ditto plasma displays, the same cannot be said for the other three manufactures.

I'm sitting 1.79 metres away.

And I am speaking about the very ugly PWM noise near black of the LG plasmas which do not even reach to the edges of the picture.

It depends on the settings of your tv. When calibrated, the PWM noise is very minor, but apparent when you are a foot away from the tv. From normal viewing distance, it is not noticeable. When not calibrated, the PWM noise is very apparent when contrast and brightness are turned up.

I'm more interested in testing out how to lower black levels via the potis inside the tv. Do you think your method to do this would work on the PZ950?

I'll take a closer look as I'm normally 12ft (4M) away, but from working in digital imaging that normally happens with images shot in low light and shadow areas, therefore dark scenes, so it could be in the transfer stage when the film is converted to digital, some displays may just do a better job at hiding it, the LG is just showing it for what it is.
Do you see it in every film or just some?

What size panel do you have? 1.79m, besides being overly precise (do you like strap your head in a jig to watch tv?) is the viewing distance of a 46inch display per THX standards. I have a 60" with a viewing distance of 94 5/8" (jk, it's around 8-8 1/2') and the uniformity of blacks, as well as all other colors is VERY stable right up to the edge of the screen. For fun, I hooked one of my computers up to the unit today and am using my PZ while I type this right now, the black bands at the top and bottom of the forum look absolutely LIKE INK and perfectly stable from side to side, top to bottom. Basing your opinion on last years lesser model PK350 and making blanket statements to assume they apply to 2011 flagship models seems uninformed and nonproductive to this forum. The flatpanelshd review of the PZ950 did make comment about the lesser performance of the black levels but also praised the unit with their uniformity,colors, and lack of motion blur. I HATE team sports but enjoy Rally and Indy racing and have never seen them look better.
I don't know if your question following my former post about owning the BR of "Jonah Hex" was aimed at me but I did have it recorded on one of my HD DVRs and it looked great. I don't do BRs as I stated in my previous post because I can record it in 1080p for about a buck and a half given the current prices of hard drives and don't waste 25-30 bucks on a movie that gets watched twice then forgotten.
If you're PO'd because your set doesn't perform to your tight specifications, then pony up a few bucks more next time and get one that does.

No, unfortunately it is not the fault of the transfers. Believe me, I am able to distingush problems of a transfer from faults of my TV.

And it is of course calibrated. The ugly PWM-noise near black is a given with LG. The size of each individual pwm-noise-flake cannot be changed through calibration. On top of that the driving scheme is very different from the scheme, Panasonic uses.

46" is the minum size for 1.79 metres to see all Fulll HD details. There is nothing wrong with getting closer to the screen unless the screen have faults. It would be a joke, if one couldn't use 1080p to watch his movies on a really big screen that fills his viewing sight more than fully out.

As you can see, the so called flagship PZ950S has the same weak near black performance as all the sets from last year - doesn't matter, how much money you're willing to spend for plasma as long as it is from LG.






You can also see very clear, that the bars get shorter in length the darker the shade of gry to display is!

This is a bug and LG did nothing about it!

Don't know what "minum" is but is it anything like the English word "minimum?". There is definately something wrong with getting too close to a display if you approach the point where "screen door effect" becomes apparent. I'm lost on most of your attempts at grammar and it's hard to decipher both meaning in content while, at the same time, being distracted by both lack of and excessive use of commas (although not as bad as luckyman777go, that was just TOO funny) Do you own a PZ of any series, and how many hours do you have on it? Seems to me you post on a lot on different forums but WHAT do you own, a PZ or Sony HX929?

Ok, I just checked my PX950 with a gray scale bar on DVE (Digital Video Essentials) and I can see what you are referring to. But other than that the picture from a reasonable viewing distance is excellent and the issue is non-existent with normal viewing of movies so I'm not too sure what your point is.
Keep in mind these are consumer products and for LG or any other manufacturer to make it perfect at the price point these units are targeted for IMO is beyond expectations and not going to happen.
I needed a set to watch films and a bit of TV and to my eyes and many others we chose LG over Panasonics and Samsung and not because they are more affordable but because they produced the best overall color and natural picture. Maybe in comparison they do not produce the best black in dark scenes, but black overall is pretty darn black.
It's fun to scrutinize our new toys but lets not get too anal and spoil the fun.

I guess we could ask LG to overlap the bezel another 1/4" and the problem is solved,

Well said. If I had unlimited funds, I'd spend 8 grand on a 60" KURO and have amazing blacks. Instead, I spent 2,200 bucks (2 prs of glasses & delivery included) and got a 60" set that has merely good, but very even, black levels along with more natural colors than any LCD set I've ever owned or seen.

P.S. I cracked UP when I saw your screen overlap solution! Maybe I'll slit some electricians tape in half to increase my borders. Then, I'll have a 59" with perfect edge detail!

Now you know why the new Samsungs are 59" and not 60", the proposed 52"s are 51" , Panasonic VTs 55"? & 65"? a

LG plasmas black levels are very dark greyblack, charcoal, at best,the mll is not up to the best hdtvs available,plasma or lcd/leds, compare a panny or sammy hdtv with a dvd or blu-ray playing a movie with large areas of very black scenes,such as the alien movies and the matrix or any like them, and compare an lg plasma like your pz950 with the other two, or. even a top line sammy, sony or lg lcd/led hdtv, then, tell me,that lg plasmas produce deep,inky, true jet blacks !

And image retention is the highest amongst all plasma manufacturers.
There is a difference between IR, that is temporary, and burn in which can be permanent !!


In that regard,
lgs are pretty equal to other
plasma makers hdtvs when it comes to burn in, the risk is low. And I agree for the most part lg plasmas have very good pictures overall,and are beautifuly designed, especially the pz750 and 950 and I love the features and menu system.
But once again black isn't true deep inky, jet black, read reviews,
and compare with your own eyes in a store, like I did that is why I now own a panny 65GT30 which has true inky jet blacks, I OWNED THE PZ950 FOR 45 DAYS and clocked about 250+ hours on it and the image retention and dark grey,cloudy looking black level,drove me absolutely crazy,read my earlier post !!!


And another thing,
SAMSUNG, PANASONIC, and LG HDTVs are not low end electronics.

In fact when it comes to electronics manufacturers of HDTVs, all three are considered to be amongst the very best in the field,at the top of there game, they are by no means low end electronics manufacturers,
That would be a manufacturer like FUNAI, they are definitely very low end.





And on the other hand, PANASONIC, SAMSUNG,and LG are not considered,
esoteric, high end, audio/videophile
electronic companies either, that title,is owned by manufacturers like, B & O.


And yes SAMSUNG,PANASONIC,
and LG produce lower end, more affordable products in there line-ups,
with LG, being known for there more affordable, value conscience,but still, high quality products, like the top of the line PZ950 plasma HDTV, that sells for far less than a top of the line, PANASONIC or SAMSUNG !!!!

First of all, I'm glad you're happy with your GT30. How much more did you have to pay for 5 more inches of screen real estate vs the 60PZ950? People like different things so refer to post 192 on here where someone was happier with their PZ than their GT30 ! I personally would have loved to have gone to 65" in the LW6500 but it would have meant reframing/rewiring a wall and I didn't feel like going to that much trouble. Once I get my basement remodeled I may go massive into the 80 inch range but for now, a 60 fits and works fine!
I'm at 709 hrs on my PZ and have not been able to get IR of any significance for several hundred hours now, no matter what I do, gaming, letterbox movies, NOTHING!
The best tv I have ever owned in terms of black levels and PQ was a 40" Sony XBR crt, fully 1080p capable and awesome! I'll probably never get rid of it even though it weighs over 300 lbs just so I can retro game on it on occasion. I mention this because it's a great reference and what I have spent many THOUSANDS of hours viewing. My regular viewing source is DirecTV HD and I have to commend it fully on providing an awesome HD signal! I watch a LOT of movies off of HBOHD channels and they supply a great opportunity to scrutinize black levels and, for the price, I think the PZ is a VERY competent performer. I'm almost tiring of all the black level debate because I live in a world of color and 95% of movies and real world viewing place more importance on color reproduction and picture smoothness instead of absolute black levels. The PZ is a pleasure to view and, again, I'm totally happy with it. NUFF SAID!!!!

I, have owned SONY XBRs since, 1985, beginning with, the (CRT) 25XBR,the first SONY XBR available, on planet earth,along with it's 20" sibling , first introduced during the thanksgiving/ christmas holiday season of, 1984, they were all excellent, on every level, and those trinitron XBRs, along, with, the many, that followed through the years, a few I owned, and a few that I did not,
they are, what I based my reference standards on, today,when making a decision as to what hdtv I wanted to include in my new home theater,those SONY's, were the best consumer grade high resolution standard definition,monitor/receivers available on planet earth,

and,
there equivalents were and still are, only found in film and broadcast studios, so naturaly, I'm going to choose from amongst, there high definition equivalents, in 2011, and that does not include, LGs, INFINIA PLASMAS, don't get me wrong, for the most part, I really like LG products.
I, love my 3, LG cell phones, two, are very smart, one not so much, and my LG appliances, are killer, including, a very cool, high tech, stainless steel microwave oven!! ENJOY YOUR LG, plasma, hdtv, and, don't sweat the small stuff !!! Its all good, as long as, in the end, we are, all happy,with our, individual choices!!!!

Unfortunately this would not help.

All objects that include these grays from 1-4 % are cut on the sides and on the top!

So, in cinemascope movies the picture right under the upper bar is very very uneven. Sometimes it seems, like brighter objects are above the rest of the picture and the rest of them is hiding behind a wall of pwm-noisefog.

Low price is not an argument, cause all LG plasmas have this problem, even the PZ950 and that thing is more expensive than a GT30 over here in germany, that doesn't has these faults.

First off, why don't you answer the question as to what you OWN? This is a PZ950 OWNERS forum and you ARE NOT it seems! Here in the US, the GT30 is a couple hundred bucks MORE than the PZ950 for the same screen size and suffers from a HORRIBLE looking thick, shiny black plastic frame. I'll admit the VT30 is a nice looking set but it is around 700-800 dollars more than the PZ950 for comparable screen size.

Please find a forum that fits your model, whatever that may be, as you're just not convincing in your arguments that we, who actually OWN and enjoy the PZ, should be dissatisfied with it.

I have an European version of 50PZ950S and I must say that the PQ is excellent.
Only black levels aren't impressive, but quite good for me. I owned Panasonic VT30 for a month and exchanged it for LG PZ950, because of phosphor trailing (awful red and green trails), green noise in dark areas of picture, FB and noisy fans, but Panasonic had fantastic black levels.
IMO PZ is better set overall with more natural colour reproduction.

These are always interesting discussions and even those who are not happy with the black levels still confide that the overall picture from the LG is very good to excellent so the overall consensus would way say that the LG is an admirable all rounder, myself included.
Mind you, we do not have the green tinge, floating blacks, phosphor trailing, peeling screen filters, buzzing, fan noise etc, etc.. so we do not get much mention in the forums, there have been a few with problems but that's par for the course for items mass produced on an assembly line.
Which leads me to my next question, I really loved the picture quality of the PK/PX950s every time I compared them to the Panasaonics and Samsungs and opted to wait for for the PZs to arrive which they never did until recently, but the only review of the PZ950 (http://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.p...&id=1305795700) mentioned blacks took a major step back from the PK/PX 950s so instead of waiting I jumped on the remaining stock of the PX.
I'm impressed with the blacks on my PX and they are a huge improvement over my 2008 LG PG25 so I'd say I'm pretty happy with this set so far.
There we're a few who had problems with DSE on their PXs and LG swapped them out for the PZ and they seem to feel the PZs are a step up, anyone else care to jump in with their observations, excluding 3D, gaming and on line services ......

Hi Turrican

I can respect your observations and technical scrutinizing but watching movies or anything else these technical flaws are not obvious, I even moved up to about 3-4 feet to see if they are obvious from that distance, they are not and any closer and it would be silly.
Even my 2008 PG25 never showed these so called flaws "hiding behind a wall of pwm-noisefog", most cannot even tell the difference between 720 and 1080 from a normally viewing distance of 8-12 ft. The picture quality of my PX950 even from 2 feet away is super smooth and I would believe the PZ is the same, so again I ask the same question, "I’m not too sure what your point is." if the picture is excellent from normally viewing distances.
Even the best digital and analogue photographs have flaws if you get the magnifying glass out.

The GT30s frame (bezel) is polished high gloss black metal,not plastic, in japan they call this finish urushi.

And the frame (bezel) is thin,
not samsung lcd/led D8000 thin, but, definitely not thick (wide),have you actually seen a GT30 or a VT30 for that matter?

Both THE GT and VT are quite, slim,and slick,
sophisticated,beautiful,elegantly designed HDTVs, as is the LG PZ950.


THE VT30s one sheet of glass
designs black border,is thicker (wider) than the GT30s high gloss black metal frame (bezel).