Official Sony BDP-S590 and BDP-390 Thread - Page 34

I played portions of a few more disks. The sony image seems slightly softer, and slightly darker.

I've left all the picture settings on the default factory settings. Any changes I should make?

The panasonic 215 seemed to offer a slightly sharper and brighter picture. TV picture settings are identical for both pana. and sony.

When people say they prefer the sony or pana., it's likely because they prefer one type of picture over another (sony = more 'filmlike' ie softer; pana. = more videolike, ie sharper).

You're comparing the Sony to a memory that you have of the Panasonic. I would hedge a bet that, assuming all PQ enhancements are disabled on both, the pictures would be identical between the two. Blu-ray players from any of the major manufacturers aren't like the days of DVD players. There's no picture manipulation being done to upscale the feed to 1080P using different methods. There's NOTHING happening besides putting the image, pixel for pixel, to the screen off the disc.

If there's any visible differences that warrant the adjective "much" before any descriptions... something else is causing the change, not the player.

Anything being brighter would be an adjustment to the luma channel, which both players can do if not setup correctly. The Sony should be in Standard mode using YCbCr output (not RGB or Auto), and the Panasonic should be in Normal/Standard with Advanced Chroma disabled, and any/all sharpening or other adjustments disabled.

Done that way, with a Blu-ray, they'll be identical. Not close, but actually identical. Blu-ray players, over HDMI, are pretty exacting and easy to measure if they are identical. Some add extra sharpness which you can pick up with test patterns, but neither the Sony nor Panasonic had this.

Mechanical noises are going to vary from unit to unit with commodity players like these, unlike players costing closer to $1K which should have much better mechanical design and QC. I suspect they're buying drive mechanisms from whoever is selling them cheapest that month.

@Hi_Def_Boss,

I don't think you've said which edition of Bridge to Tarabithia you're comparing. BD or DVD? Disney (2007) or PBS (1985)? If it's either of the DVD editions, upscaling could be the difference. That could differ depending on which device (player, avr, display) is or was doing it, as well as depending on differences that device's settings. Also, an inadvertent reset might have changed any optimizations to the settings that you might have made.

OK, I will check settings later.

The disk is "bridge" on blu ray, used on both the pana. and sony.

The Sony player has different color-space settings which have "known" bugs (see post #876 above and ones near that). Which one of those is chosen might make a noticeable difference on some displays. I don't know if the Panasonic has equivalent settings, or if their defaults are different.

Lots of manufacturers use that tact--put out a spec for a part and have multiple source submit products to be qualified against that spec. Then you buy from whomever currently offers the best deal.

This would explain why some of us never had perceptibly noisy units and why some who did could go back and exchange just to end up with another noisy one (from a store having units all from the same manufacturing run).

I know that the Sony S390 player has a USB connection on the front that can be used for a Standard 101 Keyboard according to Sony's Specs. My question is has anyone connected a wireless keyboard version? What Make/Model?

Also, is it possible to connect a wireless keyboard/mouse setup to interact with the Internet Browser? Once again, if someone has done it, what is the Make/Model?

Yes, colors, esp. flesh tones seemed inaccurate at times (very pink) on the "bridge" br disk.

So I avoid the rgb setting and use the ycbr. Which one, 444?

I've tried it with Logitech wireless keyboards and it didn't work. I suspect that wireless devices have special drivers--I'd hope that they'd just appear the same as any other USB HID.

422 and 444 are both perfect from the Sony (and Panasonic), which to use is dependent on your display. Spears & Munsil can help you figure this out.

Thanks. I'm using ycbr 444 now. It seems to look pretty good and the strange color aberrations are not apparent.

Where do I find "standard mode" in the settings?

Hit Options while playing a movie. You will get an overlay with Standard, Theater, and Bright Room settings. Standard is correct, the others are wrong.

Ah, got it. I was running through the various settings after going to the home menu.

I've got standard setting, the nr settings to off, and ycbr at 444. Am I set? Anything else? Picture seems to be looking good, although I still give the nod to panasonic.

How many of us own multiple blu ray players and have done A/B tests?

On hand I have the Sony 590&570, Panasonic 210, and Oppo 83 & 93. I can A/B them easily but I do all the hard number analysis with a Quantum Data 882E. No need to rely on memory when I can frame capture and compare individual pixels.

How would you rank them (as far as BR PQ?)


...I finished watching King Kong and MIB2. Sony has regained it's position of honor with the appropriate picture settings.

I have tweaked according to forum recommendations:

1. ycbr: 444
2. deep color: off
3. standard picture setting
4. nr settings: off

I believe that's all the important stuff.

Question: why should deep color be turned off?

Overall, BR PQ is now verging on the spectacular. However, as I suspected, DVD's don't look as good as on pana. players. Upconversion looks 'soft.' It may be the case that this upconversion is more accurate; perhaps the pana. attempts to create a sharper picture, generating more artifacts/noise.

SmackRabbit recently discussed deep color in the 790 thread.

All sony disc players have comparatively soft upconversion in my experience. I agree that this year's models appear to be no different.

I second the question. Doesn't deep color add additional bit depth (10,12,16 bits VS 8 bit) that could be used by an AVR to interpolate any color infomation to reduce or eliminate posterization problems?

I noticed on my Onkyo HT-Rc260 AVR that changing this setting changes the output of the Sony-S390 output from 24 bits to 30 bits. Could this help or improve the PQ?

Has anyone used a ramp color pattern to see if the additional color depth does anything at all?

Have you tried a wired USB keyboard? This really would not be the most convenient, but if it works, that's better than nothing.

BTW, the problem with the Internet Browser is getting around the screen. A mouse plugged into the keyboard would be nice. I just don't know if this configuration would work?

Deep Color could, in theory, help with banding on certain gradients. However, you'd also need to then have a complete device chain that works with Deep Color perfectly, and doesn't introduce any other issues at all. Given that most devices out there have issues with truncating off some fine chroma detail, which is exactly where Deep Color could make a difference in theory, it would offer up no gain there. You can also get similar results by doing some dithering on those gradients, which some players do on solid blocks of color already (the PS3 stands out in this regard). In this case you are technically getting a small error in the decoding, but you're exchanging that error (which is a dE of 0.1 or so, perfectly acceptable IMO) for a possible reduction in posterization, which many people will take.

As far as which player looks better, with Blu-ray content they all (other than the 570) look the same. The 570 might be updated to have correct firmware now, but since it's used for my son to watch Disney films every day, I'm not too concerned with it. The others, with progressive Blu-ray content, are identical. I can use any of them for reference and they work fine. I choose to use the Oppo players as they also offer Source Direct modes (which I need for processor and device testing), they are very responsive, and I get complete control over colorspace and everything else.

My advice last year was if you want the best, get the Oppo. If you want to spend less and/or need streaming content, get the Panasonic 210. I need to test the Panasonic 220 and others this year to form an opinion still.

I tried wireless out of curiosity--wired is supposed to work (it's in the specs and documentation), so I didn't bother. I'm not going to use the browser on this since this PC is connected to the same panel and AVR as the BD player, so my interest was academic.

590 pros:
-quiet, refined
-nice BR PQ, with settings tweaked (not out of box)
-nice esthetics
-accepts flash drives (2)
-plays lots of video formats
-supports sacd
-tv programmable remote
-lots of streaming options

cons:
-soft dvd upconversion
-washed out blacks with dvd upconversion
-weird BR colors and poor contrast with out of box settings
-prototype caliber menu system (very low res)


A nice player overall. Don't expect the very best PQ however.

another Pro:
displays audio and video bitrates

Three more cons:
cannot play HD video over DLNA
cannot play 24/96 DAD audio discs
cannot play "all region" PAL DVDs

Yes, this is very convenient.

Wrong. I've played 1080p24 video out of MKV containers using TVersity with conversion disabled on an S390. Of course, bit rate might be a factor--the ones I played were no higher than 9 or 10 Mbps.

I do agree with your pro--Sony's video info overlay is the best I've seen.

So, you definitely need to make sure that each component - the BluRay player, AVR and HDTV is set to handle Deep Color and is actually doing something with it.

Do you have any suggestions of color gradient test patterns or other specific patterns that might allow complete evaluation of the deep color settings?