Official Pioneer Kuro Reddish Tint Problem Thread - Page 9

After watching Pirates of the Caribbean in a totally dark room tonight, I can tell the screen is not as black as before. In the really dark scenes, the black bars appear to look more like the panel's A/R coating (tv off) when room light is reflecting off of it, than the black bezel itself, if that makes sense. Not red, but grayish black. Notice it too when I put it it on an unused input in a dark room. With the success everyone is having, and all the great instructions, will likely give it a go in a few days. Luckily I am comfortable with HyperTerminal and the command structure via RS232, and will practice using the remote going through the menu tree, before I attempt to make changes. Just have to find my cable.

Yes this sounds about right. The AR coating has a kind of purple tint to it when any ambient reflects of the screen. If all the lights are off, the Kuros are perfectly capable of producing pure blacks. If you see the red tint on the screen (especially on a blank input) then the adjustments need to be done.

Also if you see grey, ensure your picture settings are correct. I would recommend Brightness 0 or +1 and Contrast 22. If the screen or movie bars are still grey then I would recommend the adjustments.

It is good to know that the quality of these sets extends down into the service ability too. I remember being very disappointed when I first saw the red tint and couldn't believe that such a good quality TV could go wrong after only 2 and a half years of use and with no way to fix it.

I think Pioneer thought of everything when designing these Kuros which included being able to service them further down the line.

Yea, my brightness is set at -1 and contrast at 40 in movie mode on my 5020. I had my 5020 profesionally calibrated 2 years ago and those were the revised settings and it was black. So hopefully doing the reset will make it inky black again just like after it was calibrated. I am using a usb serial adaptor, and will need to figure out which of the 7 usb ports on my pc is the correct comm port. That may take longer than the actual reset.

wxman,

The reset will also fix your grayish black.

I totally agree that Pioneer engineered the Kuro to be serviceable in the event the black level drifted without a detrimental effect on picture quality.

I would suggest you try accessing the service menu and then write down all the crucial settings before attempting the reset.

There are so many adjustments that can be made and we are only scratching the surface as to what can be done on the Kuro service settings.

Perhaps someone can be game enough to write a step by step procedure based on a work flow structure. Once this is made, I guess we can all be confident that the procedure is correct and reversible in the event that perhaps one screws up the adjustment(s).

I know there is a workflow as indicated in the service manual... however, it seems rather too complicated!

I will hook a colourimeter and just to see the changes in the readings when adjusting VOL SUS and VOL RST P. I reckon, these will be or should be measured on 0IRE to 20IRE. I'll also check the effects it has on the 80IRE to 100IRE as well just coz I'm curious!

Please feel free to suggest what I should try. I'm open to suggestions.

Alright guys I think I may be able to put this all to rest. I will call my guy at Pioneer to confirm later on today. I think the sparkle adjustment workflow I posted last night is accurate but only after you replace the Y board and do a reset. Also, I think those adjustments can be applied if your panel produces sparkles naturally over time. But what we're doing here is totally different. We are all resetting the pulse counter without replacing the Y board. The red tint goes away because the RST P gets reset to its almost lowest setting regardless of what the service menu value is(018, 023, etc...). If you raise the RST P your sparkles will go away and you will get a low dark grey glow which is the perfect setting. If you raise it too high your red tint will come back. The RST P is designed to reset the cells after they pulse. I think...but I will confirm today that over time the RST P voltage raises on its own to compensate for panel aging to still reset the cells properly. Like Stroud posted earlier...after you rest your panel leave all your voltages at factory default and only make adjustments to your RST P until your sparkles are no longer visible. Just for reference all my voltages are at factory settings and my RST P is at 068. I re-calibrated again last night and had flawless results with a MLL of Y:0...will update you guys later on this evening to confirm what i'm posting.

Hello ,

Well my english is not perfect so can you confirm if I understand correctly ?

I have to reset the pulse meter and the hours meter, then if it's OK perfect, if not I have to raise the VOL RST P until the noise go away ?

Will that works with my LX5090H ?

Thank you !

Even before reseting Pulse and Hours meters, did you guys try to simply lower the VOL RST P ?
I suspect you may not have enough headroom to lower RST P as much as needed but it's worth a try IMHO.

Hey phannon,

Let us know what your contact at pioneer says. Thanks.

Can anyone else find out if this can be corrected through a software update?

Thanks in advance for any response.

This is a good point and worth a try.

I am also wondering if resetting the hours affects the red tint at all or is it just the pulse meter part? After all the procedure from the service manual is for replacing the panel so it would make sense to reset the hours.

That's exactly the procedure I did. I also have the LX5090 (not H though).

Indeed if I remember well, according to SM, only the Pulse meter reset is mandatory when changing panel.

If I had to toy with my (virtual) Kuro, I would do this :
- Lowering the VOL RST P without reseting anything ;
- If it's not enough, I would reset the pulse meter only and tweak (increasing) VOL RST P and maybe but not much VOL SUS (since Hours meter has not been reseted, maybe the actual VOL SUS value is already higher)
- It it's still ineffective, I would reset the hours meter too and tweak VOL RST P. If I still got noise in blacks bars, I would also toy a with VSUS while remaining within the max value you recommended (143 aka 215V).

Good luck.

Thank you !

Do you have the usb serial drivers on your computer? If not here is a link. Scroll down to Prolific drivers and select
"USB to Serial Adapter Driver New 2009 drivers for XP/Vista and 64-bit OS"
http://usbserialdrivers.com/

And instructions

http://www.gilsson.com/um_pl2303_v11.pdf

If I leave my 141fd in standby with the red light on in the left corner of the panel but rarely watch the set over a span of say 4 years will the set still undergo compensation changes for age or is it strictly based on actual usage (picture being displayed)? I would like to think that at the rate I watch my kuro that it will last me a lifetime before undergoing any of the changes that you all are experiencing? Just hope I haven't screwed up by leaving it in standby instead of turning it totally off in between uses.

Would really love to hear D-Nice weigh in on this.

This could also be a baud rate / bits per second mismatch? You can check what baud rate your TV is set to using the following procedure.

Pioneer Displays Default to: 9600 Baud, 8 Data Bits, NO Parity and 1 Stop Bits, NO Flow Control.

If you need to verify/change you Display's Serial Port Settings:

1. First make sure your TV is in Stand-By mode. .
2. Continuously hold down the "Home Menu" key and press the "Power" key within 3 seconds (release "Home Menu" after pressing "Power" key). After the Pioneer power's on you should see a menu with COM settings.
3. Use your "Left" and "Right" arrows to scroll through and locate 9600-232C or the wanted baud rate .
4. Once selected press the "Power" key to power off the set or the Home Menu Key to exit.

NOTE: Suggested Port Speed: 9600 baud (default).

Did you set VOL SUS back to 128?

Not sure whether the TECH told you to set VOL SUS to 143. IS this value the factory default?

I'm sure having the TV in stand by is counted as a power off event.

I hope you are right because I could see myself being buried with this monitor-

I will see if I can check this later by watching the PON counter.

I have the 101 and you can change the baud rate on the main menu. It is already set to 9600 together with my computer. Its just not comunicating. Hmmmm..

Does "PON" or "POF" work?

On windows, using device manager, click on Ports (COM & LPT) Select the serial device, right click on it and select properties and then Port settings, and make sure they match up with what you used with Hyper Terminal. Also click on Advanced and make sure the Com Port number is COM1.

Yes, I set my SUS VOL back to 128 and all the rest of my voltages are back at factory default except for my VOL RST P. I moved that voltage from 018 to 068 which is high enough not to cause sparkles but low enough to read a MLL of 0.

No new news yet...waiting on an response to an e-mail I sent.

Just thought I'd share some info that I found while trying the procedure last night on my Australian 600M.

I wasn't able to get HyperTerminal working. All COM port and other related settings were confirmed correct. I use a laptop with proper serial port(no adapters) and it works fine with Chromapure and ControlCAL which use the same port and settings. To get around this I downloaded KuroControl and used the command entry section at the bottom of the window to enter the RS232 commands, which worked fine.

The second problem was getting into the service menu. The commands I entered to get the service menu up were [PON --> FAY --> FACS01] at this point I was able to use the normal remote to navigate the menus.

Hope this helps anyone that may be experiencing problems.

Can I ask what verision of Windows you were using? XP, Vista, Windows 7? Just trying to figure out which is working best.

Speaking about the monitors only:
There's a label on the main chassis with the initial values for VOF, VRP and the rest of the "indication value" settings but you can read them out with the QAJ command. My values are close to the example in the manual.
I'd expect the panel age to be represented by the sustain pulse counter since that value doesn't reset if you change the region code (via ControlCal or KuroControl).
If you happen to look at your panel in a completely dark room and notice that it's glowing don't fiddle the RST voltage trying to fix this. The best of the panels (the AWU1378/AWU1393) are about .0005 fL*. Whle this is an order of magnitude better than any other consumer panel it's quite visible in an unlit room with normally dark-adapted vision. Don't confuse panel mute with normal operation.
If you change voltages to decrease output you are probably giving up some contrast. Phosphors dim as they age. Defeating the compensation process doesn't avoid aging.

*I'm not sure anyone that's reported MLL was using a meter than can actually measure a 9G 50" monitor.

This is indeed an interesting thread but on certain models (141 for sure) the black level jumps up when no signal is detected. My 3yr old 141FD has had a very low and stable black level (by meter) and has actually reduced in black level if you consider the black oval effect.

Note: When you adjust the voltages listed you are adjusting the operating voltage margin of the display. Voltage margin is difference between the minimum sustain voltage and the discharge start voltage. If this becomes too small the panel cannot operate properly.

Although I agree with this I can't help but feel that the compensation process is applying to much voltage to the dimming phosphors causing the black areas to glow. And I think this is linked to using calibrated settings over long periods of time (low brightness, sharpness and contrast).

When I first noticed the red tint I assumed that the screen was getting old and that it would never produce true black again. It looked like there was some kind of heat source behind the panel on the bottom right slowly causing the panel to glow a reddish brown.

I even considered buying a new TV!

The result of resetting the pulse meter however was absolutely stunning. I was blown away, I had true black (like when the Panel was new) and no adverse affect on picture quality. I would describe it as reference quality and had forgotten how good the panels actually were. It reminded me of when I first entered my calibrated settings back in January 2009 and sat back and said to myself "wow...that really is black...".

One issue I did have was that black areas would persist on screen for a few seconds if they has been there for a while. Movie bars were a good example of this. If you changed to a full screen image it took about a couple of seconds for the black to fully disappear into the top of the screen.

I could understand this, surely the only way these panels achieve true black is to not have any voltage going to the black areas of the screen therefore muting the pixels? Maybe a bit more voltage was required?

Although normal picture quality was unaffected, I had to solve this. I was aware mascior had said that lowering VOL RST P had increased black levels so I tried. I dropped VOL RST P down to 10. The affect was that the black took a few more seconds to disappear than it did before. Okay I thought, so I gradually raised it step by step until the affect had completely gone. The magic value was 62 and problem solved.

Overall I would say that the affect of resetting the Pulse Meter (and perhaps the hour meter) was much closer to what I would consider normal operation than it was before. Generally picture quality seems smoother and quieter, and I no longer see reds in dark areas of the screen (outta space, black cars, peoples jackets, peoples hair etc....).

I think bottom line is that if your television is still under warranty, then by all means have it fixed or replaced if the fee is reasonably nominal. Otherwise, feel free to gamble with it if the stakes are worth it to you.

This has fixed my issue. Perhaps there is another way of trimming the compensation process?