THE SONY SERVICE CODES - Articles, Comments, Discoveries - Page 36

Hey guys
I purchased a 36xs955 about a month ago. I really think the HDTV looks great on this tv. But i have been reading this post for a while now and trying to figure out what exactly you guys are talking about. I dont know that much about this stuff and so much of it has been going over my head. I put some of the images from the earlier posts onto a memory stick and looked at them on the tv - some of the lines were "bouncing" or "moving". is this what i am supposed to see when my tv needs some tweaking? is this why some lines when i watch dvd's look the same way? so i guessing that my tv could look a lot better. or will it?
i have been reading through the posts but after a while i feel like my brain is going to explode. i want to tweak these service codes, but it seems like its going to take some time. i am about done recording all of my values as they are now. i was wondering if somewhere in these posts did KenTech or someone else list their complete list of values for everything? i would like to see what your settings would look like on my tv. is this not a good idea? is every tv different that your setting wouldn't look as good on my tv? or do you consider this info kind of proprietary and you dont want to give it away?
KenTech, from what i have read in this post from you, i am astounded of the amount of time you put into it and the information that you have given us.
i want to get into doing these tweaks but i dont feel like i have the time to do it. i am hoping to be able to see the settings of an expert on the subject and see if i notice a difference that will make me really want to go back and tweak away. i notice that the experts in these forums see things that i would never see, so the improvement that someone else sees maybe not be noticable by me, therefore making it not worth the time.
i will continue to read through the posts in the mean time - thanks for your effort in helping us out.
jon

I have a quick question I have adjusted the vm thru vml in the 2170P-3 group and set them all to zero but now the picture looks soft or blurry is there any ideal setting to adjust these too. Thanks for any help.

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but I just got a 30xs955 and I could not find the suggested values to change in MID3, I could only adjust MID2 to change the geometry. Changing these values did affect the 1080i from my 360.

I think I'm gonna have to retract this statement. After doing a bit more reading and poking around in the AVS archives, I think what I perceived as being a "loss or smoothing out of fine detail" with 2170P-3/SHF0=1 & SYSM=3 may actually have been the passing through/preservation of even finer details with that setting.

After reading UMR's description of what appears to be a similar parameter on the GWIII, what I think 2170P-3/SHF0 may probably do is switch a simple high frequency filter/limiter on and off. And I think you may be right Ken that SHF0=0 probably enables the filtration while SHF0=1 may turn it off, allowing even finer details to pass through.

SHF0=0 may look "cleaner" and "deeper", but I think that could be because some of the finest detail (and noise) is filtered out with SHF0=0. I suspect that it's the ultra fine detail and noise that gives SHF0=1 a "tighter", "flatter" more "textural" feeling.

What this would mean in a nutshell...

2170P-3/SHF0=0 reduces the bandwidth of video signal by filtering out the highest frequency info.

2170P-3/SHF0=1 increases bandwidth allowing more high-frequency detail (and also noise) through.

Agree/disagree?

Thanks KenTech. Should I turn sharpness alway down in the user menu when i make the changes. Thanks for all the help.

Thanks KenTech for the help. I have one more problem but it's deals with overscan. I have a oppo upconvert dvd player connected to my t.v through the dvi input. I adjusted overscan with dve test pattern 12/17 for 1080i and 720p resolutions. I first adjusted vpos, vsiz, hpos and hsiz. Then I adjusted the raster with mid3 vdhp, vdhs, vdve, and vdvs. Everything looked good until I switched to video 5 and looked at test patterns from INHD that I recorded on my cable dvr. I see more on the left side than the right on the test patterns. Thanks for any help.

is there anyway to adjust horizontal bowing? i can see it a little on my set on top and bottom of the screen but can only adjust verticle

My set has a nearly unsignificant bowing on the corners. I just I tried so many ways in the service menu to try to eliminate them with VPIN, VCEN, PIN,....it nearly impossible to have it 100% straight. I got it as straight as it could. I just got use to it and it doesn't bother me anymore. But if it is a real issue for you, take Ken's advice and have an expert do the job with magnets.

Yea, it's minimal but noticable. it's in the 4 corners of the TV but not very distracting. This TV sure beats the crap out of my old Samsung I used to have so I can't really complain. But the red push people talk about is not there. I looked at the settings. RYR-GYB, 14-13-9-6, were the valus out of the box. Didn't touch them.

Yea, one more thing. It seems things in the center of the screen are clearer than things on the outside. Things near the edge of the screen are more blur'd but in the middle they're crystal clear. It's really evident when text is on the screen. This is in 1080i

You need the adjust the focus on the corners: 2170-D4 DF (dynamic focus adjustment in the corners).

ok thanks. im gonna go try it. that was bothering me.

I messed around with it. I guess it's not possible to get the whole picture as clear as the center?

and here's the bowing.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...256/bowing.jpg

It really only bothers me in the top left. I just got this set a couple days ago so it's under warranty. Would Sony send a tech to fix it for free?

I just adjusted the QPDC and it looks a lot better. anything else I can adjust?

edit. I just adjusted the red push value's and once again you were right. I guess I just didn't notice it but not that I changed the value's to 14-14-6-4, skin looks a bit more natural and less color bleeding with red

damn ken, how do you know this much stuff

I just want to offer my sincere thanks to KenTech for his tireless work on determining how to make Sony TVs look better.

I have had a 34XBR910 for about two years now. A few weekends ago, I decided to see if there was someway to download or otherwise purchase a service manual for my TV. Prior to this 34 inch widescreen, I had a 36 inch 4:3 Sony for about five years. That one I had calibrated by an ISF guy, only to have the tube go bad a few weeks later. I'm not suggesting it was his fault. My complaint here is that the place I purchased it from, which at that time offered a calibration service, didn't want to honor my $350 with another visit after I got a replacement tube.

Around that time, a popular home theatre magazine printed the access code to the service menu on that particular model TV in their letters section. I was familiar with adjusting grayscale by eyeballing it (having previously owned a Zenith front projector and the acccess code to its service menu), so off I went looking for the drive and cut controls and calibrated to the best of my ability. I also did some geometry work. As far as what all that other stuff was, I experimented with some of it and if I didn't see any results, I passed on by.

Well, I get the bug for a new TV every five years, so I switched to the 34XBR910. I bought it at another place that actually offered ISF calibration for free. They did ask, though, that I let the set run for about 300 hours before calling them over. Before that time, I had accessed the service menu and done another grayscale and geometry set-up by myself and never bothered to have them come over.

Again, I had no idea what all of those other abbreviations and acronyms were, hence my recent desire to get a service manual. Having somehow missed the posting of same on this forum while doing a net search, I bought a download from an internet site for $25. Oh, boy, I thought, that manual will tell me what all these things mean and how to adjust them. Well, you know that, aside from a few items, that just isn't true.

Finally, last weekend I came across this particular thread and rejoiced to the heavens for the information provided. I followed a lot of your advice, KenTech and you others of the ISF persuasion, and the results are marvelous so far. I'm a tweaker, as my user name implies, so I've been adjusting gamma, focus, picture enhancement, convergence, landing settings; things I didn't know I had any control over.

I do hope some day to read here that someone has figured out how to get rid of that annoying phosphor lag. I have never had my picture control higher than 13. I tried turning down YCON and PRIO to their minimum settings and all I got was a dark picture that still exhibited phosphor lag/trailing.

But, hey, all the other improvements take the sting out of that problem. Carry on!

Ok I've got a serious problem. I read a lot of the posts on here because i needed to adjust the picture on sony kv34hs420 because my xbox360 had some cropping issues on some games in 1080i. So I look at the pdf files, I find the settings I have to adjust everything works fine.

After months of not playing my ps2 I go to boot it up, the picture is scrambled and I don't know wtf is going on. My first thought was it was the cable but that wasn't it, but then I remembered the service settings I did, but since I had no clue what had done I just did a reset of the nvm and mid data as explained in the official help file. I figured what would bring it back to factory settings right?

Wrong, my tv is now screwed up beyond belief. I no longer have the all the screen mode settings it supposed to have, it only has normal and zoom. The picture for the independent resolutions is horribly scewed and distorted no matter what I do to it. I have a strange black scan line in the back ground during fad to black scenes.

I am at a loss at what I can do for my tv, doing a factory reset does nothing for it. My guess how this all started is that a tripped a setting unintentionally. I think sony makes that interface so convuluted on purpose to get more service calls.

If anyone on these forums know how to fix my problem, I would greatly appreciate it.

How much does it cost to have someone come to my house with magnets and correct bowing? Not a complete calibration. Would this be under Warranty and maybe have a Sony tech come do it for free?

First, I want to thank Kentech and the many others who have all provided great insight to my new 34xs955. I'm about 2/3 through this thread and I only really understand a small portion, the amount of tweakability is amazing.

Has anyone ordered the service manual for the 34xs955 from Sony? How much was it and how concise is it?

On my 955, when it is showing 4:3 material with black bars on each side, the left side seems a little slanted while the right side appears straight, kinda like this a bit. How should I address this? A combination of 2170-2, PPHA and VANG, maybe?

/ l

Quick question for people with xbox 360's, what picture mode do you use when playing the xbox( pro, standard or vivid) ?

Can someone post the settings for the default Pro picture mode on the HS420.

My Pro mode was tweaked before I came upon this thread.

Thanks in advance.

Pro of coarse!

Those other modes just over exagerate jaggies and make them worse by adding excessive EE.

I use Standard for my 360. Colors and Black Levels look better than Pro's

I use PRO for everything, Gaming, DVD and TV.