Official Panasonic VT50 owners thread - Page 153

No. The "sharpest" picture will be in maximizing dynamic range short of clipping and you can do that yourself with a calibration disc.

I unboxed the DVD green last night and tried basically the same thing. I only messed with edge and detail enhancement. Now my objectivity was pretty much toast as the night progressed. But I wanted to give every aspect a fair shake as others are surely relying on our input. So here is what I have come up with which sounds similar to your results.

My example content that benefited most from adding these enhancements was Street Customs and Chopped. These shows are perfect examples of sometimes very crisp and sometimes soft shots. When adding detail enhancement, I have to admit that there was a noticeable increase in overall clarity. It is difficult to quantify the level of improvement, but I would be lying if the word Samsung did not come to mind. With that said, I also found that text was inversely affected and there were perceptible artifacts that were introduced at varying levels dependant on the amount of enhancement.

I did research the duo green and it does have the exact same anchor bay processor as the more expensive iduo.

My next test was to blindly turn the enhancement down until I saw all jaggies and obvious artifacts disappear. Each time, I would look at the setting and find myself back at zero, which is basically no enhancement at all. As someone else observed, it seems as though Samsung has opted to implement some form of detail enhancement which seems to be at the cost of introducing a slightly harsher image.

The reality is that in certain situations I did in fact prefer the sharper image even with the minor drawbacks just as you seem to be.

But I also find that in terms of de-interlacing, as hard as I have looked, I at no point could perceive a difference in pq or motion whether I let the set do it or if I had the processor do it. I do believe the set may exhibit some odd behavior with de-interlaceing, but I am not seeing it materialize in content.

What I got out of all of this is that I may keep the processor which is a tough pill to swallow. But my only serious issue is actually the dithering. Its hard to un-see it and it is pretty signifigant. I also had a reality check as to how badly compressed sat/cable content truly is.

Anyway, food for thought.
Edited by TopperMcFly - 7/19/12 at 7:50am

I've read reports of lower lag time Laptop > VT50 at 24-28ms but I question those numbers. My 40 & 90ms measurements were repeatable and there is also the problem of lag time to the laptop screen itself - the longer the lag time the lower the measured differential between laptop and TV. This is something I haven't seen discussed.

WARNING - I just clicked that link and my ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus immediately detected a malware threat and closed the connection !

I think your idea of the ST/Duo combo is the cat's pajamas.
1. 10 point Grayscale - the Lumagen beats it here with 20p but for the large increase in price it isn't worth it despite the fact that the VT (and probably ST) has problems at 5, 85, and 95% peak white.
2. The Grayscale controls also enable the ability to adjust Gamma.
3. Full, 3D CMS

Problems: First, the Duo patterns are around 25% of the screen size and ABL can be a problem. Solution: Use the small window patterns from one of the two available free discs. Secondly, the Duo remote changes calibration settings in .0001 increments AND pollutes the screen with 4 separate and simultaneous OSDs. What were they thinking????????

Fortunately there is a solution. I have a free calibration program (works like ControlCal) specifically for the Duo that 1) produces NO OSD, and 2) has selectable increments of .0001, .001, .01, .1, and 1.0000. With this program I cut full Duo calibration time by more than 90% - not kidding.

Here it is:
DVDO iScan Duo Control Panel.zip 160k .zip file

Edit: The zip also contains a ChromaPure shortcut. Just use the program file.

I am seeing the EXACT same thing. It has improved since I bought the set but still considerably softer than my Kuro. I've noticed that THX Bright Room amplifies the softness because of the gamma setting it is using. Yet, I can still see the softness in custom and THX Cinema.

I still don't get this. Put up a luma or chroma multiburst patterns and every 1080p pixel is clearly visible. Maybe, just maybe, it's the glass.

Anyone try hooking up a Hard Drive directly to a VT50? I know it can handle MKV files from an SD/USB flash drive, but it would be interesting to have a 3TB drive full of my uncompressed BluRay MKV rips ready to go if for no other reason I can free up shelf space. My wife said my office is starting to look like a blu ray rental store...

Has anyone tried increasing or decreasing the sharpness of your cable providers box and then the VT50s sharpness setting?

That's basically the idea that's being tossed around with the external processors your reading about in the past few pages.
Edited by SiGGy - 7/19/12 at 9:06am

It is not the glass. I am convinced the VT50 is not great at cleaning up poor-good cable/sat sources. Blu-ray looks fine.

I am not too bothered by it. I will say golf on ESPN looks great right now.
Edited by jbrady3324 - 7/19/12 at 9:32am

Wow, thanks. Now I know what patients feel like when I spew out the genetics of say, non-hodgkin's lymphoma, when they simply ask, 'why me, doc?'

Thanks for that cat's pajamas inference as well, however I am yet find myself a pair of those

I am strongly thinking of getting the lumagen radiance mini3D, or might chicken out, and get a cheaper DVDO. Is this something a pro calibrators routinely recommend employing for non-projector based home HT systems, and what is the level of expertise with tweaking these?

Going off-topic a little away from all the apparent problems of this set...

Has anyone adjusted GAME mode settings yet? And, if so, if you've got something you like could you post them? I am currently using the stock Game mode settings and while they are fine, I'm always looking for better.

Gamma can affect perceived sharpness.

Randy, have you measured the gamma response on your display?

I doubt many pro calibrators recommend VPs for panels very often. I have a Mini and love it but I bought it when I had a panel that only had 2 point adjustments. It is handy if you have your own calibration equipment but IMO it would be overkill for a VT50. That is unless you have a plenty of disposable cash. If you don't own your own calibration equipment then plan on spending about another $1000 on a decent meter and software. The rabbit hole is very deep.

A 2TB and smaller use a 512 byte LBA structure and 3TB use a 4kB structure. Current tv's can't address that type of drive. It's pretty much limited to PC's. Also you'd have to convert to Dolby Digital or lower or you won't get audio if it's encoded with DTS. I have a 3TB(usb 3.0) on my pc and stream MKV wirelessly to my tv using DLNA and 720p works well but 1080p can stutter. If you rip down to around 10GB 1080p may work.

Thanks for sharing that info - you saved me some screwing around time and I appreciate it.

Handbreak now has an Apple TV 3 compression setting, so I may just have it transcode the MKV as a 1080P MP4 and let Apple TV stream it. At least that way I could get my daughter's/wife's movies digital so they can find them easily via Apple TV and it would free up some space on my media shelf. They are far less obsessive about PQ than I am; that said, the AT3 setting produced really nice results when I saw it at a friends house and the streaming worked quite well. I will try this out tonight.

For my own stuff, I would want to keep it lossless, so the other option would be to hook the TV up directly to a dedicated media server ala the Micca/Dune/Popcorn Time. Maybe a project for later in the summer.

Thanks again!
Edited by Blackbelt Jones - 7/19/12 at 11:34am

I haven't tried plugging my drives directly into the tv, but I have a wdtv live and it will play anything I have thrown at it mkv, avi, DVD rips and even straight bluray rips Its really a great little box that also works as a media server for content on a hard drive plugged into it as well.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KOZNBW/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00

I ran in to those while hunting for media players last night - pretty amazing what $90 gets you these days! Good to know it works well for you. That said I am keen at throwing lossless video to the VT50 and HD audio to my receiver. Looks like the Dune HD line will fit the bill. Nice looking design as well.

After I spend some more time with the Apple TV 3 working with the VT50 I will post my observations. Early returns are very good.

Has anyone had success with using Component Input with the supplied breakout adapter (by success, I mean you get picture and sound)? Just for kicks, I wanted to see if there was any difference in PQ with cable programming if I used the Component output from my new TWC Cisco 8642 DVR to the VT50. I could not get an image on the display, but got the audio. I double and triple checked the cabling and connections on both box and TV, and all are correct and well connected. I tried both the Video and Comp option on the Component input source but only audio comes through the TV on both.

Well, my calibrator buddy came over to house to help with evaluating the 65VT50 using both the Spears & Munsil disc, and running some patterns (and such) from his own devices for interlace and sharpness tests (don't recall what the device is, but it was a pretty slick little unit). BTW - Aside from his own business as an ISF II certified calibrator, he is full time employed at a large LA based post-production facility as a video engineer. He wiThe VT50 did well because the sources were good. I then showed him what I am witnessing with the cable content, specifically the softness of the 1080i programming. He had no trouble seeing what I was seeing, and was quite surprised at the inferior crispness. I will be hooking up my new Marantz SR6006 (with the Anchor Bay ABT-2015 video processing chip) today to see what kind of results I can achieve with improved sharpness/deinterlacing.

FYI - Regarding broken CMS/Luminance Controls

Transcript from Panasonic dated Jul 19, 2012 12:44:51 PM
In response to question: Plasma HDTV
System: Welcome to Panasonic Chat. A transcript of this chat will be emailed to you once you disconnect.
Agent Ashlee R. says: Hello. How may I assist you?

Customer John says: Hello. I am an ISF Calibrator and have come across a client yesterday. I found the CMS controls to be useless and have rumor of a firmware fix? I need to know if there is a fix coming because my client wants to return the monitor for a Samsung.
Agent Ashlee R. says: there has not been any announcements of any Firm ware updates being released for the VT 50
Customer John says: That is extremely disappointing to hear. The functionality of these features worked on last years models. For a $3000.00+ monitor, without fixing the CMS controls, in theory the ISFccc portion of the monitor is not up to ISFccc standards and I will be contacting the president of ISF to inform him (if he isn't already aware) of the issue.
Agent Ashlee R. says: I do apologize for that
Customer John says: Can I get in contact with someone in the product development/sales side? There has to be more that "I am sorry"
Agent Ashlee R. says: product development no , sales dept yes at 1-800-405-0652

Thanks for sharing this. It's a real bummer to read that though. Not surprised .

BTW - Many thanks to ALL those who are (and have been) contributing toward the goal of better understanding and possibly resolving/addressing the softness issue ( as-well-as some of the other shortfalls). There is a lot I do appreciate and enjoy about my new VT50. I want to keep it; if I can resolve the softness issue when the set displays poorer quality cable/sat programming signals. I want to believe that eventually (and hopefully sometime in the near future) Panasonic will have a Firmware update to correct the CMS/Luminance control issues (and possibly other things). I know the VT50 will never be the perfect set, but nothing will or can ever be. I'm willing to live with some of the other shortfalls, as long as I can get an acceptably sharper result from an external video processor for my HD cable viewing.

How would you compare the vt50 to vt25 ? Is it a big upgrade or just incremental ?

Opinion only but I am pessimistic that they will do anything this year. I'm willing to bet any 'fix' will be on next year's set, if at all. (because of their announced intention of going to OLED with Sony)

It is a big upgrade

The improvement in CR is obvious.

The improvement in banding between gradations in luminance and color is much improved.

3D is the same to my eyes.

96 hz is improved quite a bit to my eyes, but some here may disagree.

Physically, it is thinner and lighter...definitely the thinnest plasma I've seen.

But basically, in the big picture of flat panels in the last 5 years it is incremental. I still enjoy my vt25.

Not sure about this years tv but all previous models can only accept 1080i over component not 1080p. I'd say they didn't change this feature.

My TWC box will only output below 1080P. Could not get picture at lower resolutions (480i, 720P and/or 1080i) via Component from DVR to the VT50.