Samsung D7000 & D8000 Settings/Calibration Thread - Page 76

I am using Zoyd's settings from first post, picture looks really nice on my brand new PN64D8000, much more natural and comfortable on the eyes, compared to the 10 day old 55" Samsung LED I just returned.

Only couple questions please;

- HDMI level on "Low" setting looked pretty dark, it did give very nice deep blacks, but overall picture got pretty dark. I set to "Normal" and it did lighten up, but then the blacks not as deep. What do you recommend for HDTV watching ?

- How can I get the whites to pop more and be white similar to what my LED D8000 had ? But I don't want the whole picture to lighten up and lose the inky blacks by doing so. Watching Hockey on the Plasma compared to LED, the LED made Hockey games in HD very bright and very white, it looked clean, but to the point of being almost blinding to the eyes, and the ice looked diamond bright white, even with the darker LED settings. Where as Plasma Hockey in HD looked dimmer and not as vibrant, the ice almost looked off white or little dirty, but the white uniforms still looked pretty clean white. Is the Plasma just giving more of true realistic natural color over the LED ? But I would like a little more of a pop from my Whites than I do now with Zoyd's settings if possible ?

- I have a Samsung BluRay player, and it has some setting like "BD" or something ? That automatically adjusts the movie to the best settings paired up with a Samsung TV. Watched the first half hour of Empire Strikes Back BluRay last night, and the blacks were crazy deep awesome, and the white in the snow scenes really popped and looked great, better than they do when watching HDTV. And overall detail was just perfect I LOVED it. Is there a way to see what those settings were while watching the movie, and use those for HDTV ? Or is that not recommended ?

Darth, did you try TiVoHD's settings, they look like they should result in maximum peak white. If you really want some leverage with your picture and are looking for optimal results (without screwing something else up), the best thing you can do is to get yourself a calibration disc. AVSHD is free, and Disney WOW is a popular one for beginners (very easy!).

If you want the brightest possible picture, you can probably just set cell to 20 and then do a simple (takes <1 minute) brightness and contrast calibration. Or even just use cell=20, contrast=95 and set brightnes with a pattern. First you use a black clipping test pattern to set brightness, followed by a white clipping pattern to set contrast. Do not exceed 95 for contrast (96 might be ok, but we like to stay away from color clipping).

As for HDMI level, your question has been answered. I gave you the simplest explanation and suggestions I could, and jcalabria gave you an excellent resource for a more advanced understanding. We can't do the reading for you, so if it's too much maybe you should hire a professional.

Thanks for the advice Avid. I will try TiVo's settings tonight to watch the HAWKS game.

Just beware of the ABL (automatic brightness limiting) effect with hockey. With your peak white maxed out, you may notice it more. Very bright screens can cause more noticable dimming.

Does anyone have good settings for a HTPC?

I renamed the HDMI1 to DVI/PC to get rid of the overscan and most of the color tweak settings disappeared.

Couple of questions, why do you all suggest to set Sharpness to 0 ? Doesn't that make the picture look less detailed ? And I do not see your HDMI level settings ? Sorry to keep asking that question, but I have the option for "low" or "normal", and normal is brighter but makes picture more grainy or too light, where as low makes the picture darker, but with super deep blacks.

10ish works for most people, I'm at 7 - set with setup disc. You want low on HDMI black, and adjust accordingly. If you can feed your display 4:4:4, HDMI black will be set automatically (greyed out) IIRC.

I believe it will be grayed out with any YCbCr source (4:4:4 or 4:2:2). The choice should only be there when the source is outputting RGB, in which case the correct setting depends on whether the source is outputting PC/Full grayscale or TV/Limited grayscale.

If I stand right next to the screen I can end up anywhere from 5-10 on the Sharpness... it is very difficult to discern much difference. Sitting 10 feet away, I have to go well over 20 to see any artifacts (but I still KNOW they are there so back it goes to <10). No real improvement in sharpness anyway.

Anyone concerned about REAL sharpness would do well make sure they are set to Screen Fit rather than 16:9. The 16:9 setting really softens 1080i/p sources due to scaling artifacts.

Thank you LarryInRI for the calibration settings. I plugged your second set into my 51D7000 with very good results. I don't have any calibration tools but I think this will work quite nicely for me. I am sure that I speak for many readers that really appreciate the hard work that you and others on this thread have done.

Try setting up two picture modes with everything possible at the same settings except for sharpness. Set sharpness to 0, 5, or 10 for one of the modes, and set it to 20 for the other one.

Then, at your normal viewing distance, watch a variety of content looking for clarity of the image, especially small print. You will be able to see a difference in legibility. Or look at things at a distance in the background or some other fine details in the image.

Go to Tools and switch between your two picture modes in an A/B fashion.

Reverse which mode gets the sharpness setting of 20 and try all different combinations of sharpness settings comparisons. If you are truly a scientist, have somebody set the sharpness settings for you and vary which picture mode is which. See how many times a sharpness setting of 20 is chosen over a setting of 5.

In my case a sharpness setting of ~20 provides a clear, crisp picture. Below that and the image looks blurred in comparison. Above that and artifacts become apparent- especially above a setting of 30-40.

I've posted this before but only got people holding forth on why the lower settings are "correct". Nobody replied that they actually duplicated or could not duplicate this simple observation.

I sit 78" from, a 64 and can see the difference from 5-10, so viewing distance comes into it (as well as the pattern you're using.) On color space, I understand that, but opening a RGB/YCbCr discussion gives everyone a headache My personal experience over many years is it's always been the darker choice that is correct. In today's world you may be right though - there's so many sources available pays to experiment. But we're just trying to answer a simple question from an inexperienced user, so I went with the odds

I don't doubt that you see something that can be perceived as "sharper" with certain source material, and that your test produces repeatable results. But raising the sharpness is not "unlocking" detail that is in the source... it's distorting the source in such a way that, in some cases, can give the illusion of a sharper image.

The problem is that when the source really does have fine detail in it, the added distortion actually obscures the real detail. Images that have true fine detail can appear to glow and/or shimmer from this distortion. Personally, I find these distortions extremely distracting and quite annoying. If you don't notice these artifacts or they don't bother you, then by all means set your sharpness to whatever level looks good to you, stop thinking about it so much and just enjoy your TV.

That's what I mean by yet another wise one "holding forth" rather than seeing for themselves.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the source didn't matter, from 24p bluray to DirecTV the sharpness setting of 20 always beats 5 or 10.

Always.

I still comes down to personal perception (and vision.) Back in the VCR days, I always had S-VHS decks. It was clear to me that they did a better job at reproducing an analog signal of the day (it was very simple to compare.) But, the majority of people I showed the difference to preferred the standard VHS signal. They usually thought it had better detail - their brains went to the hard outlines of what little "detail" there was, and they thought the more detailed image of an "S" signal was soft.

At a setting of 7, a lot of the DTV HD stuff I see still looks too sharp to me, so obviously your theory doesn't apply to everyone.

I don't know what else to say. I didn't tell you you were wrong or even that I don't see what you see. Some people like the effect. You're one of them. Some don't. I'm one of those. We both can set things where we want to and enjoy our TVs however we like.

I agree, this certainly seems to be the case with a modern bluray player attached to the Samsung. If you're using someone's posted settings for brightness and contrast, then the setting with proper blacks is correct. While your particular set might still require some tweaking (which is why you should use a simple calibration disc), the blacks should be nowhere near washed out.

Darth, if (with the correct HDMI level setting, which for you is probably LOW, and brightness/cont/cell properly adjusted) you feel like you're still crushing shadows, then your only other option is to up the gamma setting and recalibrate from there. At that point you will begin sacrificing some MLL for improved shadow detail.


I get where you're coming from, but why do you insist that everyone absolutely MUST be seeing (and NOT seeing) the same things as you? Every time you have brought this up, this discussion arrives at the same conclusion. If you are looking for converts, I think you best look elsewhere.

It's the same type of discussion that you get between folks who prefer 4:3 sources stretched versus those who prefer pillarboxed. There is no denying that stretching is a distortion of the source... yet some folks will focus on the black bars while others will focus on the the distortion. There's no right or wrong... just preference... and you almost never see anyone change their viewpoint either way. I believe the one who forked over the money for the TV is always right and gets to decide how its used.

Yep, personal preference - once I have everything to my liking, I try to keep with the set it and forget it mentality. Of course, preserving the original aspect ratio is critical in maintaining good sharpness. Your comment WRT the use of Screen Fit (1:1 pixel mapping) is important, the overscan in 16:9 mode seriously kills detail...

Just to add to the conversation, a few days ago I decided to try sending RGB to the display (64D7000.) With HDMI Black on low and brightness readjusted to seemingly the same relative point by disc pattern, my subjective sense is a bit of crushing. Nice on some programming, annoying on others.

The only way I've been able to get a subjectively pleasing image is to reset gamma to "+1" from "0" and redo brightness accordingly.

I haven't gotten anal enough to compare directly RGB to 4:4:4 yet though, so could be my imagination. Setting brightness is kind of tedious if you use the "dither point" as one of our variables, it went up I think 5 increments on RGB, and I got fooled once by using some part of a screen pattern instead of black bars, so lesson learned there.

Yeah, going through the Spears & Munsil routine to determine optimal color space definitely seems to be a lot of work with potentially little gain. The chroma patterns look fine with 4:4:4 from my Oppo, although I'm still curious...

The only thing I would be willing to confess to "insisting" on is that you do the science.

Perhaps others who might be reading this thread in order to get the most pleasing picture will bother to do the comparison and decide for themselves what degree of fuzziness or clarity they prefer.

I love science, do it at least 5 days a week!

I understand your point, but object to your declaring the result of "science" being a pleasing | preference. To me, people who rigidly stick to some setting because that's their interpretation of a test pattern (the real world has variables, patterns don't) are just as bad as people who set by eye and have obviously wrong setups that look good to them (because they don't understand what "good" is.)

A proper setting of sharpness is usually the one that reduces or elimiminates all of the edge enhancement , zero could be the right setting but it could also be too low making things blurry 20 or higher does add edges to things check with a sharpness pattern you will still see edge enhancement halo's. Lower it to the point that the halo's disappear. There is further discussion but the thread was closed about setting the proper level or sharpness and how that differs with each TV. I forget what it is called, some pro calibrators have their oppinions on it too, bottom line, setting sharpness where the picture has edge enhancement is not the correct setting. But more of a personal preference, i don't want to get into it , please check out the thread. Guys can you point the way...

Larry

This is not meant to offend anyone just my 2cents.
Years ago I would have laughed at anyone telling me to reduce the sharpness of my tv to 0 or even anywhere under 50 for that matter. That was back on smaller screens where you lose detail anyway even before introducing artefacts.

Then when I moved upto 42" and then 58" and then 59", I tried what I had been told about reducing the sharpness to 0 or close to it, especially on hd content.
At first it was as I thought, the picture looked soft and blurry.
But after giving my eyes the time it needed to get used to the picture, I never looked back. Images in hd are sharp and clear of any artefacts and the motion stays as smooth as it can. That was a few years ago now, turning sharpness above 20 now looks awful to me.
Even on SD content I keep it at zero.

Same goes for warm 2 as the colour tone for samsung tv's. Most people when they first switch to it think everythings a dirty yellow but give it a while and you adjust to this being the basis for the closest to reference colour settings.

Bottom line is let your eyes adjust to the new settings

I think calibrating a display with a meter always gives you just a good base setting where you can adujst everything to your own preference
I mean not every human must see colors the same, at same intensity... there might just be that much more red cone cells in your eyes that a calibrated warm 2 setting might just look too red. Your eyes very likely see colors different than a calibrating device.

Like it or not everything you watch is graded to a tee using perfectly calibrated 30,000$+ monitors (usually LCDs like the sony trimaster or ecinema) and is meant to look a certain way as intended by the dp and director. I work with these people. There is simply no substitute for proper calibration by a professional.

Larry's horse is broken, and my brain hurts.

Hey guys will have the pn59d8000 calibrated by Gregg Loewen
President, Lion Audio Video Consultants Inc.
Lead THX Video Standards Instructor
From march 5-10 will be posting after his done