Sony XBR-HX950 Settings Thread

Well, if you're experimenting; how about some CNET settings for the 55" 929...
Related products:
XBR-46HX929
XBR-65HX929

Calibration report using these settings:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/59384677/Sony-XBR-55HX929-CNET-review-calibration-results

Below you'll find the settings we found best for viewing the Sony XBR-55HX929 in a dim room via the HDMI input at 1080p/24 resolution. Your settings may vary depending on source, room conditions, and personal preference. Check out the Picture settings and calibration FAQ for more information.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9996461-1.html

Home menu>Settings>Picture & Display

--Picture Adjustments menu--
Setting Memory: [any]
Picture Mode: Custom
Backlight: 1
Picture: 90
Brightness: 52
Color: 50
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Warm 2
Sharpness: 50
Noise Reduction: Off
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off
Dot noise reduction: Off
Reality Creation: Off
Smooth Gradation: Low
Motionflow: Off
CineMotion: Off

-Advanced Settings submenu-
Black Corrector: Off
Adv. Contrast Enhancer: Off
Gamma: +1
LED Dynamic Control: Standard
Auto Light Limiter: Off
Clear White: Off
Live Color: Off
White Balance: [see below]
Detail Enhancer: Off
Edge Enhancer: Off
Skin Naturalizer: Off [grayed out]
i/p Conversion Preference: Quality [grayed out]

-White Balance submenu-
R-Gain: -5
G-Gain: -1
B-Gain: -6
R-Bias: 0
G-Bias: 0
B-Bias: 0

Ambient Sensor: Off

--Screen menu--
Setting Memory: [any]
Wide Mode: Full
Auto Wide: Off
4:3 Default: Off [grayed out]
Auto Display Area: Off
Display Area: Full Pixel
Screen Position: [grayed out]
Vertical Size: 0 [grayed out]

--Pro Picture Setup menu--
[all settings default/Auto]

--Home Menu>Settings>Preferences--

--Scene Select menu--
General

--Eco menu--
Power Saving: Off
Edited by Randy S - 11/3/12 at 5:03pm

These are my preferred settings that I find suitable for ALL content, DAY AND NIGHT. Set it and forget it. Settings also apply to 3D and Game mode unless otherwise noted. The TV remembers your different settings for 3D General, so these are truly set it and forget it settings.

Scene Mode: General
Picture Mode: Standard
Backlight: 5
Picture: Max (but reduce to 85 or even 60 for 3D content to help with crosstalk)
Brightness: 52
Color: 60
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Neutral
Sharpness: 65
Noise Reduction: Off
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off
Dot Noise Reduction: Off
Reality Creation: Manual with Resolution 20 and Noise Filering Min OR Off, based on preference.
Smooth Gradation: Medium <-- amazing for gradients!
MotionFlow: Standard
CineMotion: Auto 1 <--- these two settings give best judder elimination without fake SOE look, and no artifacts in games either!
Black Corrector: Off
Advanced Contrast Enhancer: OFF for 2D content. LOW for 3D content to help with 3D pop AND reduce crosstalk!
Gamma: 0
LED Dynamic Control: Standard
Auto Light Limiter: Off
Clear White: Off (or Low if you don't mind bluish whites in some cases)
Live Color: Off
White Balance: Defaults EXCEPT set G-Gain to -6 to reduce the overly greenish yellow skin tones on people on TV. Does not affect green intensity.
Detail Enhancer: Medium
Edge Enhancer: Off
Skin Naturalizer: Off
Display Area: FULL PIXEL change it to this as soon as you get your TV!
ALL ECO SETTINGS OFF
HDMI Dynamic Range: Auto
Color Matrix: Auto
Edited by Flavius - 11/18/12 at 11:35am

No, most of the 3D games I'm interested are native Frame Packed, but yes they do take resolution hits in that they're all forced to 720p60 with 30Hz per eye. You almost always lose some res or PQ going to 3D in games, but that doesn't mean its not native and FP. Some older 3D games on Xbox are SBS only. But newer ones are FP native like Halo CE, as are all PS3 3D games. SBS games means I'd have to set the 3D TV to 3D mode manually and pick SBS mode. No PS3 3D game makes you do this, its all native support and FP. On 360, Gears 3 still forces you to do this, but Halo CE does not.

Also, your statement that "if the source has crosstalk" is absolutely false. The source never has crosstalk. Crosstalk is always caused by limitations of the display, glasses, bad contrast ratios, or some other factor. It is impossible for SOURCE MATERIAL to have crosstalk.

I really like Flavius settings... Jimbunker had good settings as well and he posted his settings on page 9 of the Official hx950 forum. I'm going back in forth between the two.

I find it curious people turn off Black Enhancer and Advanced Contrast Enhancer. I feel the Sony does a really good job with both of these settings and I have mine set to Medium for both. Looks really good.

Where is the "Display Area:" setting?? I cant' seem to find it anywhere... Is it WIDE FULL?

Black Enhancer kills too much shadow detail for my liking. And Contrast Enhancer, while nice on Low, results in unrealistic bright spots in the image. Take the WOW BluRay test disc and play the scene from Pirates of Carribean with the girl in the jail cell talking to captain squidface. With Advanced Contrast even on Low, you get some VERY unnatural bright highlights on her face. Off looks very good though, and ACE is definitely needed for 3D to help with crosstalk I've found.

Because of the way the 3D is encoded. To minimize crosstalk, 3D movies try to minimize contrast differences. Look it up. Also, some movies are less prone to crosstalk for other reasons, like the nature of what is being displayed. The point I'm trying to make is, if the 3D display technology were perfect, NO existing 3D movie would show crosstalk. None. If the crosstalk was in the source material, different 3D TVs would all show the same crosstalk and that is simply not the case. Plasmas for example, tend to show less crosstalk than LCDs on the same material because they can decay their pixels much faster. Crosstalk is caused by a limitation of the 3D display technology. No one making a 3D movie puts it or leaves it in there on purpose. Someone back me up here?

Not true, I've tested several 3D movies including Avatar, Avengers, and Open Season, and I now have others like Hugo to test with too. The problem is not really with movies. It is with games, because they have so many more high contrast areas and aren't coded for 3D as elegantly in many cases. The only scene in a 3D movie so far where I thought the crosstalk was as bad a some games is the scene in Avatar where the aliens are speaking and you get yellow subtitles on a dark background. It's crosstalk central.

By the way, actual SBS 3D games are probably not worth bothering with. The only non-native SBS 3D games I have tried so far are Assassin's Creed and Gears 3. But the picture quality and resolution suffers so badly on those titles that I don't see myself playing in 3D. Now 3D in Batman AC, a native game, is not as crosstalk prone as some games like Halo CE and Doom 3, because the Batman game is not high contrast, it is for the most part black on black, gray on black with brighter highlights. So because of that, crosstalk is far less visible. It also doesn't reduce the PQ nearly as much as the previous examples. PS3 games tend to fare best with 3D, likely because Sony was the 3D gaming champion this generation and really tried to promote it. and give the best developer support for it. Because they sell 3D TVs no doubt whereas the other console makers don't. The 360 didn't even have the ability to run a native 3D game (no SBS or 3D button required) until about a year ago, way after the PS3.

I appreciate your attempts to help, but come on man, of course I run HDMI through the latest Sony ES 3D capable receiver and use high speed cables, new ones. And I'm using a PS3 for a player with latest firmware. It's not the player. The Xbox 360 has the same crosstalk issues in a native game like Halo CE. Already tried different cables and bypassing the receiver. No difference. And tried several brand of 3D glasses. No difference. The only thing that helps with crosstalk on this TV is reducing the Picture setting.

Didn't you read my post where I compare the crosstalk amount with those special SBS test images and compare my results to samples from existing TVs before and after messing with Picture? And my posts indicating the crosstalk level of this TV is so much worse because of the insanely good contrast it has? The same posts that point to engineering research papers on contrast ration and its effect on crosstalk? This was evident even on the Samsung set I tested in the same situation, except it had less crosstalk because the TV was incapable of anything near the contrast ratio of the Sony. Now when I say "less crosstalk" on the Samsung the physical amount is the same, I should say the "visibility" of the crosstalk. Basically FAINT, vs NOT FAINT.

The higher the contrast between the 3D object and the background, the worst the crosstalk. That's why the Picture setting on the Sony, which is a contrast setting, is the main thing that works. Edge lit sets seems to be better than backlit sets for 3D because their screen more like... diffusely glows and they have poorer contrast by default. But the contrast is more stark on a backlit LED because the lights are coming from behind the screen. So in a high contrast area, you'd have LED off right next to LEDs that are ON, which exagerrates contrast and therefore crosstalk. Even with local dimming off, it is still a problem, the contrast is still too high thanks to the backlit nature. Plasmas get around this even with great contrast because of ultra fast pixel decay. The image for one eye can almost completely disappear before the shutter in the glasses has to open. By the way, we should probably have had this discussion in the main thread.

Flavius, thanks so much for these settings ! I tried everybody's and your's was THE BEST by far ! I would say almost perfect for me and ALL content. But I did make a few adjustments that I feel made it better for me personally. But I would have never been able to do it without yours as a starting point. And the adjustments I made are very minute.

I wonder if maybe my eyes perceive things differently than yours slightly ? OR if the difference is in our TV's not representing the exact same thing even though they are the same TV ?

Anyway, to help anyone else that might like my tweaks a touch better, or maybe so you can try them to see if it helps you on some content, I thought I would post them here.

1st off,,,, strangely, you were right about MotionFlow, and Cinemotion. I liked both those things OFF before. AND honestly, calibrating the TV with Spears and Munsil HD Benchmark, even there under the corresponding tests for such (motion blur, etc..) to have both them things OFF made it perform best. So thats why I originally said that. BUT under real life content movies, you are totally right man !!! With them off, there were some jerky pans, etc... With your settings, WOW ! Perfect. So I wanted to tell you that.

Also, I want to point out to everyone, that for me, to get the best picture, there needs to be SLIGHT changes made in ONLY 2 settings for every different movie, animation, game, etc.. BUT these settings are the best go to start point, and then ONLY change 2 settings pending on content.

The biggest difference in my settings from yours is "Sharpness". From what I see in ALL content if I use Sharpness at "Max" like you do, I see bad "Edge Artifacts". Unless our TV's are different and/or eyes are, I can't see how you can't see that ? Or am I trippin ? The next thing was Color. At 60 like you do I see slight color clipping and/or extremes. Especially in Reds. I like mine at 56 for all content.

Try these settings and let me know what you think. (again though, judge the content being used and tweak accordingly as I suggest for the 2 "movable settings") BOLD is the changes. My settings are tested ONLY on 2D content, cause thats all I watch or care about.

Scene Mode: General
Picture Mode: Standard
Backlight: 5
Picture: Max
Brightness: 53 (when Gamma is on -2), 52 (when Gamma is set to 0)
Color: 56 (for most content), 60 (for some content)
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Neutral
Sharpness: 24-36 (for Games and Computer), 50 (for everything else) - Above 50 = Edge Artifacting, and just gets worse as you go higher.
Noise Reduction: Off
MPEG Noise Reduction: Off
Dot Noise Reduction: Off
Reality Creation: Manual with Resolution 20 and Noise Filering Min OR Off, based on preference. (Sometimes Resolution at 10 looks better for some video games)
Smooth Gradation: Medium
MotionFlow: Standard
CineMotion: Auto 1 (for nearly all movies and most games), OFF (for some video games)
Black Corrector: Off
Advanced Contrast Enhancer: OFF
Gamma: -2 (for most movies and/or normal content) , 0 (for darker movies and/or content) (when set to 0, put "Brightness" to 52)
LED Dynamic Control: Standard
Auto Light Limiter: Off
Clear White: Off
Live Color: Off
White Balance: R-Gain: -2, G-Gain: -6, B-Gain 0, R-Bias -2, G-Bias 0, B-Bias 0
Detail Enhancer: Medium
Edge Enhancer: Off
Skin Naturalizer: Off
Display Area: FULL PIXEL
ALL ECO SETTINGS OFF
HDMI Dynamic Range: Auto
Color Matrix: Auto

Try those out and let me know what you think. :-) I swear if dialed in the right way for the right content, it creates a slightly more rich, more honest looking picture to me. I will try to take screen shots of examples between the two so you can see. Maybe it is just my set ? lol IDK.


2 things you didn't mention and I wanted to ask you about.... What exactly is "Video Area Detection" and "Super Bit Mapping" ? And what do you have them set to, and why ?

Hope these settings help someone :-D I'm loving them
Edited by JoelxD - 11/8/12 at 2:48pm

About the Sharpness. I agree with you. In fact, the other day I did notice some nasty artifacting on text, so I lowered Sharpness to about 60 and its much better. I think I also lowered Detail Enhancer to Low to help with the text. The rest of your settings may be good, I'd have to check, but I don't agree with your Gamma as I'm sure that will just crush blacks/shadow detail in most movies even with the higher brightness. But again, all this stuff is going to vary based on your source devices, etc.

Thanks for the compliments! And sadly I have no idea what those other settings do.

Cool, glad to help.

Yea, I guess as far as shadows and blacks, we could see things differently. Or like you said, the sources, etc.. For me, I like a honest, rich look. Whereas some prefer a more exaggerated "toony" look.

If honest and rich is more your taste, Gamma at -2 (therefore brightness to 53), causes scenes where there is a very dark area, and a very bright area in the same shot to look more defined and realistic to me. I found with Gamma at 0, the shadows had too much grey in them. Looked cloudy, etc.. Reducing the Gamma fixes this, then upping the brightness a notch makes the colors and lighted areas pop back out perfectly, not too much, while still keeping the blacks black and shadows realistic. IMO of course.

Again though, I must point out, this does cause for adjustment from movie to movie and source to source. Gamma at 0 is just safe for all. But to get things perfect, I do not mind adjusting them 2 things real quickly to cater to the content. Everyones miles may vary of course.

You hit the bulls-eye with the Brightness at 53 and Gamma at -2. These settings combined with Flavius and sharpness at 65 and this TV is absolutely ON POINT!

No more adjustments for me.

Sony SBM - Super Bit Mapping - is audio related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bit_Mapping

Video Area Detection is web related. Surf the internet and check out what it does

btw Display Area FULL is 1080p/i related so don't use that setting when watching SD (Lets just say that SD will look a bit different when Display Area is set to FULL). Best thing to do is set it to Auto.


Check out this thread. The hx909 has a lot in common with the hx929/hx950. Doug is a expert
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1261223/sony-2010-xbr-xxhx909-settings-discussion

Actually I'm pretty sure the Super Bit Mapping is video related as an additional chip responsible for 14-bit processing to reverse the degenerating of digitization and compression. This was first used in Sony blurays.

Check it out: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/technology/technology/theme/creas_01.html#block3

Thanks for the info and links 8mile13

I knew that for the Audio Side of SBM... but since this is in the PICTURE Settings and in the setting specifically says "creates smooth video graduations using SBM", then what I was figuring was it is a version of the audio SBM but in the video realm. Sony style - lol. BUT still nowhere is it completely specific on what it is exactly, and what is it exactly doing to the picture. Anyway, so unfortunately, I do believe you may be wrong about it being the audio SBM.

right, it is probably video related:
Super Bit Mapping (video) incorporates 14 bit up-scaling, processing and pixel mapping to smooth gradation and improve the quality of low-tone pictures.

Are there any professional calibrated settings anywhere. Sorry, but sharpness on "Max" and "Neutral" color temp may excite the masses but I
m looking for some accurate color settings. The lack of CMS and ISF on this set is very disapointing for 5 big ones :-)

bob

Hey now, upon further reflection, Sharpness is best at 65. The sharpness is very subtle on this set anyway compared to most TVs. And Neutral, well I'm sorry but both myself and my graphic artist wife think Neutral gives the most accurate color. I'm NOT the "the masses", I'm very discerning. If you're snobby about the CMS/ISF/THX junk, you need to buy a VT50 or Elite. Sorry. You should also know if you care about that stuff that professional calibrated settings on one TV aren't going to be accurate on any other TV. And people who get pro calibrations never want to give them out anyway.

So for overall 2d picture quality has anybody seen a difference between the 65hx929 and 65hx950?

Also, when using the same exact settings what picture mode do you guys prefer under general scene, custom or standard?

Seems to me that standard still looks sharper than custom with the same settings. Must be doing more background processing to give it more detail but not too sure on this.

I prefer std because it does look sharper, brighter, less dull and more natural than custom with same settings.

In his calibration report, CNET writes that he measured four different picture modes: standard, custom, cinema1 and cinema2. However, the 55HX950 has only 3: custom, standart and vivid. Where did he find cinema1 and cinema2 ?

HX950 specifications

PICTURE MODE: vivid, game-standard, game-original, graphics, sports, animation, standard, custom, photo-vivid, photo-standard, photo-original, photo-custom, cinema1, cinema2.


http://store.sony.com/p/65-inch-HDTV,-Sony-TV,-LED-TV,-HX950,-XBR-Series,-Sony-BRAVIA,-XBR/en/p/XBR65HX950#specifications