Official Panasonic VT50 owners thread - Page 324

Short of hiring a professional calibrator, I found wmwilker's calibration settings the best out of the 2 or 3 different custom settings I've tried. They can be found in the "VT50 settings" thread.
Edited by cssnms - 1/28/13 at 10:29am

Same here. I have a huge picture window to the left of me in my viewing (living) room. My system was calibrated by Jeff Meier and I feel it is plenty bright on my ISF Day setting. Panel brightness is at Mid with his settings.

Has anyone had any issues with Netflix on their VT50's? When I am watching a movie, the quality fluctuates between High HD and Low SD every few minutes or so. It's very distracting. I have a 50Mb-down and 10Mb-up cable connection so there's no reason I shouldn't be at High HD all the time. I have tried both wireless and wired connections and see similar results. The strange thing is that if I use the Netflix app on my Panasonic DMP-BDT220 I have no problems achieving High HD with no visible drops in quality over WiFi. It's as if the Netflix app on the TV needs to be updated. Has anyone else seen this?

What are "yellow pages"??

I agree, 3D on the plasma is much more cinema like.

Just wanted to share a photo showing some reflections since some people have asked about it.

I will have to try some more blue rays to check out the picture more.
I am using the same HDMI cable (not sure if cables can make a difference) to connect to the TV when I had the Samsung and now the Plasma for what every reason just not not seem very crisp....If a plasma is not as sharp as a LED....I can maybe understand that, but I would think it still should be very crisp.
When watching the VT50 I'm not sure if my eyes are going crazy, but some parts of the move look sharp when its a close up but then other parts look a bit dull.

Would the panel being not sharp or crisp mean it could be defective??? I'm not saying its that bad, just when I swapped out the samsung LED to this plasma I'm not seeing the "wow factor" so far.... I played the new Call of Duty and that did look pretty good...my issue is with regular TV watching (which is what we do most of the time)

For brightness, when playing around with the different picture settings this tv is really bright and not dim so that is not the area I am questioning.

This is a tricky one. I believe you will get more of a "sense of sharpness" when comparing your LED to the plasma, but I truly believe there is much more picture detail in the plasma (if that makes sense), especially in the darker scenes. Overall what people say is true...you will get a more film-like, cinema experience from plasma vs led. For me, it's all about the cinema experience so I am very happy with my move from a Samsung UN60D7000 to the VT50.

There is a definite difference between an LED picture and a plasma one, I find plasma to be more natural looking but not everyone prefers that. You might have stated this earlier in your posts but how many hours do you have on your tv ? Takes a couple hundred ours for the phospers to really settle in the pic does improve quite a bit. So folks have complained about 720p content looking soft, what resolution are you seeing the issue at ?

I know what you are talking about here. My VT50 seemed to be "soft" in certain scenes and crisp as can be in others. My older, lesser model Samsung seemed to be more consistent. I will say that the VT50 gets much better with time. I noticed my picture got much better around the 200hr mark.

Calibration also seems to help quite a bit.

I also noticed detail improving with time, plenty sharp and clear.

Hello all, I went to my local BB yday after doing lots of research about the tc-p55vt50 to take a look at it. Bottom line, it will be delivered this Friday, and BB gave me their online price which was $100 less than the in store price. So, I've learned much reading these forums, I'm reading them backwards, and I'm on page 260. Lots of great hints on what to do, what to look for and mention of slides to test for dead pixels. Speaking of this, would anyone be so kind to send the link or tell me the page where I can find the slides, I'm starting to go stare crazy reading the forum. I live in the Lehigh Valley PA, and it will be pretty cold this Friday, so, not sure if I'll be able to power it up when the BB boys drop it off. And if anyone of you is feeling really ambitious, what would be the top 5 or 10 things you would do related to this plasma, I'd really appreciate your summarized comments. I'm moving my LG to another room, and I'm really looking forward to my new plasma. Thanks very much for any comments/information you care to provide, now back to page 259 in the forum!

PS Sorry that I posted this as a new thread, I wanted it in the owners thread.

One thing I see alot of with the VT50 is image retention, though not as bad as the VT30. For those that say they don't get it on their VT50, then they probably aren't looking for it. I've owned Panasonic plasmas over the years and have had two VT50's, both that get image retention easily. However, it is only temporary as it should be and only noticeable on the color slides if I go right up to the screen looking for it. From viewing distance, you can turn on the color slids and not see any sign of IR. A good sign though was when watching an NHL game on the local Fox Sports Net and they have their really bright Fox Sports logo in the upper right of the screen this year. After the game, I could easily see this logo when right in front of the screen on the slides, however, after 10 mins of watching something else, the logo was completly gone and no longer visable. I anticipated IR from that logo and thought it could be pretty stubborn to go away, but if it clears that easily, then there is no issure with IR.

Re: Sharpness in LCD

LCD's aren't able to produce a good picture without heavy image manipulation/processing. One of the things they do is increase the acutance to a point that is sometimes an 'overshoot' situation. The reason they do so is that increased acutance and sharpness can, to a degree, increase the perceived contrast ratio of an image. On the LCD the effect is done quite well....until it isn't of course. If you are like me, you'll start to see all the scenes where it isn't done well and that will distract you from your viewing experience. This tv on the other hand is like watching a series of well exposed photographs (source quality issues excepted of course).

Thanks everyone for the replies...
I got the TV on Saturday so I only got maybe 20 hours on it now. I got it through BB and I am a silver member so I should qualify for the free calibration...I need to call them about that.
While at work today I left it on HBO since many say that is a good channel to get it burned in.
I've read that many use slides or use a good channel so I just decided to leave it on HBO all day today.
After watching TV for the night I did the white/black scroll and I did not see any burn in images.....so that is good.

So is the idea to let it run a few hundred hours and the picture should get better in time?

I would wait until you have at least 200 hours before calibration as it needs time to stabilize. The picture will greatly improve during this time. I would try using one of the posted Custom settings until calibration. Also, make sure they only calibrate the custom mode, not in the service menu.

That is not unique to the VT. A lot of people have had the same issue on their ST including me.

One other thing to check is to make sure you set the bandwidth manager on your Netflix account itself e.g., should be set to "Best Quality"
http://support.netflix.com/en/node/87#gsc.tab=0

I had Best Buy calibrate my TV, they made it worse. I had them do it because it was free. Take my advice and have someone reputable do it.

Did you use your 3X rewards coupon for your purchase???

Good post! Should help other people that are scared of plasma's solely for the IR (like I was tbh). It really is an 'invisible' issue from a normal viewing perspective. I find it funny in retrospect that I bought an LCD with visible clouding, flashlighting, and vertical banding, only so I could avoid the possibility of IR. Even more ridiculous given your post highlighting that the IR is mostly invisible when it happens to begin with!

Evaluating on slides is responsible for 90% of the hysteria here in regards to IR. Why would you even care abut something you cant see during normal viewing, also a lot of the uniformity banding complaints are based on what people see on slides not real world content viewing, ludicrous imo.

LED/LCD = Simulated picture while plasma is not.

That's why led and LCD "appear" to be sharper.

I just got my 55" VT50 to replace my Pansonic TH-58PZ800U and I am loving it so far. My biggest problem is that it looks too small now, I should have gone larger, it's just a shame that the next size up was 65" and it was $1000 more. This one just looks so much smaller, mostly due to it being so much less bulky.

I got it delivered last Tuesday and had to wait until this weekend to mount it and actually use it...that was very painful for me. Thrilled with the way that it looks so far and I know that it will get even better as I break it in, just like my other one did. I will say that I don't care at all about 3D and if I had a choice in this set, I would not have gotten it, however, I am still disappointed that it didn't come with any glasses. Now I will not ever even try it out since there is no way that I will go out of my way to pay extra for glasses.

I did get 2x rewards...I did see the 3x in the mail, but with buying the Samsung in December, exhanging 3 of them, and then deciding on trying this plasma....I got way too much paper work..lol

I thought I was told that Best Buy contracts out the calibration....is that true?
I live south of Tucson in Az.....anyone know who/what company is out here that calibrates tvs?? I will also give BB a call to see what they say.

Best Buy geek squad did mine. Do yourself a favor and select one of the handful of calibrators that this forum highly recommends and try to catch them on "tour". I am lucky enough to live pretty close to Jeff Meier and he came out to my house on a Saturday. My TV looks amazing.

I just brought home my GT50 and I want to make sure I check it out thoroughly, I am guessing the list of what is "Wrong" out of the box with these TVs is somewhat consistent up the line and the VT thread sees much more traffic and probably draws out those with a fine eye for detail. What are the things I need to look for early on to know if I need to return this TV?

Excessive buzzing would be about the only thing that would bug me. I've had IR and it went away, so that doesn't really bother me anymore or I should say I've learned to calm my OCD.

I mean if you hold your head up to the back of the set and hear a slight buzzing, that is normal...plasmas will buzz, just some louder than others. Also, bright screens tend to amplify buzzing too...nature of the beast.

Also, you can check for dead pixels or screen uniformity issues.

Bottom left corner of glass. Look for finger prints or hand prints on the inside of the glass. This has been a common problem among other users of the VT50 series. I haven't installed my VT50 yet. Waiting on room construction to be finished. I hope I don't encounter this problem. I wish you luck.