Official Panasonic ST50 Series Discussion Thread [No Street Price Talk] - Page 293

See post #2 on this page:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1397245/official-panasonic-st50-series-discussion-thread-no-street-price-talk

I looked through this thread and didn't see anyone experiencing the same issue with Uverse. I just bought an 55st50 and hooked it up to my Uverse. The tv has no volume when I select surround sound in the digital audio output options on the Uverse box. The tv has volume only when I select stereo. All of my other tvs play volume in surround sound.

I have reset the Uverse box as well as the tv but it still has no volume when surround sound is selected. I have an hdmi cord hooked up from the box to the tv. I have the same setup with the other tvs and it works fine. I'm leaning towards there being an issue with the tv.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue or have any advice?

For SD content, like when I'm feeding cable content without an HD converter into the TV, the Black level is defaulted to Dark and the menu item is disabled. Anyone know if this is by design? Is there a way to change Black level for SD content?

Have you tried setting the mode to 48hz in 3D? I find it greatly helps in subtle cross talk issues. Trying new glasses may help with crosstalk, but i have my doubts on this.

I have U-verse and I had no issues getting it to play through my 5.1 when I first set up the the surround sound. Are you sure that all of the necessary changes have been made in respect to the TV's sound settings being switched over to Surround Sound/Home Theater?

Hey all,

I just thought I'd post to say that I picked up a 55ST50 just after christmas and so far it is excellent

I have been paranoid about IR etc so I have been watching 2.40:1 movies and similar in the Zoom 2 mode, to make sure I don't have the black bands at the top and bottom, and any program with a static channel logo or time clock in the corner gets a similar zoom treatment.

I have experienced some 'posterisation' (is that the correct term?) where you get the more solid bands of colour (than the usual natural graduated look) in a person's face when the camera pans across them quickly, but they only crop up occasionally and I understand they are a known issue so I'm not too worried.

Other than that I don't think I have any issues so far!

I have received the Disney WoW disk so I will attempt to use it to tweak one of the screen options I don't use, such as Vivid, and use that as the 'calibrated' setting. (In the UK we don't appear to have the Custom 1 / Custom 2 settings that the US gets?) I will then continue to watch stuff on full-screen, no-logos only for perhaps a couple more months, then move to films with black bars at the top and bottom.

I was planning to use the D-Nice calibration process but couldn't wait to get it up and running lol

Although one company dropped the price by £300 a couple of weeks after I bought it I am not going to stress to much about it - it seems a good panel with none of the issues that I have read about on here, such as bad IR, green/pink tinges etc, so I will just look at it as £300 that has hopefully guaranteed a good set!


Thanks to everyone for this forum, it has been and will continue to be an excellent source of reference material with a great community feel

Cheers!

I just mounted my 65GT50 on that mount. It fit, but just barely. The hooks on the brackets that get screwed to the tv, that hang on the plate, are mere millimeters from the edge. It makes me a little nervous. I may look into something that's a little wider. It's also a bit stiff to extend and retract. There maybe some adjustment there that I haven't played with though. Other than that, it seemed pretty sturdy at least.

Ya i mounted my previous Panasonic 50" TH50PXU - which i think was about 95lbs and the left edge of the mount bracket was literally 3mm from the edge (wall studs were way off center - and centering the tv was a pain) . Sat like that for 4 years until i replaced it with a 60" ST50 - now it sits much more centered.

As long as you dont have kids or drunken friends that could trip over it - youre fine.

Just curious what the difference is between the service menu and the controls available in the advanced menu in the custom user menu. Are there more advanced options outside of the high and low rgb controls?

Wow. That made a huge difference. It's not perfect, but wow. I can't believe how much better it is. Thanks!

What you are saying is the ANT/Cable INPUT mode does not allow setting BLACK LEVEL (grayed out). Actually has nothing to do with SD since you can bring in pretty nice HDTV signal from your ANT/Cable INPUT. I've watched my cable TV quite a bit thru the ANT INPUT, just broke down and got a new HDTV cable box. I did not see a big need to adjust BLACK LEVEL, but your only option I know would be to come in via another INPUT device such as COMPONENT cable which your cable box might have (mine did) or AVR. Presumably you might be able to buy a COAX to COMPONENT or COAX to HDMI converter.

The other thing you may want to try is CNET settings, go to CNET.com and look up their ST50 review.
The significance of the D-Nice settings is, if you follow his break-in instructions *exactly* then his calbration settings should be good for your set.
He gives two options: (1) run break in slides for 100-hrs, and (2) do not run break in slides.
You must adopt his methodology from the get go, or your calibration may deviate from his results.
D-Nice procedures are found on High Def Junkies web site.
In any case, if you write down D-Nice and CNet settings they are similar (except for the Pro color settings).
And here is what I use for a 55ST50 which is similar to D-Nice and CNet
CONTRAST 80
BRIGHTNESS 61
WARM2
GAMMA=2.6 (larger sets use 2.4)

Here is what I call "poor man" calibration, assuming you don't know if your Pro color settings need to be adjusted (you did not follow D_Nice exact Procedure)
Basically adopt all CNET settings, except Pro color settings all default (zero).
I find CONTRAST=80 BRIGHTNESS=60-61 COLOR=50 TINT=o default
everything else like CNET, WARM2, GAMMA 2.6, BLACK LEVEL=light etc.
Of course you can use AVSHD 709 to check this for your set but this is what I found.
I actually think my break-in may be close to D-Nice since I used STANDARD for a while so I may try his proColor settings. Bottom line is you need a professional calibration IF AND ONLY IF you insist on perfection. Otherwise if you like the set you are fine.

DNice has 2 sets of settings posted. 1 for if you use the slides and 1 that is "out of the box" if you choose not to use the slides for prep.

Congrats P3 on the new set and I am pleased to have you back as a contributor to this site.
I think you are on the right track re: buzz control and I am thinking along same lines.
Presumably the buzz is no worse than old CRT's (my CRTis still sitting on the floor waiting for disposal).
But in the old CRT's the buzz reflected up from the set vent holes as opposed to back to the wall.
There are two issues here: sound transmission and reflected sound.
Sound transmission is stopped by heavy mass eg; lead (Pb) and also multiple layers.
Reflected sound is adsorbed by soft materials as you say and also reflection from hard surfaces can be deflected.
For example, corrogated surface deflects sound in different directions.
I seem to hear louder noise from top 1-foot of set through the rear vent holes (mind you this is not a bad noise).
So I've been thinking about mounting some corrogated flat plate a couple inches behind the vent holes. but have not tried it.
As you say something on the wall behind set might help.

I've run the slides for ~15 hours and despite the buzzing the panel uniformity seems to be better in some regards, maybe worse in others.

There seems to be slightly more pink tint in the bottom right corner, but possibly less around the edges. The first ST50 had the pink tint around the edges, but I didn't notice it during normal viewing, only the slides. It also may have improved over time. I hope that's the case with the new set.

What I don't see, and something I really hopes improves my enjoyment of watching soccer, football, and hockey, is no discernible vertical bar on the far right side. The picture also seems smoother, which I hope means that I won't see vertical streaks when the camera pans quickly during the aforementioned sports.

After the 100 hours I'll use some test content to see what's what.

Sounds like a normal panel.
Edited by Bond 007 - 2/6/13 at 3:01am

Ah that explains it. Thank you.

I contacted Panasonic about my brightness problems I posted about a while back. All the calibration discs suggest my brightness should be around 60, but I can't get these weird problems during dark scenes (someone suggested it sounded like what happens when your brightness or panel brightness setting is too high) to go away until about 50 (regardless of source content), and by that point I can tell just by looking at it that I'm losing a lot of detail.

Panasonic had me reset the TV (have my calibration settings written down anyway) and told me they recommend brightness setting of 45 (along with contrast 85), and while I kept trying to explain to them that that's too dark according to several calibration patterns that apparently doesn't hold any weight with them. So they fixed my problem by creating another one, which I could have done pretty easily by myself.

Any suggestions what to do? Have a month left on the warranty, so if there's something wrong with it I'd like to actually get them to do something. Obviously I hope it's just something simple.

You have a month left on the warranty or return period? You can try fooling with the black extension and agc settings.

Do you have your HDMI black level set wrong? Try the other setting.

Warranty. Bought it last March, but haven't had much luck figuring this out and haven't gotten much input when I've tried.

I'll try that when I get home, but I thought both those settings were ideally left at zero? Either way I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.
Nope, it's definitely set to 16-235.

When watching a movie and the MPAA green rating screen comes up, does anyone else have bars streaking from the text? I'll also notice this effect (much lighter however) when using subtitles.

I do sometimes but it doesn't bother me.

The Brightness = 45 sounds funny, but I found Brightness=61@Gamma=2.6 and =57@Gamma=2.4... I don't know if you keep changing Gamma what happens to Brightness settings. It is hard to comment without knowing your set size and settings. I am using "poor mans calibration" which is same as CNET except Color=50 and Pro-settings W/B R-G-B's all set to default (zero).

Good luck getting them to do much after 11 months with a problem you should have noticed and been on them about in 7 days.

Mine was calibrated with a C6 rental and CalMAN v4, along lots and lots of insanely helpful input from Spectracal. I also posted the reports here a while back and was told they looked pretty good.

I left gamma at 2.6 (which according to the meter was significantly lower than that), and corrected it to 2.4 through my DVDO iScan Duo. But, I eliminated the DVDO as a potential problem by hooking devices directly to the TV and re-checking the brightness patterns. I had a GT30 for a while that had the same exact problem, so when I got the ST50 I thought it was just one of those things inherent to plasmas (like dithering which still bugs the crap out of me at times). Thing I didn't consider was that the GT30 was completely uncalibrated (only used d-nice settings, didn't even load up brightness/contrast patterns) so the brightness on that display very well COULD have been too high.

Wasn't until I talked to a pro calibrator that I realized something might actually be wrong here. Was also hesitant to play with my settings much after sending the meter kit back, and it took a while for it to dawn on me that it was related to brightness and that there was a discrepancy between the point where the problem goes away and where the brightness setting should ideally be at.

What happened to the gt30? Why did you send the meter kit back?

Would it be noticeable when an F138 flashes past?

Thanks!