Samsung D7000 & D8000 Settings/Calibration Thread - Page 106

OK, all.

I've decided that I'm going to maybe let Best Buy calibrate my PN59D8000. My reason for that is because it's free since I'm a premier silver rewards member.

I do, however, have concerns about letting them calibrate my TV, so I want to make sure I ask all of the right questions beforehand.

I've done a ton of reading on this website in threads related to best buy calibrations, and it seems as though the results really depend on who's doing the calibration.

Could you please help me out with providing questions that I should ask to ensure I'm getting a full isf calibration?

I did ask if the calibration is being done by an isf certified specialist, and they told me yes.

What I don't know is:
1) what equipment they're going to use. What should they use?
2) if they're planning to adjust my greyscale, colors, gamma, and everything else.
3) how long they're planning to spend calibrating it. How long should they spend calibrating it while doing a good job? I'm assuming anything less than 2 hours means they didn't do everything.

Thanks in advance for your responses.
Edited by Sweetmeat - 12/23/12 at 9:41pm

What you can be sure of is that they will probably lack adequate knowledge, talent, time, and equipment to do the job properly. They are working on a time limit (usually about 90 minutes according to reports) and the amount of time they are given is less than what a true professional would spend setting up and taking initial measurements. It sounds like they are using entry-level equipment and software with workflows that basically walk them through the process. So, they aren't really getting their hands dirty. They may adjust this setting or that setting without truly understanding how those controls work.

Then again...it's free in your case. So long as they stay out of the service menu, they can't do any real harm.

Yeah, they shouldn't need to go to the service menu, at all.

I would ask them what meter they are using. Also, see if they will give you a report that will show before/after gamma, greyscale and color luminance.

I've given up calibrating by eye after many years..i thought I could get it better like skin tones but its absolutely impossible to get everything right.

My best way is using and comparing tv to ipad1 which is around 7000 k I believe.Just did it and it looks very good.my procedure is in the Samsung e450 thread.If your bored I'd be interested to see what you think,and Could you tell me if I'm doing something Obviously wrong.

Thanks,enjoyed reading this thread and picked up a few tips

I had them calibrate my TV (also a premier silver member). They were in and out in 40 minutes, doing both Cal-Day and Cal-Night settings after I asked them to enable those settings in the Service Menu.

I was posting these on another forum, so see if any of these help:

I believe Cell light should be at 20 for Plasmas and you should adjust contrast/brightness to get the luminance you need for your lighting conditions. So, a cell light of "8" jumps out at me. Also, his brightness settings seem REALLY low. I have the same set and mine is consistently measured in the mid to high 50's. The changes you made were good. Turning off all the noise filters would have been 101 level stuff...surprised he didn't do that.

What meter and software did he use? Did he do a 10 point white balance adjustment? Adjust color space or leave at auto? Do they give you a summary sheet of the meter readings before/after? 40 minutes is real quick. It takes me 30 minutes to warm up my TV with the meter! Then, even though I now know what I am doing, it can take me hours to tweak and adjust.

Oh, and, Merry Christmas, everyone!
Edited by Rob67 - 12/24/12 at 5:51pm

For "Cal-Night," he asked me to look at the cell light settings and what would be best in a pitch black room. I said I liked 11, but he said pitch black rooms generally run a cell light between 6 and 8, so I just said 8.

Honestly, it looks really good. Keep in mind that this is for a pitch-black room.

You'll have to remember that he had HDMI Black Level at Normal, which means everything was incredibly lighter. He lowered the brightness to compensate. Switching HDMI Black Level back to Low means you have to turn it up again.

I don't think he even really looked at it. Because he went into the service menu, he reset everything and kind of forgot to go back to some options. Whatever, I guess. At least I know what I'm doing.

I don't know what his gadgets were called; I didn't bother asking.

No 10-point white balance adjustments. Again, I really want Chad B. to come to California haha. Color space was set to Native.

No summary sheet. I've seen them before, and would have gladly liked one. Unfortunately, I don't think they do that at Geek Squad.

40 minutes seemed incredibly fast, especially since I called in sick for work that day because they reserved a four hour block (and he didn't come until two hours into said block). It seemed kind of rude. He did call about an hour before arriving and asked me to make sure my TV was on though, which I guess is the "warming up" thing you're referring to.

I swear, Geek Squad ISF calibration is only good as a free service, and even then you should hold onto your original settings just in case, plus be prepared to make tweaks afterward.

You too!

The only reason I mention cell light is that I read (in this thread, I believe) that cell light should always be left at max in plasmas and that you should adjust your luminance or brightness using the other controls. Something to do with the way the technology works. I know it affects the white balance settings. I had to re-calibrate mine as I had the cell light originally set to 16 (in a pitch black theater room). Bumped it up to 20 and then brought down luminance with the rest of the calibration.

Very interesting. I might have to consider trying that, but I even try switching to my Cal-Day settings while watching movies, and don't prefer where the whites are peaking, at least on an eye-straining level or what have you. If a professional calibrator says so, then I'm fine with it. Until then, I won't yet know how to calibrate it that way, so I'll leave it as is.

I am also a Best Buy platinum member and I decided to have Best Buy calibrate my TV for free. I figured what did I have to lose? What a mistake that was. He was at my house about 40 minutes. After he left, I noticed that the picture had a pinkish tint to it. On the CBS NFL pre-game show, Dan Marino's face looked like he was either constantly flushing or was extremely angry all the time. I had D-Nice come and calibrate the TV. He told me that the Best Buy tech calibrated the TV with no greens at all. Yes, the green level was zero. I could see it on the chart he gave me after he finished calibarting the TV. That explained the problem. Now the TV looks great.

Moral of the story for me. I wouldn't let Best Buy calibrate my TV again even if it was free.

At least he gave you a chart.

Sadly this is pretty common, they have sufficient equipment I think where they are lacking is training, experience and time constraints.

Just to clarify, I could see it on the chart that D-Nice gave me after he calibrated the TV. D-Nice gave me "before" and "after" charts and I could see zero green level on the one that was previously calibrated by the Best Buy rep.

Man, I'm always astonished at the level of incompetence with these BB calibrations. Forget FREE, they couldn't even pay ME to have them come and adjust my set.

Yes, don't recall the exact explanation, but a cell setting of anything less than 20 apparently only makes picture fluctuations worse on a plasma. This was confirmed by a Samsung insider. There is just one potential downside to leaving cell at 20 - for people who prefer a darker picture or for lower peak white calibrations (such as a pitch black room), the 10 point controls may no longer match up properly, so getting everything perfectly aligned becomes more difficult. Zoyd found a way around this by reducing the sub-contrast value in the SM such that the desired peak white is obtained at a contrast of ~95 - this maintains the alignment.

With respect to the irregularity of the 10 point controls at low peak outputs:

For the D7000 at least, reducing the sub-contrast in the service menu WB, only the CAL Contrast settings show a change. The Movie mode Contrast setting is not affected.

That is not to say however that it is impossible to get a good calibration at low peak outputs. Chad B has posted a terrific slide for determining where the 10 point controls are shifted. I've attached his slide (converted to jpg format) and some results for a 20 ftL peak white.




Grayscale:



Gamma bt1886:



Gamut:



EDIT: Cell light at 20 and Contrast at 64 for the above calibration charts.

Larry
Edited by LarryInRI - 12/26/12 at 4:32pm

.

Hello, Enrique.

No improvements since March, but maybe soon. Cell light 20 issue begs an update. May also change voltages and calibrate ACD/WB. Don't know when, though.
Edited by SeeJeffRun - 12/30/12 at 7:48am

You guys getting "brightness pops"? Mine went away with the firmware fix, but now are back, vengefully. "Cinema Smooth" isn't fixing them, just has them occurring in different spots, which is obviously weird.

This whole thing is weird. Totally killing my buzz.

(Discussion moved from general D7000 thread.)

Thanks again, Larry. I'm going to start over, the peak white when contrast is at 87 is just too much for me. On my non-calibrated set I prefer cell 20, contrast 70 and gamma +1 so I'll use those for this next round. I realize that it's going to be more difficult but I'll try to use the chart to help me with the 10 point adjustments. Also, thanks for your advice regarding the colors. I won't waste too much time on green and cyan then but I may try to get the others more in line, they all seemed to still have some room for adjustment.

I'm kind of glad I only bought the tutorial version of the Calman bundle. For now multi point grayscale and gamut is more than enough. I don't even want to think about having to deal with components beyond those :-)

Willie,

A few tips before starting with Cell = 20 and Contrast = 70:

1. Set everything related to calibration back to the factory default. White balance settings = 25. All 10 point region sets = 0. Custom color space settings = reset values. Gamma = +1 (for about 2.2 on the D7000.) Color = 50 (you'll probably end up at 48 or 49.) Tint = 50/50 (you'll probably end up at 51/49.)

2. Get the absolute best grayscale tracking using only the white balance controls.

3. Smooth out the grayscale using the 10 point controls. Try not to go more than 3 or 4 ticks max from 0.

Attack the gamma value and curve next and finally the gamut. But right now, I think you have enough to do.


Larry

Oh, I definitely have enough to do. Thank you so much for your help!

One thing: on my set color needs to be at 51. I know this isn't usual for the D7000 but both the blue-only mode and a filter confirms it.

I'll attach new screenshots here when I'm done. I expect it'll be around 2015

To my surprise I found the grayscale adjustment easier this time around, with the lower contrast setting (I didn't go all the way down to 70 though). Although the 10 point controls were shifted, I was helped by the advice to make it as perfect as possible with the white balance controls first. I spent more time on that piece and it definitely paid off when I got to the 10 point adjustments. The colors are still a bit off but I'm not very concerned. It's obvious to me that a proper grayscale is much more important for picture quality than super accurate colors when viewing real content. I'm very pleased with the result, the light output is perfect for my viewing conditions, and I'll probably leave it like this for a while.

My tutorial version of Calman doesn't contain workflows for gamma curve and I'm also not able to measure ftL.

Basics:
Cell 20
Contrast 73
Brightness 59
Color 51
Tint 51/49
Gamma +1

Hello , I've talked to Tom Huffman a respected calibrator and he told me that you don't need to adjust your color/tint settings. Just use the CMS .

Yes, I saw that topic being discussed here and I didn't see a definitive conclusion. Seeing how it's dead simple to set them, I'd rather do it though. Thanks!

I am using Chromapure and I use the color decoding module. Set color so that I have the least error in Red luminance. Then I set tint so I have the least error in luminance for Cyan.
Edited by hungro - 1/6/13 at 5:44pm

On the D7000 if the tint control is not used it is just about impossible to get magenta lined up properly.

Larry

Hmmm...still learning from you guys. Will have to go in and do a touch up soon.

Do you also use the color controls along with adjusting the CMS? I have a d6500 and set color using the color decoding module in chromapure. I set Red so that it has the least amount of error in luminance and then set the tint control for Cyan so this also has the lowest error in luminance. Then adjust the colors using the CMS. I know that Tom Huffman mentioned it is not necessary to fiddle with the color/tint control and only use the CMS.
Edited by hungro - 1/6/13 at 6:15pm

I thought something was off with skin tones after my calibration here. Specifically, it looked to me as if they had a hint of green. So I decided to redo it, this time with contrast at 70, but I'm having a few problems. The point where the 10 point shifts, e.g. between 6 and 7, is very hard to get right because I end up with one interval that no control can impact much. A couple of questions for the more seasoned folks here:

• When doing the white balance (2 point), does it matter if I do the gains or the offsets first?
• I'm on my third 64D7000 panel (one developed flashing pixels, the next had pink banding). On all three panels I ended up with the color control at 51 after using the blue only mode. Shouldn't that vary from panel to panel? I'm just curious since 49-50 is the most common setting on the D series.

Edited by willieconway - 1/8/13 at 10:48am

In a perfect world, theory would apply perfectly to hardware. But it is not a perfect world. CMS controls among TVs of different models behave differently. Color decoding behaves differently. The D7000 requires a slight changes to Tint and/or Color to get the best gamut.

An overly saturated gamut (a triangle larger than perfect matched xy ) with the proper lightness values is better than having a perfect match of the xy coordinates and wrong lightness values and lightness errors are more tolerated than hue errors.

Larry

Your charts don't show any exaggerated greens.

It is best to use the high end controls (gains for the Samsungs) before the low end (offsets.) The gains impact much more of the grayscale than the offsets.

Yes, panels and electronics have fairly large manufacturing tolerances so variations should be expected. The Samsungs seem to have a significantly greater variation in sets from the same model series than Panasonics. Since you have a meter, don't second guess it