Owners ONLY thread - >>>KDS-A2000's<<< - Settings/Tweaks - Page 7

Which receiver do you have?

Have you tried to keep the programming from the H10 to 1080i and use full screen - HDMI using the settings previously posted? That satiisfied my wife at least for now.

Vip 211
Marantz SR9300

Have you by chance found a V_CENTER value in the service menu that could be used to recenter the picture somewhat? I've noticed on DVD's that the percent of overscan is not centered on the screen (vertically). On the top there is about 4% overscan, and on the bottom closer to 1%. Thanks.

has anyone tried CNETs settings yet?

You should have warned her that the TV isn't configured correctly to display SD. I warned my wife that she will notice grainy SD channels... she feels okay about watching SD.

If I didn't warn her about SD, she would have thought I didn't know SD was going to be grainy, thus our new tv being a bad purchase.

In any case, your wife will change her mind when you get HD picture...at least get over the air HD setup quickly to help your case.

Tim

Not yet, but it sure is nice to know that those settings are close to 6500k. I've seen some settings posted that have people using cool and neutral. Almost everything I've read has shown that warm or warm2 is always the closest to an accurate greyscale out of the box. I was surprised to see that one owner said that his isf guy told him neutral was closest to 6500k. I think I trust Cnet and their team of reviewers on this one. I'm sure you could make neutral get to 6500 through the service menu, but the Cnet numbers should get us owners the best colors without an isf calibration.

has anyone tried using the iscan VP-30 to get a better picture with their A2000 set?

Absolutely one reason. I also don't want to have to switch between inputs on my receiver, when I switch inputs on my TV. I have found that the analog out will accomplish this, but then I lose the digital sound advantage. Not sure why it would route analog audio, but not digital.

I have my Color a little higher (46) and my Picture a little lower (65), and I haven't changed my White Balance, but otherwise I'm using their settings. So I guess I'm just saying that Brightness 56, Sharpness 50, and Warm2 Color Temp looks right on my set, too. I had Color down at 44 for a while, but in certain scenes I found people looked too pale. My Picture setting will likely go up once I get some lighting in the room (waiting for an Ideal-Lume to arrive). Haven't tweaked White Balance just because I have no idea how to do that by eye, and the defaults look good to me right now.

I've always set my PC CRT monitors to 6500K. Don't know how accurate they really were, but Warm2 looks most familiar to me. Anything else looks blueish.

With my PC, when I want to see 0 - 255 (for gaming or whatever, instead of just 16 - 235 for video) I raise brightness to 66.

Do you have to go through the recievers menu to select the certain output 480I/P, 1080I/P for your picture display (4:3/16:9, Zoom,etc..) and how will that work with the A2000 own (4:3,16:9, Zoom,etc..) just curios?

I do think that different lighting conditions are one reason people choose somewhat different settings. Also, the best contrast/brightness/color-intensity settings are a function of the color temperature (and also the white balance, for that matter.) And one person's ideal picture is not the same as another's in any case.

The biggest difference between my settings and CNet's are the contrast and color temperature settings.

Note that changing the white balance also changes the color temperature--and that the user-adjustable white balance settings only affect "Custom" mode, and can be set independently for earch of the color temperature settings.

The white balance/color temperature can also be adjusted using the service menu, independently for each of the color temperature settings. In this way, all the "color temperatures" (choosable on the user-menu of color temperatures) could be set to be completely identical. Or "warm" could be made cool, and "cool" warm.

Changing the RGB gain and/or the RGB bias values will also change the ideal color/contrast/brightness values. That will be another reason for differences between people's settings.

Yeah, there is a V_CENT value. Member stevenjw discussed the settings in this post. Perhaps I did something wrong, but when I changed the value in the service menu, the setting changed for all inputs. I think that I have the same problem as you - my DVD player isn't centered properly. However, if I change the service menu value, it changes it for the other inputs, such as my cable box, which I don't want to change. I'm not familiar with the service menu, so maybe there is a way to set the value for one particular input. Anybody here know if this can be done?

Yes, and the menu does not incude a "pass through" or "variable" mode, unlike the Sony HD200 I used to have when I had DirecTV service.

The Vip211 can also be used to control the aspect ratio. That can be done independently for SD versus HD content, so that's not a problem.

I know what your talking about. It's mainly the Edge Enhancement and the Detail Enhancer. I could certainly increase those white edges, but settled on this compromise. It's a big picture I posted so the actual white is barely noticable on the TV itself. By adjusting the set for those faint white edges gives you just a tiny bit more detail without hurting the actual picture. It's a nice compromise I settled on and in actual content viewing the image looks razor sharp without being artificially edge enhanced or anything.

About resolving the lines, I really don't know what the deal is. It may be the pattern itself or HDNET's signal. I tweaked every setting in the TV to see if I could get the lines clear and could not yet HD channels are super sharp and clear.

I guess I shouldn't be complaining about test patterns as I don't "watch" those, but as many have said in the Owners thread "You paid for 1920x1080, so you expect to get 1920x1080". On the other hand, who can complain with such a razor sharp HD picture?

I'm surprised more people are not using the Detail Enhancer. I have found a significant improvement in almost every format, including HD on the Discovery channel. It seems to produce a crisper image. This provides the same effect that the unsharp mask in photoshop seems to produce. In general, most digital images can use some out of camera sharpening. Anyway, I have found that a value of Medium for Detail Enhancer, and Low for Edge Enhancement provides a pretty good image.

Well I tried the CNET settings and they look much more realistic. Skin tones look accurate and the colors don't look as cartoonish as they do out of the box. I had my previous crt rear projection isf calibatrated twice and now the Sony looks more like it should. I did put noise reduction on low as it does help the noise without sacrifining too much detail. I agree about the detail enhancer option. On another thread "KTTV images" said that the detail enhancer works both horizontally and vertically as opposed to the sharpness control which works just horizontally. I used the dish network guide page to adjust it and on the medium setting the letters look clearer and more defined. I toned down the sharpness from CNET's 50 to a setting of 35 to compensate for having the detail enhancer on and it looks again "realistic". It sure is nice to have a TV that has so many user control options.

Has anyone found out what the service mode fix is for the low pass filter issue mentioned in the Cnet review?

I have emailed Sony a couple of times and they keep coming back with "Your TV is capable of showing 1080p content" and " our engineering data is proprietary and marketing strategies are instrumental to our success and as such are confidential". I hope someone is able to find those settings. My TV is a July build and might have the filter turned off, but it sure would be nice to know for sure.

In the morning I will turn off both the Edge Enhancement and the Detail Enhancer and snap pictures of the HDNET pattern and everyone can see the difference. If there is still some white showing around the black gridlines I will reduce the sharpness setting until the white is completely gone. In each of these photos you will be able to see the change in the lines I've circled on the earlier picture. As you get rid of the white, the sharpness decreases, so it's all about which compromise you are most comfortable with.

Since I'm using the HDMI input (6) for the SA 8300HD STB, would it make sense to use a DVD player (I think I'm going to get the Oppo 971) and plug it in to the same input and use the DVE patterns to get a more accurate idea of the sets resolution?

I'm passing the 1080i recorded signal from the STB to the A2000. Maybe this STB isn't perfectly recording and then playing back the test patterns? So far any recorded HD material looks exactly like the live feed, so I'm not sure that is the problem, although my eyes may be decieving me.

I also plan to buy a new video card for my PC in order to output a 1080p signal through the DVI to HDMI cable. Maybe this would be a true test of the sets resolution ability?

Surely someone else has recorded the HDNET test patterns and tweaked the A2000 to get the fine lines showing. Can anyone comment if you have gotten ANY test pattern from ANY source to resolve the very fine lines like what I have here?
Close Up Pattern

I also gave the CNET settings a test drive. Although the settings are different than mine, the net result is very similar. However, based on auditioning a lot of material with dark scenes, I think they have the brighness set too low, resulting in a loss of detail in dark scenes.

Apparently, for relatively good sources, the CNET "Picture=84, Iris=Min" setting produces almost exactly the same effect as my "Picture=62, Iris=Auto2" settings. However, I find that the auto-iris does a good job over a wider range of material. The downside is that the auto-iris adjustments are sometimes noticeable. I seldom notice it unless I'm looking for it, so for me it's a good tradeoff.

However, I now prefer the Warm2 setting, after making the white balance adjustments as per CNET. But that requires minor modifications to some of my other settings: Brightness needs to go to 59 from 58, Picture needs to go to 65 from 62, and Color needs to go to 39 from 38. I have updated my original settings post accordingly.

OK, after a little experimenting I will say that the Detail Enhancer is much more powerful than the Edge Enhancement using the HDNET pattern. EE had little effect compared to DE, so I took some photos of the pattern with DE on low and with DE off. Simply turning it off got rid of almost all the white around the gridlines.

Here is the first pic which is DE on low and should be the same as the earlier pic I posted.
DE on low

Here is the pic with DE turned off.
DE off

In my opinion the DE is too powerful. Anything more than the low setting just seems excessive. It is very much like the unsharp mask filter in PS if you are familiar with that. I wish there was a setting in between off and low, but since I had to choose, I prefer low. It just gives everything a small degree of extra clarity. In contrast, the off setting makes everything a tiny bit soft. After flipping back and forth between the 2 settings and different HD programs I think low is the better setting.

The effect on the HDNET pattern resolution seems minimal. I can hardly tell a difference, but it is there. If it were a big difference I would choose the setting that made the lines clearest, but in this case it seems to be user preference.

Jason:

For reference what do you have your sharpness set at when looking at the pattern?

AVBILL....i tried your settings and nice set up when i was playing xbox360

i was also wondering to kdsa2000 owners...

where is the power save on or power save off optinon at??

i couldnt find it anywhere...!?!??!?

All my settings are in my last post (#172) and since this is the HD feed, the sharpness is set to max.

Under the settings menu, there are 2 different areas to make adjustments. When you hit the menu button, it automatically starts at the first area which is picture adjustments. Scan to the bottom of the master menu list, right select, and near the bottom of that submenu is the option to have power save on or off. It is also the same menu for adjusting cinemotion.

No offense, but these settings make the TV very gray.

To which settings do you refer?

Did we ever get those service menu settings from Sony that CNET mentions?

Anthony

Jason,

I did read the post, but these setting make everything very grey. Doesn't anyone watch SD on their set and have good picture?

Seth