The Official Panasonic U50/54 Owners' Thread - Page 27

I'm kinda loving it right now. The color definitely seems more accurate. I wanted to give it a few days to see if I still feel that way and I'm happy to say I do!

I was wondering if anyone has encountered what I am dealing with. When connected to my PS3 whether I am watching movies, hulu plus or playing games at times the screen will stutter and the sound will cut out. Other times just the sound will cut out (this has been happening much more often). Playing games seems to cause the sound problem to happen more frequently then watching movies.

Another strange thing is my picture settings have reset to default multiple times. After a noticeable screen stutter, the picture looks quite a bit different so I check the settings and sure enough they are reset to default. I have tried both hdmi cables I have tried hooking up my PS3 into slot hdmi 1 and 2. This is within the first 24 hrs after opening my brand new tv.

I don't seem to be dealing with these issues at all while connected through my hd antenna watching tv.

I really like them too.

I've been using them for a couple of weeks now, and the color definitely has more "pop" to it, while still appearing mostly accurate to my eye.

Does anyone know a good dark room calibration?

Yeah, in fact, it's made me reconsider my adjustments. I'm trying a lower contrast (with slightly higher brightness) for a while. Not that color has any real effect on contrast, but now that the color does pop more (as you say) I feel I can bring down the contrast a bit to see how it works.

Yeah, I brought my contrast down a few clicks. I now have contrast at 80 with my brightness at 55.

I'm trying mine at 83 and 58 (my living room is a bit brightly lit).

I have my PC hooked into my set for games. They look absolutely incredible and vibrant, especially when I'm able to pump them out at full detail, however, I can't optimize for tearing. I think the refresh rate on the set is too low. Is there a way I can modify the refresh rate on the set? couldn't find anything in the options.

Shouldn't V-Sync take care of that?

Thats the thing, still tearing with vsync

I'm not sure what the problem is then, but it shouldn't have anything to do with the refresh rate. I assume the same game doesn't tear on another monitor?

I was looking into this as a replacement for my Sammy PN63C8000. However I couldn't find this model on Panny's site at all. TC-60PU54. Why is this. I can't find any info on this model

I found it listed as TC-60U50 on Panny's site. I am assuming that this is the same as above
Edited by Jnipz - 2/17/13 at 4:12pm

Yes it is a U50

Does this model have ISF Cal options?

Can someone help me understand why many of the advanced picture settings on my P50U50 (like 24p direct in) are 'grayed out' and I cannot change them, and perhaps how I can unlock those settings?

You have to be playing a 24p source to access that

It can be calibrated in the service menu only

Any setting that is greyed out is not significant to the current source that you are viewing.

How can I access that menu?

Unless you have a meter and cal software you'd be shooting in the dark

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1412033/the-official-panasonic-ut50-settings-issues-thread/600

check post 601
in short
hold vol down on display (not on remote)
press "info" 3 times on remote
you are now on your own. Be careful.

The stock colors on this TV are so messed up, any calibration he can do 'shooting in the dark' would be better than what Panasonic picked for him. I'm certain the manufacturer tuned this TV to be unappealing and hid the color options in the service menu to make the higher end models pop better, yet they all use very similar panels and technology underneath. There's absolutely no reason these settings need to hidden in a "Service Menu" while on the higher end models, the same settings are out in the open for the consumer to adjust.

(What's the point of doing a lot of R&D to make an inferior panel at a lower pricepoint when you can just detune the higher models and produce only 1 product...economies of scale.)

The way to access that menu is:

1. Hold the physical volume button down ( - ) on the TV itself
2. Press 'info' 3 times on the remote. Everything from now on is done on the remote.
3. 'Start Adjustment Menu' will flash, then you will see an odd looking menu. The titles on the Left panel are tabs of the menu, you want WB-ADJ
4. Press '1' on the remote twice to get to the WB-ADJ (white balance adjust) menu.
5. Press '7' to scroll/select the temperature you want to adjust and '9' to scroll through vivid, normal, cinema. I choose Cinema and Warm. (This equates to Warm2 in the regular menu, don't ask me why)
6. Press '3' to scroll through R/G/B cut and R/G/B drive. You can adjust each value with +/- volume on the remote.

Note 1: scroll though and write down your settings before making adjustments, in case you ever want the stock look back.
Note 2: Leave allcut/alldrive alone. They are calculated by adjusting the other values, you will undo your changes by messing with these.
Note 3: In case you don't understand hex values, 0 is the lowest value, FF is the highest value. 80 is right in the middle.
Note 4: I suggest hooking a laptop up to your HDMI and cloning the screens, then viewing a photograph to have a comparison

Below are my suggestions to tune it by eye:

7. Place Rcut, Gcut, and Bcut all at the middle (values of 80)
8. Place G-drv at 80.
9. Adjust R-drv and B-drv until things look normal to you.

Note 5: I like mine a little cooler, I have R-drv set to 7D and B-DRV set to 65, then I had to back G-drv to 7A to get rid of a green tinge to people's skin.

10. Turn television off by remote or physical button. Your new color settings will be saved under the Color temp and Video mode you set. (So mine is set to Cinema/Warm2,Color 40, Contrast 85, Brightness 50 +/- 5 depending on the movie/source).
Edited by nveleven22 - 2/18/13 at 12:01pm

If you have the Disney WOW video, does it have tools to set the service menu options. Getting into and adjusting the service menu options is quite easy, but when I used Anikuno07 settings, I did not notice an improvement for my p60u50 unit. In fact i went back to stock settings. He did mention every TV might need different settings (I believe his tv was ut50).

I've tried about all the settings suggested in this thread, but at times I am fighting detail in dark scenes. I watched the Good Wife last night, and it seemed like they shot the scenes in dark. (I than watched it again on an older panny plasma it was not quite as dark..

Update:

My first encounter with image retention/burn-in. I use this plasma to replace an LCD for my HTPC. I've read that plasmas don't suffer image retention as badly as they used to so I compromised my precautionary side.

I have pixel orbiter off for best possible image, but for the first time ever, I have a screensaver enabled in Windows 7 on (ribbons), and I've got the Windows taskbar on autohide to minimize any static images. Too bad I forgot about the toolbar in Firefox, I really should have seen this coming.

I spend an hour or two a day on the internet on my HTPC and as of now, the Title/Taskbar of firefox is retained very faintly. On a pure white screen, I can see a faint "Firefox" logo at the top left corner where the orange menu link was located and the Minimize/Restore/Close buttons at the top right corner. Both are extremely faint and cannot be seen from my seating position, even on a pure white screen, but up close they are perceptible.

New Precautions:

Latest version of Firefox with the Sytlish add-on installed - along with this http://userstyles.org/styles/5449/scrollbar-hidden-hide-scrollbars-totally

Now in fullscreen browsing mode (F11) and with the add-on installed, I've got no static images anywhere on the display while browsing the internet. No taskbar, no title window, no scrollbar, nothing.

As for the retained images, I'll have to find a video of some random static to get rid of this efficiently and effectively. If anyone can help out, I'd be much obliged.
Edited by nveleven22 - 2/19/13 at 10:38am

Tearing occurs if Vsync is turned on and the games puts out less frames than the screen refresh rate. The purpose of Vsync is to stop tearing if the game has highers frames than the refresh rate thus bringing them down to the actual refresh, for example 60 frames for a 60hz tv. So if your refresh rate is higher than the frames it's giving, Vsync should be off.

Panasonic sent a tv repair guy over to fix the buzzing and to check on the dithering/grain or whatever Im seeing in alot of programming. They had to take my TV and I just got it back (took like a week, they had to order board). They said my TV had the new screws in it already so they just tightend them and put a new board in it. He had me turn it on while still here and I was happy at first because the buzz was alot lower it seemed. Not long after he left I had to change the picture settings because they were reset and then I started watching different programs and the buzz came back louder than ever, its a bummer because that wasn't my main issue with this set but I mentioned it might be louder than it should be so they said they would check it out, well whatever they did made it worse so now the buzz is my main issue. The dithering/grain look is still there sometimes but Im starting to think its normal for this TV and other plasmas because they let me use a loaner that was a Panasonic Plasma, it was a 2008 model and it was just as bad if not worse on cleaning up grain/snow etc....

Just thought I would let people know that if you have a u50 that was manufactured later in 2012 it probably has the new screws, so all they can do is tighten them and it could make the buzzing louder. I would hate to call them again but I might just have to, not sure there is much else they could do, maybe loosen the screws back to where they were before I guess.

Does the buzzing happen on a pure white or overly bright screen? That's pretty much normal with every plasma. Sounds odd to me the technician didn't tell you that on the spot.

Next, if dithering is REALLY an issue from over 6 feet away, then you have your brightness/contrast too high. I used to be able to see the dithering until I turned the brightness down and used the TV for many hours; it gets better. Up close, I can certainly see it. But using HDMI from my HTPC, looking at this page now, everything looks as clean as an LCD. If I get up close ( less than 3 feet) I notice dancing pixels.

Buzzing is normal for a plasma on bright scenes, but some TV's buzz louder due to having defective parts or a lack of quality control, etc. As for dithering, it's not really a plasma issue at all, that relates entirely to the source content you're watching. Having brightness or contrast too high will only increase dithering in the sense that the image is bright enough to spot the dithering more easily. I'm not saying dithering doesn't exist, but it's only a negative because it brings out all the flaws in the source content you're watching. You can't be too hard on plasma though, you're LED is going to look bad too if the source content is poor quality. I consider anything on network cable to be poor content, with the exception of some nature shows, etc. It could be due to the fact I have TWC but in general cable broadcasting is not the best quality. On a clean, crisp picture, you won't see any dithering unless you get right in front of the TV.

Before they worked on it, the buzzing was really only annoyingly noticable on bright screens, now its bad constantly. It makes me want to pull out my freakin hair, its a high pitch noise I hear when Im 10 feet or so back from TV, almost like a constant ringing in my ear and once I turn TV off its like a relief, a breath of fresh air so to speak. Its too bad because like I said it wasn't a major issue before they messed with it.

Yeah Im getting use to the dithering, I was just freaked out at first because this is my first Plasma and I thought I had a major problem. I first noticed it when starting a BD or a game and the screen whould lighten up and there would be a static type look for a few seconds but it would always go back to a pure black screen. Then I noticed in some BD and Dish Programs would have alot of grain in the background, it wasn't on all BD so the tech said it was the bluray dvds that was causing all the grain. I guess I expect a 1080p bluray to look pretty smooth. The first 2 blurays I rented when I got this u50 were expendables2 and MIB3 and expendables was just plain ugly to watch, grain all over. MIB3 wasn't as bad but some scenes were horrible. I have watched some blurays that look pretty damn good with lil to no grain so........ Im thinkin it was more to do with the blurays than the TV itself

Sorry about the buzzing....get another tech.

Easy way to figure out if its dithering or film grain: When you're unsure: Pause the frame, then look closely at the screen. Did the grainyness stop moving around? It's film grain, and inherent to the video, not the signal, not the television, and not the decoding. Did the grainyness and dancing pixels continue even with a paused screen? That's dithering, and you want that to be a minimum without losing details at your seating position.

Entirely incorrect. Dithering has nothing to do with the source, refer to my way to pinpoint the difference between dither and film grain above.

And no, dithering doesn't bring out the flaw in the content, it's a technique to remedy a shortcoming (flaw) in the display technology. As much as we love our plasmas for their black levels, they have very bad color reproduction inherent to plasma. I think most panels are 6 bit in each channel (R/G/B); so in order to show the whole gamut of 32bit+ colors, they flash pixel colors inside, around, and alongside a static flat color to produce the illusion of a different shade from far away. The caveat: you have to be seated far enough away to not be able to distinguish individual pixels to not notice this technique. If you sit too close, you'll certainly notice the dancing pixels.

An LCD (CCFL or LED, whichever) however, are almost always true 32bit panels, and I've never seen one use a dither technique. You can get as close as you want to your laptop monitor...you won't see any dancing pixels. Pixels just 'are' the color the need to be on an LCD, and they stay static; a plasma has to fool you from far away to that it can produce that color. On top of that, whacky high brightness/contrast levels can make the effect overbearing, even from far away.

Pull up a digital picture you shot from a high megapixel camera and view it on your laptop/desktop, and then pull up the same image on your TV. Inspect them very closely; you'll notice the TV has flashing pixels and dither all over the place. You can't tell me that's the source material's grain, now can you?
Edited by nveleven22 - 2/21/13 at 7:50pm