Official Panasonic VT50 owners thread - Page 160

Originally Posted by TopperMcFly 

That's right and that's why. My settings are for those looking more for pop than Cal. And trust me, the set takes several days of use before the richness shows up knocking. Kluken, give the set a bit more breaking in time and then try my settings. It can't hurt and I think you will be happy. Let us know how it goes and good luck.
As a side note. After realizing fully the zero need for a video processor, I am glad I tried the $900 Onkyo because it made me also realize that my Yamaha RX-V671 sounds just as good if not better and has all the bells and whistles I need. For the current price of $349, it may be the best value in my living room.

Originally Posted by YES90125 


I think I am going to purchase the Integra DHC-80.3. not for the video processing, but for the sound processing and the need for a pre-amp with updated Dolby HD and DTS HD processing. I currently have my 250 watt per channel Parasound Halo Amp hooked up to an old Sony receiver I purchased 13 years ago for $400.00.

Everytime I turn it on, I feel like I am comitting an Audiophonic Sin

Originally Posted by mnc 

I also live in the Atlanta area, and I would try contacting D-Nice first. No disrespect to any of those calibrators, but D really is one of the best around. When I finally get a new TV, he is the first one I will contact!

Originally Posted by kluken 

Who is D nice?

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

True - you just have to select the TV that offers you the best PQ and features for the content you view. If you seldom watch BluRays and high quality broadcast feeds, this TV may not be the one for you... But if you do consider BluRay and high quality broadcast important to you, I don't believe there is a better TV on the market today...

Originally Posted by technut7 

Where is the scroll bar found?

Originally Posted by YES90125 

I think I am going to purchase the Integra DHC-80.3. not for the video processing, but for the sound processing and the need for a pre-amp with updated Dolby HD and DTS HD processing. I currently have my 250 watt per channel Parasound Halo Amp hooked up to an old Sony receiver I purchased 13 years ago for $400.00.
Everytime I turn it on, I feel like I am comitting an Audiophonic Sin

Originally Posted by flmsrgnt 
I can add edge enhancement as Low Medium and High. The SR6006 allows for edge enhancement with a 12 point scale.

Even low looks crisper but it also adds artifacts and makes the image look harsh. I notice (after hooking up my AVR) that ALL my HD cable programming has significantly improved sharpness, but does not feel or look "harsh". ALL HD cable programming won't be "as sharp as a tac", but everything IS significantly sharper compared to not using the AVR. The SR6006's default setting for edge enhancement is zero (off), but even at zero, the sharpness is much better. However, as I increase the edge enhancement, I do begin to see artifacting from my normal seating distance (11 feet from nose to TV), but only at the highest values.

But set on low, the positives almost outweigh the negatives. My feeling is, the results I get with the SR6006's edge enhancement at zero, the positives most certainly outweigh the negatives. It only got better when I applied some DNR and edge enhancement (EE only to the level that I could begin seeing artifacting from 11 feet; then backed down two clicks). Maybe my TWC signals are much worse than your DirecTV. BTW - My DVR is a new Cisco 8642HDC.

Out of either processor I have tried, it is not possible to make the image any sharper without introducing harshness and artifacts although not to obvious on low. I assume you mean "any sharper" than what you can achieve when using an external VP.

Passing 1080P directly to the set has never once shown me to be of any benefit or proven to be doing a better job than the set itself. I have not hooked up any other device to the SR6006 as of yet. But I was pleasantly stunned with PQ with 1080P Blu-ray direct to the TV from my PS3.

The Onkyo did not feel right to me for other than video reasons, and is already boxed up. I much appreciate your review (and opinion) of the Onkyo AVR. It makes me feel more comfortable with keeping the SR6006.

Of all the testing I have done with these processors, I am much more confident in claiming that my particular setup has zero issues with 1080i and the image being produced is about as pure and clean as I have seen in a television. Through my testing/evaluation before the AVR (and when my calibrator did some follow-up testing last week), there were no objectionable issues with "good" 1080i signals fed to the VT50. For me, it is how the PQ suffers when the VT is fed a lousy cable signal. Now that the AVR is processing my lousy cable signals, I can sit back and enjoy HD programming (which is about 85 - 90% of my viewing).

Thanks for all your helpful efforts.

Originally Posted by Michael2000 

The complaints I have seen about this are from people who did NOT do a direct side-by-side comparison test to TVs of similar quality. The ones who did the side-by-side comparison tests found the picture as good or better than the other sets, even with lower quality input.
If you put poor quality video into a TV which you have been putting in good quality video, and the TV is capable of doing an excellent job of displaying good quality video, then naturally, the bad quality video is going to look really bad. in comparison. If you take a mediocre TV, and put bad or good quality video in, it will not look a lot different.
Michael

Originally Posted by DrRx 

The 80.3 is an great choice. I have the Onkyo equivalent (5509) that I am pairing with a NAD Master Series M25 7-channel amp, and I am likewise amazed every time I turn it on. And certainly don't be afraid to to use the video processing features of the Integra. While I bypass my Onkyo's video processing with my Oppo-95 (I use the Onkyo's "Direct" mode), I use it without fail with my HD cable feed to my 65VT50 and notice a definite improvement in overall video quality - both color saturation and especially sharpness - using just the default settings of the Onkyo. For me, at least, it upgrades the quality of my 1080i cable signal to look very close (not the same though) to native bluray 1080p. The SD cable signals are still a lost cause howevere, but I rarely ever watch those channels. In fact I fully agree with the conclusions flmsrgn posted below a day or so ago regarding his experiences with a SR6006 in response to Toppers video processor experiment.
[/B]
Let me know if you agree (or not) once you hook up your 80.3.
BTW, another huge YES fan here ............ guess that gives away my age a little

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

I am doing a side by side comparison right now with my 60 inch Pioneer Elite KURO and I can tell you it blows away the Panasonic 65GT50 when it comes to poorer quality broadcasts - there is simply NO comparison.
When it comes to BluRay and high quality broadcast the Panasonic is right up there with the KURO and even better in some respects, i.e. whiter whites, brighter, etc. And the 3D is very addicting...
I have owned 60 inch TVs for many years and I cannot remember a TV over the last 7-8 years ( before my KURO I was buying a TV just about every year ) that was as bad as this Panasonic when it comes to less than perfect quality sources. The dithering ( or whatever you want to call the noise ) is unwatchable whenever the source is not a high quality source.

Originally Posted by JimP 

What "poor" quality content are you watching?

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

I tend to not watch "poor" quality content and therefore I can live with ( if I choose to ) this TV.
But for example, most of the movies being broadcast on cox cable on HBO HD, Showtime HD, etc.
A specific example occuring right now ( though by far not the worse I have seen ) is Highlander : The Final Dimension on Showtime Extreme HD. Watching it with THX Bright room and I can see tons of noise in just about every darker scene ( does not even have to be that dark ). Switching the HDMI cable over to the KURO shows a magnitude ( not just a little better but a great deal better ) improvement in noise level ( absence there of ).
It seems like many people are reporting these issues so why are so many others in denial? The TV has great strenghts and some severe flaws. This is the case with just about any TV. Pick the TV that meets your needs the best and enjoy it. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there is not excessive noise being displayed. I don't even remember my first Samsung DLP ( I owned the first 1080p DLP model that hit the market ) having anywhere near this amount of noise in the picture...

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

I tend to not watch "poor" quality content and therefore I can live with ( if I choose to ) this TV.
But for example, most of the movies being broadcast on cox cable on HBO HD, Showtime HD, etc.
A specific example occuring right now ( though by far not the worse I have seen ) is Highlander : The Final Dimension on Showtime Extreme HD. Watching it with THX Bright room and I can see tons of noise in just about every darker scene ( does not even have to be that dark ). Switching the HDMI cable over to the KURO shows a magnitude ( not just a little better but a great deal better ) improvement in noise level ( absence there of ).
It seems like many people are reporting these issues so why are so many others in denial? The TV has great strenghts and some severe flaws. This is the case with just about any TV. Pick the TV that meets your needs the best and enjoy it. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there is not excessive noise being displayed. I don't even remember my first Samsung DLP ( I owned the first 1080p DLP model that hit the market ) having anywhere near this amount of noise in the picture...

Originally Posted by Michael2000 

The complaints I have seen about this are from people who did NOT do a direct side-by-side comparison test to TVs of similar quality. The ones who did the side-by-side comparison tests found the picture as good or better than the other sets, even with lower quality input.
If you put poor quality video into a TV which you have been putting in good quality video, and the TV is capable of doing an excellent job of displaying good quality video, then naturally, the bad quality video is going to look really bad. in comparison. If you take a mediocre TV, and put bad or good quality video in, it will not look a lot different.
Michael

Originally Posted by YES90125 

I noticed that most suggested settings have sharpness at 0. Does anyone have their set higher and notice a difference in quality? Does it make the picture any less soft and more LED like?

Originally Posted by kluken 


Who is D nice?

Originally Posted by PhilH930 

I just posted concerns that I have in the VT50 settings thread, but wondered if anyone here can suggest a way to improve an issue to my eye. In summary, I'm finding my picture a little dull and lifeless. I would love the set to pop a little more, appearing more vivid and bright if you will. Right now, it appears a little washed out and darker than my 6 year old Samsung plasma. For reference I am using Toppers settings, but with contrast, brightness, and color adjusted to 84, 63, and 58 respectively. Any additional increases beyond this just seem to wash the picture out more rather than adding more intensity to the image.
On a slight side note, I've been using the DIsney WOW bluray daily (both daytime and evening), and while the bluray footage looks good, the contrast slide on advanced setup remains a problem. Even with contrast at '100' (a setting I'm not comfortable using), the stars on the calibration slide that should be invisible are clearly visible to my eye. Increasing brightness helps, but to the detriment of the overall picture due to washing the image further (more grey).

Originally Posted by Fanaticalism 

What do you have panel brightness set to? Your brightness setting seems a bit high as well.

Originally Posted by NateDoggg 

I use the Scrolling Bar if I watch anything with static images for a good length of time (like a 2 hour movie on FX). I just run it once (15 minutes), and it always seems to wipe my screen clean. I know it's probably not necessary to use as much as I do, but I am being very careful with this set.
Just be sensible with it. Don't leave it on one channel with a static image for an entire day. Don't leave the pause button on your XBox for 8 hours straight. Don't leave a snapshot/picture on the screen for hours on end. And, if you are like me and want to be extra careful, run the scrolling bar if you are unsure.

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

I tend to not watch "poor" quality content and therefore I can live with ( if I choose to ) this TV.
But for example, most of the movies being broadcast on cox cable on HBO HD, Showtime HD, etc.
A specific example occuring right now ( though by far not the worse I have seen ) is Highlander : The Final Dimension on Showtime Extreme HD. Watching it with THX Bright room and I can see tons of noise in just about every darker scene ( does not even have to be that dark ). Switching the HDMI cable over to the KURO shows a magnitude ( not just a little better but a great deal better ) improvement in noise level ( absence there of ).
It seems like many people are reporting these issues so why are so many others in denial? The TV has great strenghts and some severe flaws. This is the case with just about any TV. Pick the TV that meets your needs the best and enjoy it. But don't fool yourself into thinking that there is not excessive noise being displayed. I don't even remember my first Samsung DLP ( I owned the first 1080p DLP model that hit the market ) having anywhere near this amount of noise in the picture...

Originally Posted by tonydeluce 

I am doing a side by side comparison right now with my 60 inch Pioneer Elite KURO and I can tell you it blows away the Panasonic 65GT50 when it comes to poorer quality broadcasts - there is simply NO comparison.
When it comes to BluRay and high quality broadcast the Panasonic is right up there with the KURO and even better in some respects, i.e. whiter whites, brighter, etc. And the 3D is very addicting...
I have owned 60 inch TVs for many years and I cannot remember a TV over the last 7-8 years ( before my KURO I was buying a TV just about every year ) that was as bad as this Panasonic when it comes to less than perfect quality sources. The dithering ( or whatever you want to call the noise ) is unwatchable whenever the source is not a high quality source.

Originally Posted by blwegrzyn 

So after I pulled trigger on 55vt50 at best buy i got to page 22 of this thread and it seems to me that if one is not going to invest in pro calibration this tv is not worth getting and i would be better off with just getting gt or st ? Please help as I need to make decision if I should cancel my order and get maybe cheaper model?
Thx

Originally Posted by Michael2000 

What poorer quality broadcasts are you guys looking at, ie. channel (TNT, CNN, etc.), media source (Time Warner Cable, FIOS, etc), and show name?
I was just down at BB Magnolia this evening, and the Magnolia person changed through a number of Directv channels looking for bad quality video. I did not see any excessive noise or dithering on any channel or show. In fact, I was surprised how clean it looked after hearing all these stories. It looked just as clean as the Samsung plasmas, and not much different than the Elite.
Michael

The VT50 passed our 1080i deinterlacing test with 3:2 pull-down set to On, but not when we used the default Auto (and, despite what the menu explanation says, this setting does affect HDMI sources).

Originally Posted by sheshechic 


Exactly. I have never owned a tv that ever showed so much noise. I've also never seen an image with noise displayed the way this one does it either, that's not to say that it hasn't been displayed like this though... I've just not seen it in all my 50+ years.

It is their compulsion to defend or deny this flaw that I find unrealistic in a way that makes them seem to be sheeple.

Originally Posted by TopperMcFly 

Your comments are rude and uncalled for. You have done nothing but bash this set and people that like it. Kind of funny to me that you still own one. You were one of the main culprits in spreading the"bad pan" hysteria. Not many people deny the dithering issue including myself. But that is very different than claiming the set is unable to resolve 1080i properly. Instead of blasting the set and the people here, how about you try actually contributing?