Official New Panny thread: 42PD50, PX50, PX500 - Page 28

so, 20% can be had NOW and EASILY with one of the E reatailers, or E providors listed above as SPONSORS in ORANGE above.

I would go for that, and have ordered there before.

I agree that the recommended "less than 50% contrast and brightness" settings for 100 hour break-in are totally unacceptable for decent picture quality during daytime viewing.

One of the reasons I went with Panasonic is that their panels have always received good reviews for burn-in resistance. I'm working on the assumption that if you use settings higher than 50%, ALWAYS use full screen display, and avoid channels with logos, that you will be aging the pixels evenly and will not have to worry about burn-in despite violating the first 100 hours recommendations.

Is this a reasonable assumption?

I have the 42PD50U,and use the following settings. (I'm definitely a novice!!) I like the picture, but will admit that it's off a bit... green grass is a too green.

P: -2
B: +1
C: -3
T: 0
Color Temp: Normal

Are my setting much too high or too low?? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

On the "better-safe-than-sorry" premise, I'd recommend you at least draw the blinds and use STANDARD, not VIVID settings during the 100 hour break in period. That's only a month, and you'll probably be keeping your plasma for years.

It's Panasonic that recommends the "less than 50% picture" setting during this time, so the advice seems worth heeding. They advise both always filling the screen and the 50% picture setting during break in.

That's good advice Macfan, and yes I'm using Standard mode with the contrast dialed down even from the default +20 to +15 which is still 75% of the possible contrast value. Vivid mode comes set at +30 or 100% of the possible contrast value!

I am also experiencing oversaturation of greens even though the green decoder checks out acceptably using the smpe color bars and the green filter that comes with DVE. I suspect my cheap target component cables, and I have purchased some higher quality ones that I will test tonight.

This makes no sense to me, but it seems to have happened anyway. I had the same over-saturation of greens concern at first with my PD25U, but over time it seems to have become less and less an issue. I don't know whether anything changed, or I just got used to it. Anyway, when watching the Cubs in HD recently, the grass at Wrigley looked just like the grass out my window, not the florescent glow I'd seen when I first got the set.

What annoyed me even worse at first was the green cast over everything which I found very disturbing with skin tones. That problem has ceased to exist.

Admittedly, I was fooling around with the settings at first (starting with very low picture and brightness settings, then trying to get the color and tint right) and now I use the factory settings. That's probably the source of my original problem, but I suppose it's possible that the greens mellow a bit as the panel breaks in.

As I said, doesn't make much sense, but my green problems seemed to have vanished.

FWIW, which probably isn't much.

Oddly enough, my greens seem to overassert themselves in dark scenes such as in Collateral or Fight Club. I find myself asking, "Is LA really lit with green tinted lights late at night?" or even wondering if Hollywood is maybe shooting low light scenes with green lights to get more lumens on the actors while still keeping the scene "dark."

Anyway, I am highly suspicious of my $9.99 Target component cables with the connectors that I have to compress with a pair of pliers before connecting because the metal is so soft. I'll get down to the bottom of that tonight and share the results. I have not been a big believer in the merits of high-priced cables in the past, but I'm willing to give them a try in this case.

Healthy skepticism!

Advice: stay away from Monsters. They are WAY high priced, and there have been more than a few posts here where they appeared to be defective.

I've never heard a discouraging word about bluejeans.com cables. Check their website. They tell you up front what materials they use, and you can custom order what you like. At a fraction of the cost.

Unfortunately Monster is the only higher-performance brand available locally, and I just can't bear to wait for shipping. I can tell you that they appear to be priced significantly lower at Radio Shack than at electronics stores. I bought a 2m component cable (not the Ultra THX) for basically the same price as the bluejeanscable.com belkin cables, under $50.

And my skepticism of cable hype comes from the audio world where the snake oil peddlers there make Monster look like a Catholic charity in comparison.

Just a little tidbit, the new professional series Panasonic Plasmas are around the corner.

When?!?!?

Before fall? I was gonna get the 7UY, but if the 8UY is coming soon, I can wait a month or two.

I agree that sometimes the greens look too green. I played with the tint a bit and now it seems more realistic. i'll post my new settings later tonight.

It would be nice to try out other peoples settings and post comments, this way we can all enoy a better picture. So please post your settings and comments on other settings..

JT

Adilm:

That would be excellent. I was not expecting them until September/October. IIRC you provided some preliminary info on the 2005 consumer line early on. So when you have details on the professional/commercial, please share.


JCPZero

Yeah, the greens can be a bit neonish when you watch golf or some other green fielded sport. In those scenarios I have to switch the color temperature to "cool." I did not notice this until I watched The Masters this past weekend.

FYI... I am using the Monster HDMI from my cable box to the PD50 with incredible results. It is well worth the $120 in my opinion!

Here's an example of the green push in dark scenes. Rent the Fight Club DVD. In scene 4, Ed Norton is sitting on the toilet in his bathroom ordering from a catalog. In Standard picture mode, the PD50U shows the bathtub tile and all of the bathroom as a pastel green. Connect your dvd player s-video to a CRT set and you'll see that the tile is actually a bone white. The same green push can be seen in the same scene on the inside of his refrigerator and especially in the intial scene of his visit with the doctor. I upgraded my component cable before making this test, and it had no effect.

Strangely, the extrasaturation of greens in well-lit scenes like a golf tournament doesn't bother me so much, but this consistent green tinging of dark scenes has got me a little worried. I found something of a workaround to it though. If you change the color temp to warm and set the color to -10, it will take out much of the green and restore the dim incandescent yellow/whites that were being greened. Obviously you have some tradeoffs in fleshtone. I'm still evaluating if this is really a practical workaround or not.

I really wonder if this is a Panasonic thing. I had a Panasonic DLP about a month ago until I started having problems with rainbows, and it had this exact, and I mean exact, green pastel takeover of low-light scenes. You can see the same thing in the movie Collateral.

Excuse ME? Has a brightness "specs" been identified on the px50u or pd? Ive been looking around, but couldnt find it.

400cd/m^{2
is this brightness correct for th-42pd50u? Why is it lower then previous models!}

I had the exact same problem. I was getting PBS HD, ABC HD and CBS HD with the PD25. when I exchanged it for the PD50 I lost all three but started getting HDNET, HD Movies and ESPN2 HD.
I posted the question earlier and was advised to check under different channel numbers- but to no avail.
Let me know if you find a solution- I was thinking in the lines of calling panasonic and if not resolution will think of getting STB.

Ram

I don't know much about this stuff, but I just went through a "clean up" of my coax cable as it runs through the house. My signal goes through a STB, but the issue is still the same. I have two different STBs, but one was getting more channels than the other. In the end, the "lame" STB was not to blame. The signal was just weaker in one room than another and this resulted in a lack of reception on some channels. Could it be that the two different receivers respond differently to the same frequency (referring to the freq that that channel is sent at over cable)? As a result, the TV does not have what it needs to display the digital and thus doesn't.

I might be grasping here, but my recent exercise in signal strength and channel availability has lead me to believe that it should always be the first item of consideration.

Just got my 42PD50 last weekend and am hooked up to Comast cable. I am getting all the HD local channels I expected. NBC analog is on 8 and NBC-HD is 8-1, etc. Also found INHD1 & 2 on 73.1 and 73.3

The TV did not seem to find the IHND channel during the auto-scan, at least I did not notice. I had 'turned off' all the digital channels until I saw on this post about INHD and went back in and turned them on.

Adilm,

You have stirred the fires of anticipation in a host of us lurking in the shadows waiting for any tidbits of information that will lead us to actually purchase something ... you have our attention, and we humbly entreat any insights that you may share regarding the availability of the 8UY, and especially any information about the nature of this new beast. TIA

When I get definite facts I can disclose, I will post.
Do Not PM pretending to want to purchase from me, it's all the facts I can give out right now. Thanks.

AdilM,

I see that you are an installer/dealer and to me that means that you are an expert on the subject of plazma. In my shopping around I was able to see a side-by-side with the Panny PD50U and the Sammy R4232. While I found the Panny to have the better PQ, it also exhibited some very troubling "clay face" on the ESPN sportscenter. What causes this and can it be fixed? Have you compared the PD50 and the 7UY? Hundgry for some expert analysis...TIA for anything you can share.

How were you able to "turn back on" digital channels that were not originally auto-scanned?

AFAIK, you can not "add" digital channels manually. It MUST find them during an autoscan or it will never know about them. If you learned something different please let me know. Thanks!

In the manual tuning menu you go to the channel like 73.3 and flip the right most column(Add) to 'Yes' . In the initial scan it did not set it to display when thumbing thru the channels.

Sorry for my difficulty explaining properly, trying to remember what I did when I am nowhere near the actual TV

Has anyone with the 42PD50 had an issue with the close captioning. I turn it off and when I turn on the unit the next day the captioning is back on, usually on the digital HD channels. It does not alway happen but it is odd. Of course it might just be some other user in the house is doing something I don't know about:-)

That's what I thought. It must have found the channels during the initial autoscan.

I also noticed close captioning today on my NBC DTV station, but only on the HD (4-1) Channel. It was not on the 4-2 SD channel, nor any other DTV channels. Also, I have CC set to OFF in the Setup. I think the CC was somehow forced ON in the regular feed. Next time I see it, I'll check my other receiver to make sure it is not a problem with the PD50U in particular.