Official Panasonic ST50 Series Discussion Thread [No Street Price Talk] - Page 256

The ST does much better than most plasmas in a moderately lit room because of the filter and excels in a dimly lit room. But if you have a brightly lit room and watch a lot of tv during the day your best bet would be an LED.

Don't know if this means anything to anybody, but Panasonic swapped my 55ST50 that I bought in April of this year with a brand new unit built in November of this year. I too had IR issues with my original unit(that eventually broke) that do not occur as easily as they do on my new unit. Panasonic also was very quick to completely replace my unit without even attempting a repair or asking questions. I was extremely thrilled with their customer support, but it makes me wonder if there is a known issue with the early batch of these televisions.

Mine is March and I have had no issues. I have been following this thread since June and it seems random to me.

That's good, maybe it is a rare issue or the person I was working with was just a kind human being. I had issues with IR, "bars" across the screen, loud humming, and eventually the seven blinks of death.

Gee that's a really hard question.
I am have new 55ST50 that seems to be "keeper" no buzz no probs beautiful pic so far. Strong point is we watch from off angles a lot and it is really super there deep saturated colors viewing at all angles. But I am still ambivalent on the LED/LCD vs. Plasma choice maybe I prefer LED/LCD. Bright room is typical case where LED/LCD might be best choice. But the new ST50 can be adjusted quite brighter than past and has glare-retention technology built in that helps the image "pop" even if dimmer than LED. One thing I really like about LED/LCD is possibility of passive 3D which I think is great. The 55ST50 consumes from <75 to >250 Watts, depending on your settings for brightness etc, so you have controls. You need to list all your objectives... and decide best compromise in your case.

Yes I believe repetitive use of the guide did me in. It is fading slowly. I'm running it as much as I can to get the hours up.

Thank you both for the responses and feedback. We don't watch a whole lot of TV during the day except for football on Sundays and occasional golf in the summer.

We watch a lot of blu-ray movies, Comcast HD and Netflix - no gaming. We have the Panasonic DMP-BDT220 3D Blu-ray Player and have started buying our movies with 3D combo packs so we can watch 3D movies (mostly Pixar movies right now for the kids). We probably don't need a TV with apps because the BR player has that, but it seems the good 3D TVs already have that.

I guess our objective is to have a 46"-50" HDTV that is wall-mountable, looks good, looks OK in a bright room, has good PQ, supports 3D, and can be had for around $1000 or less.

Did my post get completely overlooked?

I just went to check and the orbiter was on and it was set to bright, I'm doing the scrolling bar test for 15 minutes it says. Thanks for the picture Krefly!

Okay im Unserstanding thos 3:2 pulldown things the consensus is to
Have it set to on for tv right? But what about gaming, or blu rays which are usually 720p and 1080p should it be set to off?

Let us know how it goes with tech service. Inquire about tightening the screws on any of the circuit boards under the back panel to see if that reduces or eliminates the buzzing.

Having come from a 42' plasma that had some issues, i.e. minor buzzing, "purple snakes", I am being more critical with my recently purchased 55ST50. Although the 42" was a great set, especially since it was my first HD experience, I suffered through the whole "purple snakes" issue. I'm not expecting the 55ST50 to be flawless, however I don't want distractions. When doing the 100 hour panel prep I really looked it over: no dead pixels, very minimal banding (only noticeable on a couple gray slides), good uniformity. The only issue that I immediately picked up on was the buzzing. After I finished with the panel prep I input D-nice's reference settings and watched Up on blu-ray via my PS3. From my viewing distance of 7-8 ft I could especially hear when the buzzing level increased during bright scenes which was evident in the scene when Carl, the old man, was on the blimp and looked down at the clouds. When the camera panned back to him I couldn't hear it. Once it panned back to the clouds it was evident again. The cloud scene was quiet, which really highlighted the buzzing. Throughout the majority of the movie the buzzing wasn't apparent, but the on/off effect during the clouds scene was a bit annoying. On a positive note, the minimal banding that I saw on gray slides was not visible during the movie.

I will continue to watch varied full screen content, i.e. blu-rays, and dish HD, making sure to avoid static images and logos for the next 100+ hours. I'm hoping the PQ improves and the buzzing decreases, but I'm not optimistic about the latter.

P.S. For anyone who ran D-Nice's slides and input his reference settings did the color seem a little undersaturated?
Edited by p3Orion - 12/9/12 at 11:39pm

Yes, and the tint seems off to me. I haven't had time to play with it yet.

Just wanted to bring this back to maybe get some more answers. I just watched prometheus and the blur effect was pretty obvious. Just watching the menu screen shows it. If you focus on a object that is moving, it's blurred until it comes to a stop. There was a scene in the movie where the camera was moving and they were walking and anything in motion was blurred. Any idea what's causing this or is this normal? I am highly visually alert so I noticed the slightest things so maybe it's just me?

Nothing wrong with the tv and is normal, but about your highly expectation with the HD tech.
What is your reference source? Did you ever saw a source that isn't blurring when panning?, i.e. movie theater, crt/plasma/lcd/led/projector tv sources?, blur is (intended) in the movie itself?
Even in real life when you panning your head (fast) around, everything looks blur to my eyes! just saying.

But here is the solution to display movies correctly on your tv, without or to minimize judder/jitter/shudder/stutter/blurring/soap opera etc.:
-When playing movies (as movies are recorded @24p = 24fps) from your bluray player/htpc/ps3 etc. ALWAYS set those video output= 24p!
-Set your tv [24p Direct in] = 48Hz or 24Hz if available!

For the following settings that cause more or less blurring/posterization etc., try it out:
-Set "Video NR" = Off
-Set [Color space] = Normal.
-Set [Contour emphasis] = Off.
-Set [AGC] = 0.
-Set [Content type(HDMI)] = Off.
-Set [Block NR] = Off.
-Set [Mosquito NR] = Off.
-Set [Motion smoother] = Off or try which setting gives less jitter/blur.

The worst blurring are on the LCD tv's!
Edited by iBrad - 12/10/12 at 4:15am

So the PS3 should have 24p set to ON? On page 254 Muddeprived explained the shudder issue he was having with the Alien Anthology and someone stated that 24p should be turned OFF. Which is it?

I played the same movie on my cheapie quantum view LCD and noticed hardly any blur so that's why I was thinking something was wrong with the ST50.

My settings are the same as you listed. TV is 24p In at 60 hz (option is greyed out so I cannot change it anyways)

If it is normal, i'll just try to ignore it lol.

What size LCD? I'm still using my 42" plasma and yesterday I started watching Thor in HD via my dish DVR, then switched to my 55ST50 and I noticed more source flaws. Any imperfections are more apparent on a larger screen, which is why I asked what size LCD. I know they're not the same technology, but screen size could be a factor.

I found this link awhile back and thought, given the recent posts, it would appropriate to share:

http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/blu-ray-dvd-disc-media-players/55735-how-properly-set-up-your-sony-ps3-blu-ray-player.html#axzz2BqJD3LxE

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1406663/pixel-jogger-break-in-improves-pq-plasma-lcd-led-tv-the-only-way-for-diy-users-only

I also read an article on a video website but I am struggling to find it right now.
I will keep you posted. It said essentially said what was stated in the above link.

Do you have the motion smoothing on?
I had a similar issue with this feature enabled, once disabled, the picture panned normally.

well, after a week of trying to knock out a stubborn Ir from my channel guide, which I haven't used in a week, it has only weakened a bit. As this is my 3rd set because of various problems, I have to stop kidding myself and admit that this panny model is a dog. Yeah, yeah, I know, you had no IR problems with yours, its perfect blah blah blah....I started a service call with panasonic, and they gave me the old try this and that for 2 weeks and let us know. Sure. Whatever happens, if the IR goes away or they fix something, I really don't care. Whatever panasonic was, I feel it ain't no more. I really really wanted to like this set, but in my case, it was a complete failure.

If panasonic comes out with a set that will give me a 10 hour orgasm, I will pass.

Apologies if this has come up - I've read pretty much the entire thread, and searched, but didn't find any results.

It appears to me as though the Canadian warranty for the ST series may cover IR/burn in...
The owners manual has separate warranty descriptions for "Canada" and "USA/Puerto Rico". The USA warranty has the following section:

"Limited Warranty Limits And Exclusions
This Limited Warranty ONLY COVERS failures due to defects in materials or workmanship, and DOES NOT COVER
normal wear and tear or cosmetic damage, nor does it cover markings or retained images on the glass panel resulting
from viewing fixed images (including, among other things, non-expanded standard 4:3 pictures on wide screen TV’s,
or onscreen data in a stationary and fixed location)."

The Canadian warranty has no such explicit exclusion.
Has anyone from Canada tried to have Panasonic address any IR issues via warranty?

Are there any settings floating around that are there to produce a brighter image while still maintaining some semblance of good shadow detail? A corworker and I both purchased the ST50 and she's not thrilled with how DNice's settings look in her room with the lights on. I tried doing a search which proved to be a near impossibility to turn up relevant info -- given the keywords that I had to use.

FTR, I tweaked the gama setting on mine a hair and am thrilled with how the settings look.

OK, so what would be a better alternative at that price?

This was my concern as well as my current budget LCD gets washed out in bright ambient light (even with blinds down). I have the 50" ST50 running D-Nice's slides and it is bright but the slides are probably more vivid than TV. I only experimented with normal video for a few minutes before I started the slides but I think it is brighter and easier to see than my old LCD even with regards to bright ambient light. That being said it is very reflective (but I can live with that).

Yup id love to know this as well

Kurt, not telling anyone what to or not to buy.

My experience only. 3 tv's still problems=arf arf.

Automatic

Turn up contrast to 100, and enjoy. (As you know, that setting is not about contrast, but just peak white level.) You'll have a little white clipping, but it's fine for non critical viewing in a bright room.