Panasonic ST30 DIY Calibration and Settings Thread - Page 32

Very interesting. I like the color settings. Maybe -17 for me on the W/B B high. I set the Black Extension back to 0 and same with Tint, but Brightness right now at 64. 80 is same as 100 on Contrast so left at 80. Color still at 47. Mid panel, 2.2 and Graphics. Looking very good right now, especially skin tones and very white whites. This is on HD cable on all channels. I think I'll try this for a while. Thanks Cobra!

I pretty much did the same thing. I am using Jimmy's exact picture settings except tint at 0. I am using Cobra's pro settings with the black extension back to 0. Looks pretty nice.

Not trying to knock you or anything, but I just dialed these in and immediately went back to D-Nice's Pro Settings. Everything looked WAAAY off for me with yours...and really red.

I have been toying with all the new settings that have been surfacing recently. FWIW, I have been really happy with Jimmy's settings for my 50" ST30, but after popping in my Disney WoW disc, I made these changes:

Contrast: +80
Brightness: +68
Color: +51
Tint: 0
Color Temp: Warm 1

Everything else is the same...

I won't be able to try it until later. I will start with the WB changes first. I know I have been up and down the picture settings so much I can almost tell the result before I do it. I had tint where it was because yellow did not look good at "0", although the hue test was normal. Also, it was like a switch was turned on when I followed gremmy's graphics findings, so I'm leary about changing. But I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

I think this is where the size and panel differences come into play but allows us to get in the ballpark. My calibration disc allows a +68 to +72 before it fails the brightness test, clearly showing both black bars. At +71, I can just barely see the first black bar, per instruction, which gives very nice shadow detail on my set. The color saturation test starts to fail on my set at exactly +51. It is still good at +50. I settled in the middle of the range which turned out to be +48. We are certainly within range though. I would be surprised if we all end up with the same settings. I calibrated to the mid, 0 BE and graphics settings. To try the new Cobra recommendation, I would want to break out the disc and calibrate to HDMI off and black extension at "0". I have my doubts but I'll try it.

Great job on the calibration.

Those who think they are getting their sets closer by borrowing settings from DNice or anyone else should take a good look at your before pic. This is why we calibrate with a meter. All of these TVs are DIFFERENT.

As far as contrast goes, the other poster is correct. After about 85 on custom-mid, contrast doesn't do anything further. On my set, however, I get decidedly better color decoding (in particular the brightness of the green primary) if I knock contrast back down to around 76. YMMV.

Yes, you can use the color saturation control as described in the curte palm tutorial. Without a VP, you can't really do all that much, but at least you can tell if your TV is seriously pushing green like mine was. There is a spreadsheet floating around on the internet somewhere that tells you what the luminance values should be for 100% color window patterns given a particular 100% white window. You can use the meter to set the correct luminance for red and then for grins measure what you're getting for blue and green. My TV had an egregious green error -- this is the main reason why I purchased the VP. Little did I know at the time that the higher end gamma would prove to be the bigger visual improvement.

Oh, and knock sharpness down to 0. That is the correct setting on this television.

As Gremmy stated, EVERY set is different and why sharing settings doesn't work well and completely useless for grayscale.

That might be debatable.

Even though I posted the RGB settings, it was mainly to show how far off the DNice settings were on my set... not to insult DNice but just to show you can't necessarily transfer settings from one set to another.

I certainly don't have a problem with anyone using them... it just wasn't my intent... but if it helps anyone that's great. Otherwise, I'm not offended if someone doesn't like them... so don't worry about that.

Since I was a virgin calibrator until last night, I have a ways to go, but being able to see what happens while using HCFR helped me understand a lot more. I'll sit down this weekend and try to tweak the settings now that I have a better idea and a few suggestions. Before I do that, I wan't to try out a couple Blu-ray movies and see how they look.

If anyone has any further suggestions on what I might want to do in order to improve my results even more, please let me know.

Really? I swear I couldn't see hardly any difference at all on the DVE sharpness test patterns as I scrolled the sharpness setting up and down. On previous sets that I have owned, the sharpness created obvious halos, but not in this case. As a result, I'm not really sure the control does anything (on some televisions it's there just for show, sort of like the "close door" buttons on an elevator). So I dialed it back to 0 just to be safe, thinking I might have noticed some MINOR edge enhancement when the control was pushed near its limit. The picture didn't seem to get overly soft at any setting.

What does your calibrator say about that control on this set?

If it's truly a dummy control it doesn't matter where it's set.

BTW, the only reason you'd want to have the sharpness set to anything above 0 is if 0 actually defocused the image, since the goal for a nuetral calibration is generally to eliminate all edge enhancement.

KTrain - I am similar to you on my 50ST30. My color is at 50 right now. I also found that I need to go to neutral or warm1. Anything more and I get red push. On mid panel brightness red push is more problematic. Mid works good for me during the day, but at night the whites are just too white, like nuclear as if my eyes are going to burn out. Granted, I tend to have the room nearly totally dark except for the light coming out of my wood stove or a candle or two.

That being said though, I know the man and know how serious he is about his work and his knowledge not to mention the investment. Obviously he felt comfortable enough to post instructions and recommended settings for a whole line-up, not just one model, of Panasonic PDPs. I imagine this was done to give everybody a fair chance to get the most out of their display. Knowing that Panasonic always seem to have a curve ball or two, It must pass thru D-Nice's head, why the hell am I doing this? Not forgetting there is little reward, a thank you here and there, more likely an open door to criticism. I know what you are saying Cobra and this is not a criticism of your work and I have always felt the panels are different, probably to a small degree. I will try the new settings as soon as I can but my gut tells me to stick with D-Nice. I can't do the settings now because I just came back from the eye doctor---I can't see much of anything---- isn't that fitting? laughs!

Gremmy, I couldn't see any difference in the sharpness test patterns either but I could see a shift in brightness and what looked like a better picture when I got above +20. I noticed a couple of early pro reviews were up to +50, so I said what the hell. The picture just seem to pop more for me after + 20. You're right though, the test shows nothing.

There are different ways to measure and look for excessive sharpening/ringing or excessive softness/blur than the traditional circle patterns on DVE, etc. Using more of a custom created set of varied patterns across different frequencies is more sensitive and it can be seen that zero is just too low. There is no perfect sharpness number though, because increasing it may help one frequency, while descreasing it helps another frequency. It becomes a give/take. So, a given range of 20s to mid 30s seems to be in the right ballpark.

Are you saying that you observed the sharpness control raising the white level? That would be truly odd behavior if true.

I'm interested in learning about these tests, David. How does one go about conducting them?

To be honest, I am not certain. My calibrator created a very elaborate set of these patterns that really showed the entire spectrum of what's going on. Maybe there is some technical information somewhere out there about it.

The statements that I (and I'm sure others) have made about the merit of copying grayscale settings are not about D-Nice in particular and I certainly have no desire to speak to his motives or to impune his integrity.

All I can say is that if you pose this question over in the pro calibrator's forum, I think you'd find that they don't find merit in the copying of settings for grayscale in general. Also, I think you'll find that hobbyists who own meters have consistently measured results which reveal the innacuracies of such an approach.

Of course, I've spoken my piece on this before and have no desire to beat a horse long dead. Again I will say that if you are happy with your results, then I am happy for you and wish you the best with your PQ.

P.S.

On a related note, check out Cobra's calibrated settings and mine (from before I got the VP involved). We used the same brand of meter (both new and calibrated at the factory) on the same exact model television and measured completely different results.

Exactly - this is why I put 50" ST30 in bold letters in my post.


I know. And as said above, I also know that the size of the panel also makes a difference - I posted my settings basically as a suggested starting place for others who have a 50" panel.


My room too is light-controlled, and becomes pitch black when I want it to be. The first two nights I started trying some of the MID panel brightness settings, I too felt like the picture was BRIGHT and my eyes were going to burn out...lol. However, after tweaking it a little with my calibration disc, it looks very accurate and I have grown accustomed to the difference in brightness.

No, no gremmy, it wasn't that sophisticated, strictly subjective. As they say, I couldn't put my finger on it. As I was playing around during the sharpness test, like we said nothing was changing, 0 to +10. I left it at "0" and switched from the calibration disc to a cable HD feed. I went back to the sharpness setting and just started to raising it. Somewhere above +20, I noticed the picture got suddenly better. Of course this could have been caused by anything, including the source. I took it from +40 to +50 and saw no change. I then took it back to "0" and again, it looked better to me at +40. I don't know why, by the test, it shouldn't have. It could be just me and my imagination but I kept it at +40. Faces and other material are very sharp with no blur or focus problems, no lack of detail. My eyes actually see more detail. So, I kept it at +40.

I justed wanted to say thanks to all you guys! I have learned so much from this thread and your debates. It really has opened up a whole new world for me. I have the 55ST30, and it has been a blast learning what all these settings are and what they do!

So...keep up the disagreement! Gremmy, Jimmy, CareyP, David, and anybody I left out...thanks again!

On a side note, my wife will soon hate you all, as I will now have to buy a calibration tool!

InrI

Anyone have 3d calibration settings for the ST30? Am using D-Nice 2-d and look great but want to check if there are special tweaks?

Jimmy, I tried your main settings on my UT50 and the picture is outstanding. Thank you!

I'm glad they work on your set. I am going to try Cobra's new settings and will report what they do on my set.

I am following Cobra's settings, exactly. My first impression is, I can see where it would meet the likes of those that view in a completely dark room. I can't fault the new pro settings. They actually look pretty good and will keep them for awhile. The yellows look a little toward green again though. Adding my -3 tint back in takes me back to a solid yellow again. Overall, my picture is dark again. It kind of looks like a very cloudy day. The colors, black and details look very good. I can't really say the whites are any whiter then they were, certainly not as bright as with my settings. I guess the best way to describe what I'm seeing is it looks like I'm looking thru my 3D glasses. It's tough, it really is a very good picture. I'll live with it awhile and let my eyes and brain adjust. I'm afraid it takes us back to where we started, with a too dark picture. Don't forget, I have a 42ST30.

Well that didn't last long. Cobra, I really like your pro settings. I'm going to use them. Great job!! I went back to my basic settings. The A-Team is now playing on HBO and the PQ between adding back in the +4 BE, 80 contrast and 71 brightness is literally night and day. So much more detail and liveliness. It looks again like my old Pioneer and my current VT25. Going to various material, the PQ is very good across them all. I'm going to keep my settings for sure. I am going to keep your pro settings though.

For those using my settings, try using Cobra's new Pro settings along with my other settings. They make my settings look a lot better on MY SET.

Here are my settings again with the Cobra Pro Settings. They look excellent on MY SET. EDIT Update: Still prefer D-Nice settings.

Not quoting this time... wouldn't have enough room to reply

As I mentioned before, Sharpness was at 50 since that was the default setting, so I turned it down to 0 just to see what I thought. I didn't look at any particular area or color in the picture... just attempted to retain an overall view... and the picture was slightly blurry... very subtle but it was definitely there. Turned it back up to 50, and it was gone. I didn't have time to try other settings, but will later using the DVE test pattern. I suspect I'll end up somewhere in the middle.

I couldn't agree more about the issues of using others settings... it's a crap shoot... but it's easy to change settings and you may get lucky so I'm not saying not to... just realize even if it improves your set, the odds of those setting making your set look as good as the orignal poster are even slimmer. I really wish they did work on the same level because I hate seeing anyone, especially me, spend all that money on a display, and have to go through this.

What convinced me was the thread about Fluctuating Brightness in the Panny 2011 lineup. The Service Menu settings, which are custom set for your display at the factory, are stored inside the A-Board... and those settings include information about colors, etc. Problem is, the SM values are different even between identical displays. Since I had a Panny Service Tech in my area, he came over and "updated" my A-Board using a flash drive which does not overwrite the SM settings. But anyone else had their A-Board "replaced" by a Panny repairman who are not authorized to have the data on the flash drive. So a repairman was supposed to save your SM settings, exchange the A-Board, then restore your settings. Problem is the majority of them didn't do that, telling the customer it wasn't necessary... which was bunk. That thread showed owners how to save and restore the SM settings themselves. The point is, the odds of the SM settings in my TC-P60ST30 matching the SM settings even in another TC-P60ST30 are slim, so using someone else's User settings won't provide the same results.

I never wanted to have my set professionally calibrated due to the cost and the fact that they eventually need recalibrated as the display ages... so the money adds up. Plus... and I'm not even remotely knocking DNice, Chad and any others who have clearly proven themselves... I just don't have much confidence in having someone else do anything I can do myself. I can see having a professional calibration, which I think looks good at the time, but decide otherwise a couple weeks later. Then what? But at this point, doing a calibration with my i1D3 and the updated version of HCFR was the best move I've ever made with my display... just look at my before and after calibration graphs. Not only am I much happier with my display, but it cost less than one professional calibration, and I can recalibrate in the future without any additional cost... even if I buy another display. If you can't afford the i1D3, there are good meters out there for less money. And HCFR is not only free, but it supports lots of meters, and many more updates are planned.

Sorry if I sounded like I'm on a soap box... just trying to help, but I sort of get that way with things I really believe in.

not quoting either,

Thank you again Cobra for sharing your work------and investment with us. I don't think what you and gremmy have done takes away from any of the pro calibrators on here, especially D-Nice. They have their work, which they do very well and we all support and recommend them whenever we get the chance. This is a DYI thread and it's fun to save some money if we can and do-it-ourselves. I'm really seeing a difference with your pro settings. I don't think gremmy ever posted pro settings. If he did I missed them. He stated you both had the same meter. Did you both come close to the same pro settings?

Interesting comments... your settings may help me fine tune some of my settings which are still at their default values.

For example, right off the bat I notice you're using +40 for Sharpness, whereas mine is at the default of +50 which I mentioned before I could probably lower some, but I'll still use the DVE disc for a better comparison.

You comment about changing your Tint to -3 was also interesting. Again, my Tint is at default 0, but at one point I noticed a slight green in someones face... seemed to show up because their skin was very light and the lighting was bright. Maybe -3 there will help so I'll try that also.