Owners ONLY thread - >>>KDS-A2000's<<< - Settings/Tweaks - Page 102

"green push" can be a lot of things. Normally you should be able to calibrate it out by adjusting the gray scale. The SXRD sets have excellent controls for adjusting gain and bias on the RBG.

I would only resort to making service menu adjustments if you didn't achieve satisfactory results by adjusting the sets gray scale.

Thanks for the advice. Right now my white balance settings in the user menu are all at zero except for the green gain which I have set at -7. I really don't know enough about what I am doing to know if making adjustments with the other colors in the white balance will make a difference. Thanks.

All you need is a color meter (a decent one costs $150 but you can get a basic one for $40) and the free Color HCFR software. You can burn a free test disc and throw up a test pattern and FIX your gray scale.

Adjust RGB for balance at 20 IRE (20% gray scale pattern) and then at 80 IRE and get grayscale as balanced as you can. Then step through the full IRE range and fine tune it.

It's really not hard to do, it's really not expensive to get a meter, and in all likelihood your picture will improve dramatically.

When I adjusted my picture by eye I thought that blue was too high but it was actually TOO LOW. Only when I put a meter and a gray pattern up could I see how far off my colors were.

Good luck.

Thanks so much for all your help. I just may look into getting a color meter in order to get the most out of my set. I did not know that replacing the optical block could have such an effect on the tv. Thanks again.

I would be interested in this too. Is there a post here that has step-by-step instructions on doing a DIY caliberation? I have an AVIA disc and am afraid of chaning service menu settings so when I change the settings using AVIA, I am not really sure what the right value is. AVIA can get you to the correct range but not the correct setting IMHO.

Also there are a ton of White Balance settings for this set which AVIA does not cover.

Hopefully I can use the color meter for my bedroom LCD (Sharp) and my computer monitor too so for about $100, it seems like a reasonable buy. Is one available in local stores like Radio Shack?

PS: I changed the bulb on this set and now my colors look washed out. Dialling down brightness and/or Iris did not look good either. Then I tried random settings posted here and the picture looked better.

This thread is a great place to start as it gives the basics for display calibration;

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=852536

To give you some specifics on calibrating the SXRD A2000 series TV I will assume that you are using the freeware ColorHCFR software as well as either the AVS Blu-Ray compatible test disc (available as a download in the calibration forum) or the free DVD from Color HCFR.

1. Install Color HCFR on a laptop you will use for calibration (you can use a desktop if you have one in your viewing area). You might want to get a USB extension cable too so that you can sit further back from the TV when making adjustments.
2. Download and burn either the Color HCFR test disc or the AVS AVCHD Test Disc for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
3. Buy a compatible sensor. I like the Eye-One, you can find kits with this sensor bundled for under $100 if you look around and check the calibration forum threads for buy deals.
4. Load the necessary software/drivers for your sensor. You will need to copy the DLL file for the sensor into the colorHCFR program directory so that it can see the sensor when plugged in.
5. If doing calibration with the Blu-Ray compatible AVS AVCHD test disc, set your color space to REF709 in the test software under "preferences". This is important since HD material and SD material use different color spaces.

Now, assuming you've gotten all of this working, how do you calibrate this TV?

Before you start you want your TV warmed up for at least 30 minutes running bright content. Calibration must be performed in a DARK room. Don't calibrate in mid-day.

1. Reset settings for the input you will be using to defaults (record your old settings first if desired) and choose an Iris setting you want to calibrate with. I would avoid calibration with dynamic Iris since it can affect the readings. You can always calibrate with Iris at medium or high and then change the iris settings after calibration if you want a brighter picture, it won't throw things off too much.

2. Press the green "start" button on the Color HCFR software and answer "yes" to sensor calibration. Put the sensor in a dark place and click "ok" to calibrate the sensor.

2. Put up a 100% White box pattern from the test disc and position your sensor over it. I use a tripod leaned against the screen with the sensor resting on the screen directly. The sensor should be reading, you can tell it is by seeing the RGB values in the lower left of the display. You will see a contrast level measured in Foot Lamberts (FtL). This is your overall contrast setting. Generally for digital RPTV you are shooting for a setting of 30-40 but with the excellent SXRD you can go much higher and not have bleed out, etc. I calibrate for 50 ft/l and the rest of the calculations use this value. Adjust contrast until the TV reads the desired value for Ft/L. Make sure when calibrating you are not reading the values with the TV menu on the screen!

3. Now that you've calibrated your contrast, it's time to calibrate brightness. Put up the 10% grayscale settings and get the 10% (10 IRE) window displayed on the screen. Make sure your meter is still reading (mine gets stuck sometimes but quickly unplugging it and plugging it back in wakes it up). Calibrate Ft/L by adjusting brightness control until you get a reading of .65% of the value you got for the 100% window. In our example of reading 50 ft/l for 100% then you will be adjusting for 0.325 Ft/L on the 10% window. This sets the screen brightness for a 2.2 Gamma value (the industry spec) at 10 IRE and it should more or less hold throughout the brightness range of the set at all IRE values.

4. Now pull up the primary colors from the DVD menu and pull up a 100% RED color window. Adjust Ft/L to read 21% of what it read when you calibrated 50 ft/L for the 100% window. Adjust your COLOR CONTROL up and down to get this adjusted, do not make adjustments to picture or brightness. From our example you would be calibrating for an Ft/L reading on the 100% RED window of approximately 10.5 Ft/L.

5. Now pull up a 25% or 20% gray window. See the RGB values in the lower left of the screen and how they are all over the place? This is your gray scale and it's way WAY off. Keep in mind that when possible you want to reduce the oversaturated colors before you EVER bring up a color. Gain controls overall saturation and affects the brighter IREs more and BIAS adjusts the fine tuning more. You want to make the minimal adjustments you can to these primaries to get them reading as close to 100% for Red Green and Blue as possible. You will make these adjustments in "advanced settings" under "white balance".

6. Now repeat step 5 with a 50% window. Go back to 25% and adjust again. When you have 25% and 50% reading pretty well check 75%. It should be tracking well but you can adjust here too. The goal is to get RGB tracking even for the full IRE range but in reality you will not be able to get it great in the lowest IRE values. You want the best performance in the critical 25%-75% since that's where you will notice color differences, skin tones, etc, the most.
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That's it. Your set should look remarkably better than it did and you didn't even have to go into the service menu. The first time you do this it might take an hour or two, but after some practice you will be able to do it in 30 minutes. This just scratches the surface of what these TVs can do, you can get more detailed info and learn about more calibration techniques in the thread I linked and in the general calibration forum for the HCFR software.

You should also plan on adjusting again every 90 days or so as the brightness of your bulb changes.

Very cool!! Thanks so much for the excellent post. I will look into borrowing a friend's Spyder2 and doing it in the next couple of weeks.

Glad I could help. The Spyder2 I had would give low readings for the color red. It's still an improvement over adjusting by eye and will give you some experience doing calibrations, but you might want to look into a better sensor eventually.

I have a KDS55-a2000, hooked to a EVGA Geforce 7300 GT. Has anyone got the PC screen to show at full size, if so what connection at what resolution, i have tried a DVI to HDMI with no luck at all. I have got it to work via VGA but the screen is only about 1/2 the size of the screen before i use the TV to get it to 2/3. I know it was probably listed before but this thread is 100+ pages long and my other searches have turned up nothing. Please help fellow Sony Owners.

I have input 6 HDMI not working on my KDS-60A2000. Has anyone any experience of this? There is no physical damage to the socket. Can it be fixed by some sort of software download? The set is 1 year and 11 months old. I wonder if the warranty would cover this.

No software update is going to fix that. The set would be covered for this under warranty but the warranty for that kind of thing is only one year old.

OK i just replaced my bulb and im at the service menu that tells me my hours but how do i reset it back to 0. Thanks Mike

You don't reset it in the service menu but the regular menu. Your manual tells you the exact place.

I just wanted to share some additional calibration related information for owners of this set who have their light engine replaced.

I reported the results of my earlier calibration but have had more time over the past week to do more testing and make further adjustments.

One thing I noted after my light engine was replaced is that with the WARM2 setting for color the blue level was really really down on the set more than it had ever been with the previous light engine.

With my old engine I could only get proper D65K gray adjustment with the WARM2 setting. What I am finding now though is that although I can get D65K adjusted with WARM2 the Delta-E values are really far off and the set looks bad in lower brightness areas.

I have since recalibrated with the WARM1 color setting and it dialed into D65K much easier (which surprised me, I could never get D65K adjusted before with WARM1) and my Delta-E values are between 2-4 throughout the IRE range.

Thanks jmpage2 for the additional information. I may try the the warm1 setting.

I have been noticing that my blacks on screen look kind of black with dark blue splotches in it, is there something out of whack or is my TV starting to fubar? Ive had the tv about 2 years or so.

Found this on Sony's official website, maybe thats my problem

Good find.

My gray scale is way off. Is there an easy way to adjust it? The basic and advance adjustments don't cut it.
I tried the service menu a year ago, but it wasn't working very well for me.

I also notice the same thing on mine and someone pointed it out to me today. Can someone confirm if it's time to call Sony for a new block? Overall all my blacks are more like purple.

You should first see if there's anything you can adjust that has an effect on this, such as the gamma correction, brightness level, etc, before placing a call to Sony.

I haven't heard of optical block failure happening in this way but I suppose it is possible. Maybe some experts can chime in from the calibration team.

Originally posted on 01/12/2008 here:

Calibration by Chad B

I'm reposting it in the A2000 owner's thread to avoid having it purged due to lack of activity in it's original thread.


I'm including this calibration report in the RPTV (Post#1) list that's linked at the bottom of my post.

I haven't been reading RPTV threads for over a year. If any of you know about calibration reports that aren't in the list please PM me and I will include them.

My KDS-50A2000 had a projector replacement and a lamp replacement recently.

Eventhough it works fine, I can notice picture isn't the same eventhough I am using same settings under User Menu.

So I got a hold of a Service menu complete list with default value's and went one by one on each setting. Though I didn't change anything, I noticed few value's are noticeably different. For someone who is an expert on service menu, please tell me about following settings:

WEM
129
GAIN_R 132
GAIN_G 132
GAIN_B 132

Those were the settings I found when I looked. List I got says default should be 128 for each of those. Which is the best value to use? What does this affect?

Other than LPF setting, what else can help for sharpness and scree focus?

Also, I notice, my picture gets highlights blown out easily, with less dynamic range. What's in the service menu that can help this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

128 is the standard to start for Cool ... Does the Picture look bright or Dark... Warm would be 128 & below... Blue would be lower in Warm...

Picture looks dark of course.
Even if I change the brightness and picture from user menu, it won't look normal. Picture seems to blow out highlights easily.

I would check in the calibration forum to see if any calibrators have worked on the Sony A2000 series after light engine replacement.

Some of them might have an opinion on whether or not the new light engine can be made to look as good as the original one after a professional full calibration.

How much better did the picture get after calibrating it properly?

I've been satisfied with the picture since the day i got the tv but it's on vivid mode and since i've been reading tv forums for about a year now, everyone talks about calibrating the tv and that vivid is horrible. All this talk makes me feel like i'm missing out on something great. I have previously calibrated(regular menu options only) my tv to what other people have used just to get an idea of what it's like and i hated it. I understand that every t.v. is different in calibration but i tried about 4 different recommendations and on each one the picture looked washed out and...yellowish(i've never been a fan of warm settings, cool ftw). I've tried living with it for a couple days(3 has been my max) and still end up switching it back.

What was your first reaction when you properly calibrated it?

Did Black levels look better/worse? White levels?

Do different HD sources need different calibration(Satellite, BD, HD DVD, Gaming, etc)?

I don't have a laptop and don't want to spend money on a calibration meter thingy because i'm doubting i'll even like it, i'm just mostly curious.
How well do blu-ray calibration movies work and how much are they?

If I have an "extended warranty" through Best Buy, will they calibrate the t.v. if i call a tech?(I'll probably have to call and find out)

On to other things. I ran an over scan test on my tv, but it was streaming through my Xbox 360 so i don't know if that affected the results, and it was showing about 2.5% over scan(not bad).
Is that an accurate method to test over scan issues and does it increase your PQ if you fix it?

I do have a PC about 6ft from the tv but it only has VGA out(it's a cheapo emachines). Can i run any tests/calibrators from this to my tv and is there any update/fix i can do to the t.v. so it won't display letterbox?

My tv was manufactured in August 2006(SP3), any new updates available?

Final Question(it's kind of a pipe dream):
Is there anyway possible that I can replace some parts inside of the t.v. with parts from the A3000 and also apply a firmware upgrade to it so it's capable of displaying with 120hz?

Sorry for all the questions, it's just a collection of thoughts and ideas i've had over the years of owning it. I'd appreciate if you could answer as many as possible, even if it's "No".

Personally I can't stand the way these sets look when they're not calibrated. A friend of mine with an A3000 hasn't let me calibrate it yet (he's waiting until he gets his Blu-Ray player) and the picture looks terrible. The blue is pumped up, the picture is over sharpened, etc. It's especially noticeable with skin tones, which don't look natural. I can usually tell when a set is badly adjusted just by seeing the greenish/bluish/reddish tint to the skin of the actors, news castors, etc.



The only thing that matters is what makes you happy. However, there's no reason you can't do a real calibration (or pay for one) and if not happy change it back to the settings you had before.


Black levels are noticeably better after calibration and there is less blow out of high brightness areas of the picture.


Different sources do require different calibration, however, since I run everything through an audio video receiver with a single HDMI connection this is not really possible. I calibrate for my PS3 and deal with other inputs being slightly off.


They work for basic adjustment, such as if one of your primary colors is grossly off, helping you set brightness level, etc. They are worthless for setting grayscale, checking Delta-E, etc. What's the most important part of calibration? Oh ya, it's having the gray scale and luminance calibrated properly, neither of which are possible with a calibration disc alone.

If you're willing to spend $40 on a calibration "movie" then you can spend the same on a used sensor on eBay and do a real calibration with the free tools that are available.


Calibration is not part of your warranty. They do sell inexpensive calibration at Magnolia if your Best Buy has one of those. Inexpensive being about $150... which is a lot cheaper than the $300-$500 many have paid for a pro calibration.


You need to run an over scan pattern check from the actual device you are calibrating for.


If the PC runs Windows XP or Vista and has USB ports than you can use it for calibration. You just need to get a USB extension cable for the sensor, which costs about $2 from monoprice.com.

You don't want your TV to display letterbox? Seriously, don't waste our time with this crap. If you hate the evil "black bars" so much then just use the zoom or full screen function on the TV or your input source.


no.


No. If you want a 120hz TV you will need to buy one.

You seem to give very detailed responses, so I will ask you.... I have ready through this here and there, but I basically just want to know how to calibrate my tv, what do I need to buy, where do I get it....etc....etc....if you could PM me that would be great.

Thanks in advance!!!

Please do a search for posts of mine in this thread. I provided a very detailed calibration instruction earlier on a page or two back.

I adjusted someone esles calibration settings for the t.v. last night a little bit to my own preferences and they actually weren't that bad. Once i started adjusting the RGB Offset and Gains the picture stopped looking so yellow and actually began looking pretty good. I then switched back to vivid and was like "Wow, this sucks". So i'm beginning to like the whole calibration stuff but i clearly need to tweak it more. There seems to be a big red push mostly on the tv that i'm having difficulties fixing in the main menu. Thanks for you help tho!

p.s. When i was complaining of the letterbox(bars on top, bottom and sides) situation, it was for the VGA connection only, not for movies or anything. PC's display in 1280x720 in the center of the screen, so it's clear that the t.v. does not scale VGA connections to 1920x1080. I was just curious if there's a way to fix that via service menu.