Maxent 50" plasma MX-50X3 official thread - DO NOT POST PRICES!!! - Page 62

my sharpness is on 0.. i consider anything higher to leave little color halos around every piece of text on the screen

and by false contouring i mean every possible shadow on this thing has a bunch of blocky looking sh!# at the edges of it, its not just like a couple of films either.. its my xbox360, comcast HD channels, DVDs, computer.. whatever

Did you just guess on what to set them to? Or do you have equipment to measure the output? Any pointers?

Just purchased MX-50X3 from BB. Got everything hooked up to it OK and the picture is great. But I have a problem already. The TV quit working. The green power light blinks green. I tried unplugging for about an hour. When I plugged it back in, the orange light came on (as it should). But when I tried to turn it on, the green light came on for a few seconds, then started to blink again.

Can anybody help?

Hmmm... I have the 5020HPM from Costco (new Maxent 50"). Sounds like your unit may be defective. Was this a floor model? You may want to take it back to BB. I'm curious why you purchased it there and not the new model from Costco with the "Warranty" that Costco can offer you?

It was not a floor model. It was the last one in the box. As far as I can tell, the box had not been opened. I purchased it from BB because I couldn't pass up the 30% discount off the sale price, which ended up being an incredibly low price. They had 2 new and 2 floor models left. There are no Costco's in the Milwaukee area. Anyway, I called BB and they are going to send a tech out, but not for another two days. Thought maybe I could get it working before then.

Has anyone actually compared the MX-50X3 versus the MX-5020HPM side by side?

I have the 50X3 and am very pleased with it and my brother is considering getting a new plasma based on my 50X3 ( I have had it since Nov. 2005 and love it.) Just curious if the new 5020 display is any better or if he should jump on any remaining 50X3 units from BB.

Thanks!

Best Buy has the 50X5 in their system for as much as the X3. Expected arrival is only a few weeks and shoul dbe similar to the 5020 except for only 1 HDMI. A few calls to Maxent revealed the info, but they aren't releasing the spec sheet.

I'm with you!!! The false contouring on my panel is making it borderline unwatchable during dark scenes. At first I thought it was D* compression on my HDTIVO. However, I see it on DVDs and in SD. If there's a dark scene, there are swirling blotches in the shadows. One really horrible movie was Platoon, broadcast in HD on HBO - many dark scenes that were nearly unintelligible. Does anyone else see motion artifacts? I noticed it first during the basketball playoffs. I again noticed it during football. I thought a plasma would outperform LCD in motion detail. However, my Panny AE700 LCD front projector shows no signs of false contouring or motion artifacts.

The problem now is finding a make/model that doesn't demonstrate false contouring. I understand it's fairly common to plasmas. Any suggestions? I bought from Costco, so a model they offer would be best.

Of course you will see fc on sd material. If you feed the maxent a crap signal it will not perform well. Comcrap is having a free weekend of starz so i decided to watch "Flightplan" with jodie foster.It had alot of dark scenes. I watched it on the Starz-hd channel. I saw alot of false cont. If I watch the same movie on dvd I see little or no false cont. That tells me it is the signal coming from starz or comcast causing the problem not the maxent. I see fc on all the HBO-Hd, Starz-HD, Etc. But I do not see it on the main network feeds of HD movies-like abc-nbc-cbs they all look outstanding with very little or no fc at all. the hbo's ,starz signals are crap in my opinion unless you are watching them on a 36" crt tv or smaller. The maxent will excel if you feed it a good signal. I have Plattoon on dvd and it looks fine on my setup. I think all plasma's will show this issue if you feed them a crap signal and blow it up to 50". Alot of people have problems with tivo and picture quality. I think tivo is coming out with a new hd box in a couple of months and hopefully it will solve some tivo picture quality problems. As far as motion artifacts -I have never seen them on my Maxent.

Just a follow-up from an owner - I bought this TV around February, and... it's a great TV.

I didn't care very much who made the glass beforehand as long as people here said it was good, whatever it was. Now that I have it and see that it's a great TV I don't care if it was made on Mars - it looks great.

I haven't had any of the color push issues that people seem to freak out about. I have seen the older Maxent 42" and its green-push issue and wonder if all the green tint concerns are people mixing up the 2 TVs, or worrying too much because of rumors that have drifted from that TV to this. To be honest, this Maxent has the best color representation of any display I've used - computer monitor or TV.

I've also found that all the rumors about bad picture quality, like bad shadows, to be untrue. If you've got that going on with your 50X3 (and it REALLY is a 50X3), it's your input. This thing's got a clean picture for any clean input.

I've also done one thing to this TV I imagine most have not: Shipped it across country in a wooden crate. Granted, I surrounded it with a box spring and a mattress to protect it, but nonetheless it survived the shipping from Boston to Los Angeles. The one thing I'd recommend for moving this TV is, take the side speakers off if you normally leave them on. The metal that attaches them can withstand force relative to the speakers but not the force of the TV shifting. One of my speakers was bent back 30 degrees when it arrived. I bent it back pretty cleanly with a wrench, though.

The 3 negatives I'd have to say, if I had anything bad to say:

The Zoom mode, to zoom up HD-shaped shows that are being shown with black bars on the top and bottom, only works in S-Video and Composite mode. This is the one thing I strongly dislike about this TV, because now and then a Component- or HDMI-fed channel has this faux-HD sort of broadcast, and it just looks silly. My current workaround is to feed my Digital Cable Box in through both S-Video and Component; that way I can kick down to S-Video and Zoom if need-be. If you're buying this TV, plan a workaround like this ahead of time so you aren't frustrated; you'll need your outputs to be flexible because of this TV's inflexibility.

The TV has a noticeable buzz sound, especially when you first turn it on, when it's warming up. I'm told this is just how plasmas work. It's extremely quiet - fine with me. It is occasionally audible to me in really quiet movies, which annoys me personally, but it seems I have better hearing than those I watch movies with.

The TV has a serious impact on heat and electricity usage. Showing an all-white image like a GAP commercial uses 550Watts of electricity (less for darker images) and generates a lot of heat. On a hot day that's heat you may not want in the room, though it was pleasant in Boston's cold winters. Turned off but still plugged into the wall it's a bit of a "vampire device," using 10Watts when off. Consider unplugging it at night; it will avoid the vampirism, and protect your expensive TV from lightning and power surges, for free.

hell even in tame DVDs like wedding singer, near the end of the movie when hes outside in the dark for a couple of minutes its false contouring city..

i'm thinking about hooking up my IBOOK or POWERMAC to this monitor. has anyone tried this? what were your experiences...challenges...?

I think it's your DVD player. On my cheap DVD player, there is a ton of false contouring... but there was on my CRT set as well.

When I use my PC to watch movies, there is no false contouring.

I hooked up my G5 via DVI->HDMI to the 5020HPM and there were no issues. Looked great and detected 1366x768 straight away!

Justin

You plugged your PC into the HDMI port and got 1366x768?

My PC would only allow 1280x720. The Maxent manual confirms that 1366x768 via HDMI is not possible.

Hmmm... I have a 5020HPM and it came right up. Running from a G5, though, as I said.

Justin

hi, my manual (version before yours) states that mac resolutions are not supported by my model (50X3). is there any mention of this in your manual? i'd look it up myself, but maxent hasn't made this available on their site yet. i'm gonna try to hook my MAC up as soon as i get my vga cable.

what kinda stuff do you do with the g5 and tv? have you noticed any early burn-in stuff? i figure your screen would have static images from OSX computing.

do you play video games on it? i plugged in my PS2 and discovered that it does not utilize the entire screen, so i no longer play on it.

thanks for sharing.

wes

Umm.. I'll take a look in the manual, but I remember it saying something like that, too. It worked for me. All I did was play some DVDs and some WMVHD movies until I got my Oppo. It was a quickfix bc my progressive scan dvd player was really horrible.

Justin

Is it not recommended to hook up my PC to the 50X3 (or ANY plasma for that matter)? Tech support says I should limit my usage, but wouldn't give me anything definitive. Then why do they give very detailed instructions (in their manual) on how to do it via RGB port?

Anyone...anyone?

Cheers,

Wes

That's talked about a lot elsewhere and even in this thread but... basically on one hand plasmas aren't supposed to have the problems of CRTs, the burn-in problem, but at the same time they have a problem that works exactly the same way - people who get technical about it call it unevenly aged pixels, but it's the same result.

So, playing games with a lot of fixed items on the screen (or using PC apps, with the X in the top-right and the Start menu/taskbar at bottom) at length may cause you to notice a shadow of those in later images, but it takes more abuse on a plasma than on an older CRT.

So... yes. My thought on it is, if it would cost too much to replace, avoid playing any game or using the PC standard interface longer than an hour. If you have the money to replace the plasma eventually, then use it however you want - it's your TV, that's the idea.

I used mine for PC use through the RGB port. The 50X3 can do 1366x768 (depending on your video card which would be perfect 1:1 pixel matching) through the RGB port, but is limited to only 1280x720 through the DVI -> HDMI port. I've used my 50X3 for PC use, and it works great. I just limit my use to 1 hour or less, and make sure to avoid static images and have my screen saver active. Other than that, enjoy the TV - there's nothing like surfing the net on a 50" screen.

thanks for the reply. i agree with ya about surfing the net on a 50"er. are you a windoze or a mac guy? only reason i'm asking is i'd like to achieve 1:1 match, and need recommendations on video cards. i've no problem doing the research, but you seem to be up and running...

I'm not talking about SD material. I expect to see a crappy pic on SD. This complaint regards exclusively HD material. I have seen it both on DVDs (admittedly far from HD) and on D* HD. BTW, the HR10-250 HD Tivo (with D* tuners built-in) is the only HD Tivo made. It is being replaced by another HD DVR from D* which uses MPEG4 compression. We'll see if that makes any difference.

The other thing I haven't tried is to use the HDMI connection instead of component. I don't expect to see much difference.

SD material on my new Samsung 5053 looks so much better than the former Maxent. not nearly as much False Contouring. The Maxent did look great with HD, except for the floating black level.

TiVo released their Series 3 HD DVR with 2 cablecard inputs last week.

I have a HR-20 D* DVR and the MPEG4 looks the same as the MPEG2, but again you're comparing local channels to national HD feeds here.

What do you think about the HD on this set compared with the Maxent?

Justin

Hi All,

I have a problem where the picture settings on my Maxent keep getting reset to the factory defaults. It's not all the time, but it's every few days. Anyone heard of this problem?

It maybe all the settings that get reset, but the picture settings are the most noticable.

Thanks,
Steve

Hands down the Sammy wins on all accounts.

The only way that I know of -that the picture settings would reset- is if you push the recall button on the remote. If you or anyone else in your household is not pushing the recall button I would say you have a problem with the unit and should call maxent. P.S. Try to make sure no one is pushing the recall button on the remote by mistake.

what would you pick?

the Maxent or the Panny 50PX6U? Is it really worth the extra?