Quote:
Originally Posted by daren_p 
I recently received my 50GT50 & now have around 30hrs on it. So far, extremely impressed with the picture but I do have one thing thats been bugging me, its the noise/buzzing produced when the display produces a white/light or bright screen. I understand that this is normal for plasma technology but the noise my set is producing is louder then what I expected. One of the reasons I went with the Panasonic, is I've read many complain that the Samsung is typically louder.
So what I'm wondering is, what is considered "normal" for this set? Mine is in a small room ~ 13' X 11', I sit 10' or so away from the tv. With darker content the panel produces very little electrical noise (basically have to be right beside it, if you want to hear anything). Under brighter screens, with volumn muted, I can easily hear the tv from my watching position (if your ffwd'ing commercials, its easy to know which one are light/bright screens). At night when I listen at lower volumns through the tv, the noise is sometimes heard above the audio as well. If I'm listening at louder levels during the day, its not normally noticed. Is this considered normal for this set or did I happen to get a panel thats louder then the norm?
Also, had a question regarding contrast. I was playing with my Spears & Munsil calibration disk & looking at the contrast pattern, if I wanted to have it calibrated all the way up to peak white (254 level on this disk/pattern), I actually had to lower the stock contrast in the THX Cinema mode I have been using. For proper setting, I ended up with a contrast of 42. When looking online that seems extremely low compared to what most have it set to for night viewing but when I look at the demo material on the disk, have been watching Band of Brothers blue ray, or HD Satellite & the picture still looks great. Is this typical or are others only calibration to reference white (234 level on this disk)? I haven't had a bright sunny day yet & my room isn't that bright, but so far with daylight or the room lights turned on, the THX Daytime setting looks washed out/way too bright.
I recently received my 50GT50 & now have around 30hrs on it. So far, extremely impressed with the picture but I do have one thing thats been bugging me, its the noise/buzzing produced when the display produces a white/light or bright screen. I understand that this is normal for plasma technology but the noise my set is producing is louder then what I expected. One of the reasons I went with the Panasonic, is I've read many complain that the Samsung is typically louder.
So what I'm wondering is, what is considered "normal" for this set? Mine is in a small room ~ 13' X 11', I sit 10' or so away from the tv. With darker content the panel produces very little electrical noise (basically have to be right beside it, if you want to hear anything). Under brighter screens, with volumn muted, I can easily hear the tv from my watching position (if your ffwd'ing commercials, its easy to know which one are light/bright screens). At night when I listen at lower volumns through the tv, the noise is sometimes heard above the audio as well. If I'm listening at louder levels during the day, its not normally noticed. Is this considered normal for this set or did I happen to get a panel thats louder then the norm?
Also, had a question regarding contrast. I was playing with my Spears & Munsil calibration disk & looking at the contrast pattern, if I wanted to have it calibrated all the way up to peak white (254 level on this disk/pattern), I actually had to lower the stock contrast in the THX Cinema mode I have been using. For proper setting, I ended up with a contrast of 42. When looking online that seems extremely low compared to what most have it set to for night viewing but when I look at the demo material on the disk, have been watching Band of Brothers blue ray, or HD Satellite & the picture still looks great. Is this typical or are others only calibration to reference white (234 level on this disk)? I haven't had a bright sunny day yet & my room isn't that bright, but so far with daylight or the room lights turned on, the THX Daytime setting looks washed out/way too bright.
Owners have reported everything from dead quiet to load buzzing. Mine is in the dead quiet camp. To me that means its just barely audible on a full white screen in a dead silent room from less than 3 feet away. From my normal viewing position its inaudible in a dead silent room. If you turn on the volume at even a low level (I have mine volume set at 25) the power supply buzz is not detectable unless you stick your head behind the TV. At a volume setting of 25 on the evening news I have measured peaks from speech at about 54 dB at 3 feet from the center of the screen. My SPL meter has a minimum of 50 dB. I have stuck this thing 2 inches away from the top left corner at the rear of the TV on a white screen and it doesn't move the needle.
Most of my viewing is in the evening. I usually have one torchiere floor lamp turned on that gives full room illumination that I can read with. The THX Cinema mode looks nice; deep color saturation, clear whites, and deep blacks with great contrast but I certainly wouldn't want it any brighter. During the daytime, the image is a bit washed out but acceptable. I prefer the C-Net settings but overall the image is similar to THX Cinema. I tried the Black-Ops settings, but its just to bright for me. These may be better in the daytime but for my usual evening viewing, I found them too much. The THX Bright Room mode is just too harsh for anything less than high-noon in a greenhouse
I think they gave us this mode to try give as good as PQ as possible in a semi-torch mode. Game Mode, that's just scary I personally have never had much luck with disk set-ups. Even after optimizing the test screens the overall image is usually "not so good" and I end up tweaking the picture back to what looks better. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the C-Net settings with just a little tweaking.
