The Official Panasonic VT50 Settings Thread - Page 9

Originally Posted by restricted3711 

Hey guys,
I actually had Geek Squad come out and calibrate my 65" VT50. I know probably a mistake but I took advantage of them offering a free calibration so I thought there was nothing to lose. The guy came out and only calibrated the settings in the service menu for the custom setting. He did not touch anything in the actual menu. He showed my the readings on his laptop which showed that he got it as close to 6500K as possible except for on the lowest IRE's. After he left I put in a calibration blu-ray and on the black level tests, the blacks have a brown/reddish tint to them. This even happens in the THX modes. Did he completely screw up the tv and if so can I get back into the service menu and reset what he did? Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by buzzard767 

There is no need to access the service menu for calibrating the Custom mode. Let me guess; he "calibrated" the 2 point grayscale in the service menu and didn't touch a thing in the user menu, or at least nothing beyond Contrast, Brightness, Color, and Tint. If so, he left 10p Grayscale, 10p Gamma, and the Color Management System, all in the User menu AND the only controls you nefed, untouched. Bad deal, even if it was free....

Originally Posted by restricted3711 

Hey guys,
I actually had Geek Squad come out and calibrate my 65" VT50. I know probably a mistake but I took advantage of them offering a free calibration so I thought there was nothing to lose. The guy came out and only calibrated the settings in the service menu for the custom setting. He did not touch anything in the actual menu. He showed my the readings on his laptop which showed that he got it as close to 6500K as possible except for on the lowest IRE's. After he left I put in a calibration blu-ray and on the black level tests, the blacks have a brown/reddish tint to them. This even happens in the THX modes. Did he completely screw up the tv and if so can I get back into the service menu and reset what he did? Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by PhilH930 

One week with the VT50 now, and I keep going back and forth on the picture. For reference, I am coming from a 42" 6 year old Samsung plasma which appeared to have a great picture. My main concerns with the VT50 are the following:
1) Picture a little dull and lifeless
I have been using Toppers settings which made a big difference to the display compared to the out of the box options. Also, I've continued to run Disney's WOW bluray to fine tune for my lighting conditions. Even with both of these, the TV just seems a little dark to me. I'd love for the colors to be more 'vivid', but not wash out the overall picture. The strange thing is on the Disney WOW blu ray, for the contrast tuning option, even testing contrast at '100' does not remove all the stars that should become invisible to my eye. Turning up brightness only appears to wash the picture out while making it brighter. Does anyone know of a way to manipulate the image to make it pop? Right now I'm running contrast at 84, brightness at 63, and color at 58, with all other settings match to Toppers post.
Perhaps the TV just needs more hours to break in? I've also ordered a new 15' cable to replace the 12' cable that is probably too short for what I am doing. While it carries 1080p (according to TV info), I did not look at the specs when ordering the 28 AWG 12' cable from monoprice, which they only spec up to 1080i. Perhaps a website error, who knows. Anyway, for what is really a 12' 6" gap (I've moved my receiver to accommodate the current 12' cable) I've gone ahead and purchased a 15' 24 AWG cable spec'd to 4K.
I've also started to doubt the set, wondering if it has a brightness issue.

Originally Posted by restricted3711 

Hey guys,
I actually had Geek Squad come out and calibrate my 65" VT50. I know probably a mistake but I took advantage of them offering a free calibration so I thought there was nothing to lose.

Originally Posted by donnymac51 

..The service menu has separate white balance settings for HD and SD which are both the same. If he only adjusted the HD you could put on an SD channel and go into the service menu and you will see your original settings. You would then need to put on an HD channel and now you would be able to change your HD settings back to the original. Of course you could always complain that your calibration looks like crap and ask that they reset it for you if they have the settings. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Tempest261 

I've said this a bunch of times, and no offense to Topper, but THIS is why sharing settings is pointless and foolish. This is especially true with new plasmas, which tend to drift very quickly. For instance, take a look at D-Nice's posted ST50 settings, both before and after his 200 hr panel aging. They're drastically different, and this is with his SAME sample panel.
You're going to have to have your specific set calibrated (ideally after 200+ hrs of usage) to get the most "pop" and accuracy out of this set. It's as simple as that. Short of the Kuros, these are some of the highest contrast-ratio Plasmas ever created, and if your old Samsung has more pop then your VT50, then it's because of your settings.
They may work for Topper, but unless you steal Topper's VT50, they aren't going to help you.

Originally Posted by PhilH930 

One week with the VT50 now, and I keep going back and forth on the picture. For reference, I am coming from a 42" 6 year old Samsung plasma which appeared to have a great picture. My main concerns with the VT50 are the following:
1) Picture a little dull and lifeless
I have been using Toppers settings which made a big difference to the display compared to the out of the box options. Also, I've continued to run Disney's WOW bluray to fine tune for my lighting conditions. Even with both of these, the TV just seems a little dark to me. I'd love for the colors to be more 'vivid', but not wash out the overall picture. The strange thing is on the Disney WOW blu ray, for the contrast tuning option, even testing contrast at '100' does not remove all the stars that should become invisible to my eye. Turning up brightness only appears to wash the picture out while making it brighter. Does anyone know of a way to manipulate the image to make it pop? Right now I'm running contrast at 84, brightness at 63, and color at 58, with all other settings match to Toppers post.
Perhaps the TV just needs more hours to break in? I've also ordered a new 15' cable to replace the 12' cable that is probably too short for what I am doing. While it carries 1080p (according to TV info), I did not look at the specs when ordering the 28 AWG 12' cable from monoprice, which they only spec up to 1080i. Perhaps a website error, who knows. Anyway, for what is really a 12' 6" gap (I've moved my receiver to accommodate the current 12' cable) I've gone ahead and purchased a 15' 24 AWG cable spec'd to 4K.
I've also started to doubt the set, wondering if it has a brightness issue.
2) The picture is very soft
Strangle enough, the picture seems sharper when viewing from an angle as opposed to straight on. I believe the filter might be the reason behind this. I can live with the softer picture though if I can get more pop out of the picture from issue 1 above.

Originally Posted by Tempest261 

...and if your old Samsung has more pop then your VT50, then it's because of your settings.
They may work for Topper, but unless you steal Topper's VT50, they aren't going to help you.

Originally Posted by JimP 

Peter
At the shootout, one of the calibrators mentioned that the VT50 didn't calibrate well using the blue filter technique.
I don't really understand why, but evidently there is a good reason.

Originally Posted by AvidHiker 

Very true, we have documented the same problems in the Samsung plasmas - calibrated color and white balance settings tend to be very different from set to set. The rest of the calibration and other settings are actually good to use as a starting point, but get yourself a test disc and do it right. It takes no more than 5 minutes to check your brightness, contrast, color, tint and sharpness with AVS HD 709, you can do it by eye, and it's free!
But more importanty, Topper's settings aren't even the result of an actual MEASURED calibration. Which is fine, I'm glad he's happy with them and he has posted a disclaimer to this effect, but I don't think this point is getting though considering how many people seem to be using his settings. It appears he's just slapped together what he liked from the few posted calibrations out there and then made further adjustments to suit his preference (including switching to Warm 1 or Normal, which will completely negate the effect of any posted white balance calibrations). In fact, I'd bet money that the change in color tone is the only reason people find this "calibration" satisfying. That's fine if it works for you, you're making your whites blue which gives you that LCD "pop", but it's far from accurate.
Copying anyone's "casual calibration" seems absolutely pointless to me. In fact, generaly speaking (and especially for novices), adjusting any color or grayscale calibration controls BY EYE is a very bad idea (especially when I see some relatively large adjustments, like values of +4 and -4). You guys have no idea how this can throw off everything else in the set's calibration (that's based on my experience with Samsungs at least, I haven't calibrated a Panasonic yet but will be doing the basics on my friend's ST50 soon). Anyway, if you could see the results on measured performance, I think you might understand that the best approach is to leave these settings at defaults. They're not really intended to be toyed with unless you understand how the system reacts and work through them methodically. But if you simply must make changes to them, I suggest you keep them small (like +/- 1 or 2 tops) to minimize the damage you're doing to an otherwise relatively accurate TV.
Of course, in the end, everyone should be happy with the results. So feel free to ignore me and let 'er rip. I just hope people will take the time to understand a little more about what they're doing. After all, you paid a premium for a TV that can actually be calibrated.

Originally Posted by JimP 

My 65VT50 is about 6 weeks old.
Initially, with the color temperature on "Normal", the picture looked a tad bluish.
Now it's looking about right.
Although I'm capable of doing a calibration ( equipment and software), I'm just wondering if I leave it alone, if at least the grayscale with drift to the correct setting.
Has anyone else noticed this?

Originally Posted by buzzard767 

There is no way to predict to which points drifting will lead.

Originally Posted by restricted3711 

Hey guys,
I actually had Geek Squad come out and calibrate my 65" VT50. I know probably a mistake but I took advantage of them offering a free calibration so I thought there was nothing to lose. The guy came out and only calibrated the settings in the service menu for the custom setting. He did not touch anything in the actual menu. He showed my the readings on his laptop which showed that he got it as close to 6500K as possible except for on the lowest IRE's. After he left I put in a calibration blu-ray and on the black level tests, the blacks have a brown/reddish tint to them. This even happens in the THX modes. Did he completely screw up the tv and if so can I get back into the service menu and reset what he did? Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by YES90125 

Viewing mode: Professional1
Contrast 36
Brightness 0
Colour: 30
Sharpness: 2
Vivid Color: Off
Eco Off
P-NR Off
Gamma 2.2
Intelligent Frame Creation Off
16:9 Overscan Off
16:9 Overscan Off
R-Gain +1
G-Gain -3
B-Gain 4
R-Cutoff 0
G-Cutoff -2
B-Cutoff +1
How do you access the Professional 1 mode? These settings were on the flatpannelshd.com site

Originally Posted by wmwilker 

Those are EU settings. I assume you have a North American model.

Originally Posted by JimP 

My 65VT50 is about 6 weeks old.
Initially, with the color temperature on "Normal", the picture looked a tad bluish.
Now it's looking about right.
Although I'm capable of doing a calibration ( equipment and software), I'm just wondering if I leave it alone, if at least the grayscale with drift to the correct setting.
Has anyone else noticed this?

Originally Posted by donnymac51 

What he did in the service menu is global for all picture modes. Without you going in to the service mode you can try changing the color temp setting to a cooler one such as going from warm2 to warm1 or even normal and check each with both your cal disc and while viewing content. Unfortunately there is no way to reset the service menu to stock white balance settings. There are posts all over these settings threads from people who forgot to write down their original white balance settings. Each display has their own individual settings. Maybe the calibrator has them written down. If so you then need to decide if you want to venture into the service menu and change them back to original. The service menu has separate white balance settings for HD and SD which are both the same. If he only adjusted the HD you could put on an SD channel and go into the service menu and you will see your original settings. You would then need to put on an HD channel and now you would be able to change your HD settings back to the original. Of course you could always complain that your calibration looks like crap and ask that they reset it for you if they have the settings. Good luck.

Originally Posted by mrmagoo693 

So I am getting the free geek squad calibration (only free because of being a reward zone premier silver member) this upcoming monday, but after reading this post that after the calibration the picture got worse and he cannot change it back, I am having huge doubts about going through with this. I am very happy with the picture currently... should I just cancel it instead of taking the risk of the geek squad calibrator making it worse? Please help. I love this new VT50 and just wanna make sure I am getting optimal performance from it (used CNETs settings, tweaked with Disney WOW calibration disk and currently looks amazing)

Originally Posted by mrmagoo693 

So I am getting the free geek squad calibration (only free because of being a reward zone premier silver member) this upcoming monday, but after reading this post that after the calibration the picture got worse and he cannot change it back, I am having huge doubts about going through with this. I am very happy with the picture currently... should I just cancel it instead of taking the risk of the geek squad calibrator making it worse? Please help. I love this new VT50 and just wanna make sure I am getting optimal performance from it (used CNETs settings, tweaked with Disney WOW calibration disk and currently looks amazing)

Originally Posted by jbrady3324 

What are you guys getting for light output in (isf) day and (isf) night modes?

Originally Posted by buzzard767 

I get around 42 Foot Lamberts for Day mode and vary the Night mode anywhere from 22 to 35 FtL Depending on the viewing environment.