Pioneer rumor  

There is no telling for sure what this means, but if it means that you can calibrate grayscale with ambient light in the room to match the typical viewing conditions then it is impractical, and they will learn this if they try to do it. When it comes to ambient light, there is no typical viewing condition for the most part. The color and intensity of sunlight coming through the windows/drapes varies drastically through the day and is entirely gone at night when perhaps an incandescent bulb will provide the ambient light. There is only one right way to set grayscale and that is without ambient light.

Now setting Brightness is different. There can be different optimum settings depending on ambient light levels, but they are not usually all that far apart.

There is an automated solution for calibrating the latest Pioneer Elite displays available to ISF techs, but the equipment is very expensive, and it is slower than I can do manually. The results looked good to me, but it was a demo and I was not able to check if it was as accurate as a manual calibration. Marantz has a self calibration sensor that came with its S3 PJ. It was visibly and measureably less accurate than a manual calibration, however there were technological hurdles to overcome that would not be present trying to do the same thing with a plasma.

So this sort of thing can be done, but again, it would not be usefull for "correcting room problems". The degrading effect of ambient light can not be mitigated (at least not by calibration), only endured.

Glenn

Glenn, like an included 'microphone' in MCAAC, I see a photodetector being included if the idea can pan out. Imagine having an automated system that continuously detected the ambient conditions and adjusted, autonomously?

Really? What good is it to have and set as one's black-point when its well below the ambient light-level? Surface reflections (including that surface's ability to scatter reflected light) on a flat-panel in the environment of ambient light would do harm to the measured and perceived black-level (point of which the minimum light level is produced to the eyes).

Also, be able to alter color in a manner in which the ambient light is one temp vs. another would be interesting. But, I gather this is a much, much more simple system, but if its not there to detect ambient (room) parameters then what is it good for?