LG Plasma Panel tweaks for better blacks. - Page 40

We are all entitled to our opinions, but you have no place to come into this thread and put down those who have contributed. We all know the dangers of what we are doing, both to ourselves and our TVs. AVS wouldn't exist without us tweakers, I can assure you that. I don't think anyone posting in this thread has said that it's so easy anyone could do it.

I see you are a new member. I would suggest that, in the future, you refrain from popping into threads to essentially say, "what you are doing is dumb and you're all ignorant for doing it." That provides no helpful contribution whatsoever and is frowned upon by most of the members here.

If he knew I paid much more than $600 for my (over 25 times tweaked) Plasma, I wonder what he would call me then??

Nonsense.

Thanks for your reply rob80b! The back cover doesn´t look exactly the same as on the picture but i have a back-up plan. A friend has the same display as i do and i´m gonna check the screws one by one

Still loving my tweaked 60PK550 plasma here! Holding strong at .007 MLL thanks to this very useful thread.

btw, since I had a scope and meter I had the tools to do this "right", and in my case tweaking pretty much amounted to adjusting the panel to exactly the specs called for in the service manual. In other words, doing LG's job, but more carefully.

Those engineers may have designed an excellent product, but unless someone sets it up properly before it goes out the door it will never be all it was capable of. That sort of attention to detail would drive the price up I imagine. Also, in my case it drifted since new, so it is nice to be able to readjust later as it ages.

Ok ... first off i'd like to say sorry for being an ass in my previous posts.
I did the tweak last night and .... OMFG, it's another TV.

To make up for my silliness I'm willing to share some infos on what I did.

My plasma is a 50PZ250, I basically did the same thing as the PZ550 guy (the pots are placed slightly differently though). I did tweak the Set_Dn even though he said to avoid it, and it resulted in even deeper blacks. I turned it a quarter clockwise (further would create green pixels here and there).

Tried it with MKV's and BR's, it's superb.
It's another f*cking TV, it's freaking amazing.

I can see some artifacts for 2 seconds when starting it up, but disappears as soon as the image kicks in.
Turned it off and waited for it to cool down (for about 20 minutes), and turned out perfect, no green pixels, misfired pixels or whatsoever.

Much deeper blacks resulting in much more details in dark scenes (i can clearly see the difference in Dark Night or Immortals for example).

I'd like to apologize again for my previous posts.
Hope it helped.

Cheers.

@brody76: Priceless!

Apology accepted and much appreciated. I was happy with my set beforehand but considered getting a new TV. After the tweak, I'm no longer on the market. Enjoy your "new" TV.

Thanks.

I got back at it today, and guess what, I could make it even better and even darker.

It's amazing the changes you can do to your TV just by turning a few pots.

My blacks now blend into the bezel, this is just freaking amazing.

Totally eliminated the noise in the bright scenes by slightly tweaking the VS.

Now I'm trying to eliminate the green/pink pixels that show up on a cold start in the lower left corner. It's related to the low MLL I guess.

I guess i won't be able to eradicate them totally (the price to pay for an amazing image ? Count me in), but i wanna reduce it as much as possible to make it tolerable.

They last like 2-5 minutes max on a cold start (tweaked last night, started this morning on a BR disk, green/pink pixels emanating from the left bottom corner and spread to the right).

I don't wanna sound like a fool and talk nonsense, but I'm pretty sure we're getting some of the best blacks out there, if not the best (close to Kuro).
LG trying to stay away from problems with Pioneer ? In any case, their panels are prepared for much better images than what we get out of the box.

Not even close to Kuro elite, the blacks you and other folks are getting (including on my samsung) are in the 0.004 - 0.006 ftL range. Excellent levels yes 5x better than factory but the Kuros can get below 0.001 ftL, more than 4x what we are achieving.

Yep, Kuros are amazing TV sets.
But they come with a price ...

Considering the price I bought my plasma (about 700$) this is a pretty amazing achievement.

yep, in contrast ratio/$ I think you are ahead.

I've been tweaking my PK950N. The best thing about it: That I've learned so much about how plasma televisions work! Before the tweaking I studied the service manual thoroughly and read every post in this thread at least twice.

As it turns out I might have one of the few sets that was pretty much on target out-of-the-box. Thinking back this was not much of a surprise as I've been pretty satisfied with the black level and thought it matched my Pana G20 (incidentally also what flatpanelshd.com said about the PK950N). It has about 500 hours on the clock.

In any case, I did improve the MLL a little bit. This was my procedure:

I started by measuring all the V* values using a multimeter. They were all within 1 volt of the numbers on the label. Then I started turning SET_UP clockwise (using a plastic adjustment tool I bought off ebay). Already after a few millimeters there were misfires. I tested if turning Vy would give me more headroom but there was no noticeable difference. SET_DN was the same, after a couple of millimeters clockwise there were misfires.

BTW, I chose to concentrate on the Y-SUS board. But I did a quick check if turning VA on the SMPS (PSU) board would give me more headroom for SET_UP, but I can't say it did so I adjusted it back to spec.

I did notice though that turning Vy counterclockwise lowered the MLL a tiny amount and I got a cleaner picture, with less noise. And the couple of millimeters I got on SET_UP also lowered the MLL a little bit. So I'm still a happy camper.

Been tweaking for a few hours earlier (yep, again), finally put the cover back on because I reached satisfaction. The blacks are deep and mix with the bezel in the dark, I believe it's the best I can get on this set.

The green pixels are present for the first 5-10 minutes of warm up on a cold start up. But from my viewing distance I barely distinguish them in the dark areas.

A very small compromise considering the quality of image I could attain ..

PS: very Kuro-like pictures 8)

Yes I did, it's a strange issue and goes away when I set the screen to 60hz. I don't think it has anything to do with this tweak (if so 60hz would be strange also). I did try to use the AVS HD disc in the bluray player but it got no "blinking" pattern. So I cant rule out if it's a htpc issue or tv issue.

Could manage to get rid of the green pixels on a cold start (tweaked the VZB accordingly).
Deep blacks and no more undesirable effects, this is how my panel should be from the start.

My bet is counter clockwise.