Samsung Plasma Panel tweaks for better blacks. - Page 8

Standard entry for type is 5XDSarD for D6XXX and 5XDSCrD for D7XXX and D8XXX.
Because of the sticker on my panel which says model is FH, I and some others tried 5XDFHcD

soopermario, on my voltage sticker it says Model: 850FH-YB09 is that what you are refering to for panel type. Out of curiousity what are your voltage defaults, mine are (VS 207) (VA 58) (VSC -187) (VE 80). Whats is yours if ya dont mind me asking. On my VSC it is minus(-)187. Was wondering if your was a minus also.

kanpol, if you read back a few posts, you wouldn't have need to ask these questions.

My model is the same, and there are the same voltages on my sticker.

The "type" in SM must have something to do with the screen coating.

5XDFHcD -> maybe 5 series without coating
5XDHHcD -> maybe 5 series without coating, or D6500 (does it have antireflection?)
5XDSarD -> 6 series with antireflection
5XDSCrD -> 7 and 8 series with realblackfilter

I think this because the image is quiet different. When I set the different types on my D6900 the following stands out:

5XDFHcD -> Oversaturated and brighter
5XDHHcD -> very similar to FH, maybe the same, but I think it's a tiny little bit less saturation
5XDSarD -> colors are very natural, but picture looks dull
5XDSCrD -> colors are very natural too but the picture is somehow brighter, but in an odd way (I don't mean a white crush, it's hard to describe, it just feels that there have to be the realblackfilter to compensate the brightness)

This is all in standard mode.
In movie mode the differences between the types are very little. Must be because the movie mode is for viewing in a dark environment and the screen coating makes no difference then.

Actually after I asked you what model you had yesterday. You never answered so I did go back in the thread to look. All you said was the sticker on my panel said it was FH. You never mentioned what sticker or where on that sticker it mentioned that. Thats why I asked. I'll leave it at that. Yes the 6500 has antiglare coating. I think the 6500 and 6900 are mostly the same because when I googled this Model: 850FH-YB09 one thing that came up was a 6900 repair kit.

In post #175 I told my sticker values, but ok it was 2 pages back
I have the 51D6900, and told that in several posts.

So when the 6500 has antiglare when the FH is maybe 4 series and HH 5 series or so. Till samsung brings a new firmware I will stay at HH now, because I like it the most. On Formula 1 yesterday FH looked to colorful. So even when HH type is the wrong setting it looks best for me and not dull like the original type.

@zoyd, is your calibrated black setting=45? With my latest Yrr setting of around only 1/4 turn from default, I no longer have any green dither on black bars or full black image, and my calibrated black setting is 56. However, I do get green dither on all black/dark grey areas of videos I play. They disappear at around Brightness=45/46 but this would also be below the calibrated black setting. How did you manage this?

How would you relate this to the black clipping pattern on avs 709 disk, what i mean is what should 17 look like, I get that 16 should be completely invisible but 17, do we want to see the bar with barely any pixel activity in the middle. I have sometimes a hard time getting this right. What is your approach?

Yes, lowering brightness (for the dither/green spots to go away) crushes blacks, so do you just leave brightness to 55 and see green dither on dark areas and just ignore them?

I ask because in really dark scenes (ex. Sherlock Holmes or Underworld), these green dither/spots look terrible, and from 7'-8', they wash out those areas and tend to change the area to appear grey. So my only recourse when watching these scenes is to lower brightness down to 45. Should these green dither disappear on patterns above 3% using calibrated black settings? I'm not sure how to correct this issue.

BTW, what's gamma=2.3 equivalent in our D550 (slide value from -2 to +2)? Thanks.

From my reading of this thread, back off Yrr until problem goes away?

In addition to my last post, watching the black patterns w/ my calibrated brightness=56, I also green dither on the bars 17 and up.

@kjgarrison, my Yrr pot has been lowered to around 1/8 (from 1/4 turn) and I don't see green dithers on black bars or full black image. The green dithers I see are on the dark areas of video scenes (look like green bacteria when peeping through a microscope.hehe). The only way I get rid of them is to lower brightness to 45 (sometimes lower) w/c would then crush blacks.

FWIW, here's a static picture of how it somewhat looks like on the Black Clipping video. The spots are green and do actually 'jitter/dither/flicker'. Not shown too well on my cheap cam, but gives a good idea.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j50/jgloc1013/BlackClipping-1.jpg

sherpa 25 what is your contrast set at? Has anyone used the avs 709 copied to a hard drive then used with a ps3. I ask because, when I use this with my ps3 to set my black level,I get different results then when I do this with my hard drive connected straight to my tv. On ps3 I have it set to rgb full and hdmi level normal and superwhite on.

My contrast is at 92. I can actually set it to 100 w/o clipping using the AVS709 White Clipping file, but I noticed whites turning to very light pink at values higher than 92 so I keep it at 92.

As happy as i am with this set, the tweaker got the best of me and i decided to give this a try... no yrr on my 59pn6500 . adjusted what i could without any testing equipment and honestly i can't tell that any of the adjustments made my blacks better or worse. i know it was mentioned that the larger panels have better blacks to begin with so maybe I was already past the range of perceivable difference.

Changing panel type to FH on mine looked great at first, but have to agree with others it is over saturated and unnatural . It also gave me magenta sparkles so meant I would have to dial back the yrr pot. Was getting brightness pops too.

Gone back to DSArD type. Much better, not sure changing panel type is such a good tweak.

Jap, same here

marky did you try "HH" instead of "FH"? This is what I'm running now. It is not perfekt but not as dull as the "DSarD". Until a new firmware I'll stay on "HH".

soopermario, I was checking stuff out in the service menu and what I discovered was when you change the type from FH to HH to SarD to SCrD it changes the wb settings, in the adc/wb menu, for movie mode. In order to see the gain and offset in WB you have to use the emulator to enter the SM and then goto CONTROL then SCC and change SCC mode from dynamic to movie

Did see your previous post may give it a try. So HH is a toned down FH?

Yes you could say so. I'm still not sure if HH is for the 5 series but it makes sense. The colors of all types are different and I think only the DSarD is messed up in the 1019 fw. But not the colors are messed up, it must be something else and maybe the other types don't have this issue. So you have to find the type that's nearest to your actual set. And because the 5 series is nearly the same panel, besides the antiglare, the colors shouldn't be so off

kanpol, this is interesting. Thank you for finding out. But because I'm nearly settled now I won't go into the SM again until a new fw is out. Only if it takes to long I will tweak around again

Soopermario,I feel ya, I hate going in there too, mainly cause I hate having to input all my settings all over again. But The curiousity gets the better of me sometimes. Whats your opinion on this, Since basically we have the same logic board mines 6500 and yours 6900 I wonder if the voltage pots line up the same. Since you adjusted yours to the correct voltage settings and if I moved mine to the same location of yours then mine would be correct also.
Did you happen to take any pictures of your final position of the voltage pots? If so would you mind posting them, please I feel my blacks can get alittle better, still have a slight glow in all dark room with a black jpeg on screen.

Zoyd after you lower your black levels, when you use the black level pattern to set them, are your final numbers (brightness,contrast) higher then they were before you did the tweak. Is this thinking correct, the lower your blacks the higher your settings have to be so the blacks wont be crushed?

I think all Logicboards are the same, at least for the 5 to 8 series.
I did take pictures of my pots before and after. Will post them but it takes some time, my Router is dead, waiting for replacement. So the pics come in a few days or so. But it will be better to measure your voltages. A Multimeter is not expensive. And an advise from me, set the voltages to sticker values and just play with yrr. It will take less time and stress and you will feel better because your set is at the correct values and you don't messed something up.
For example, on my panel I set yrr to my liking. When I then change some voltages the blacklevel itself don't get any better but the screen uniformity changes. And also because you're too playing with the SM it es better to leave the voltages alone and just tweak the yrr a bit clockwise.

A little late but here are my pictures from the pots pre-tweak. This settings were correct. Kanpol, as hopefully you read, I said first that my "Ve" voltage was wrong, but it wasn't as I said later. "Ve" was only wrong because I already had changed "Vs" and these voltages depend on each other.

The attached pics are from a Samsung Plasma 51D6900 European Modell.

Kanpol you can compare it to your pots, but I rather suggest you use a multimeter and measure the voltages.

Zoyd, have you tested the "Near Black" patterns on the ColorHCFR section of the AVS Rec709 disc to verify that there is no black crush of the 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% windows with these tweaks?

I too have a 51" D8000 and before I take it off the wall, attach the stand, move my BR player, not to mention get plastic screw drivers and open up the TV in the middle of the night, I want to have a plan. I don't want to go through all this more than once.

My black screen measurement with D3 Pro (calibrated) probe was 0.014 with CS off and 0.020 with CS on. Not much different from yours. As you know, the D3 probes are supposed to be quite accurate at the low end measurements, more than even the i1Pro. I got mine through ChromaPure and the calibration of the probe is automatically loaded into CP. They sent the correction matrix, so I could use it with any other software by loading the corrections manually. I'm just spending the time getting to know at least this one product better, but eventually would like to verify it with another one. What software do you use?

My plan is to measure at all the test points to make sure my voltages are to specifications as shown inside the panel, adjust to spec if any are off, and then just to the Yrr tweak.

I'll follow your instructions to find the Yrr induced artifacts and then probably back off a little more than the minimum required to make them go away.

You went from 0.16 to ~0.06. This is already the darkest and most uniform TV I have ever owned and will be happy with any significant improvement and especially anything below 0.10 ... unless I get greedy ... which is something I have been known to do. heh

Thanks. Your contribution to these forums cannot be overstated.

What software do you use? With ChromaPure I get results to the hundredth, but you are reporting results to the ten thousandth.

And for the rest of your calibration?