Owners ONLY thread - >>>KDS-A2000's<<< - Settings/Tweaks - Page 4

It's already posted.

Since 480i has less detail and more noise, I softened the image slightly. I reduced the sharpness, turned the NR up to high and turned on the edge enhancement. There doesn't seem to be any downside on the HD channels, but it makes a big improvement on the 480i channels.

I want to go get a HDMI cable to plug between the STB and the TV and see if that makes any difference. If it does, I'll report back any changes.

For those of you concerned about improving the SD quality you need to get a Radio Shack Bidirectional Cable TV Amplifier.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search
OR
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search

When you turn up the gain control you will see the snow and noise start to dissapear. As good as it is it won't make it completely disappear, but it helps a lot. Plus it helps to prevent the digital signal from pixelating on the HD channels.

I tried running 2 of them in series, but it made no improvement. Now that I think about it, I may try one going to the STB and one to my VCR's in a parallel design. I got one of these years ago and almost forget about it. It works well.

I went to get the Digital Video Essentials DVD a while ago and was surprised there was more than one version. Can someone in the know please tell me if there are 2 versions of the NTSC?
I saw a PAL version, so I know that's not for me.

I got the one that says "Optimize Your Home Entertainment System" NTSC component. The confusng part is that on the back of the box it says they made a NTSC, PAL and HDTV version of the disc. I can find no info at all on a HDTV version. Am I missing something here?

What I got:

i made 1 change from my original settings and it brought an extra wow to the set. i know cnet suggested you turn off all the enhancements but at least try the white enhancement. i got it set on low and it gives all white details a lil glow to it. a must try

The HDTV version only plays on D-Theater format type machines. It is a VHS tape if am correct. What you have is fine. It is also what I have.

Yea, I just started trying it out this morning. Seems to be working just fine. I think I do need to get a newer upconverting DVD player, though. You could see a little graininess from my 480p DVD player.

Is that the general consensus, use this disc and set up the TV using a good 1080i DVD player? Probably should use an HDMI cable as well, right?

Has anyone found a way to tweak colors individually (red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, magenta)? I don't see anything in the custom menu, so I'm guessing this would be a service mode tweak.

Also has anyone noticed an shimmering in a panning picture? When I play Xbox 360 games and pan the screen slowly everything seems to shimmer a bit (I can't notice this with a fast pan). I'm wondering if this is the moire filter umr was talking about. The shimmering is more pronounced in 1080i (implying a deinterlacing limitation), but I also see it in 720p to a slightly lesser extent.

I used the white balance settings to reduce the red and green. It may not be the right place to adjust, but it worked and the colors are very balanced now.

I haven't seen that shimmering, sorry.

I was hoping to tweak the input 4 from the SA8300HD DVR by recording that test pattern from HDNET. Something wierd happened. The DVR shows it recorded it, but won't play it. When I hit play it goes to the channel 998 screen saver. Maybe it didn't record it?

Anyone have any other ideas for tweaking the DVRs input settings? Maybe I'll have to wait until next week and try again to record it?

how much did you reduce them by? can you post your settings?

Sure, look behind you.
Page 3.

I have the same DVR, and mine recorded and played fine. I do however have mine connected to Input 6 via HDMI.

I just got my set and after some inspection it appears as if the green convergence is off. The guy that took it off the truck had it almost upside down and gave it a bit of a jolt getting it over the curb on the handcart. Is there a way to adjust this ? The red may be off a bit too but the green is off by more.

Sorry if this has been posted before but I have a son who is fussin....

Wouldn't the white balance effect the white areas of the screen far more than the areas with color (I thought I remembered someone posting that)?

Yes, that's what the white balance controls are for. Trying to adjust color with the white balance controls isn't going to yield good results, but if you're happy with what you end up with then feel free to use them...

I received my 60 A2000 last week, and have spent a few days tweaking and evaluating it. It's hard (without a test disc) to settle on the "optimum" settings until you've had a variety of content and several hours with it.

Overall, I'm blown away by the HD quality on high quality feeds (Discovery HD, Conan OTA, HDNet). On SD, I am dissapointed but find the high NR setting helps a TON. I also have a 42" Panny Plasma and a low end 4:3 LCD projector, plus the 36" WEGA this is replacing, so I have seen the gamut of technologies. Oddly, the 4:3 LCD projector shows less noise on SD than the SXRD, probably because the low resolution just hazes out the details, even on a 92" screen.

I used the settings many have suggested here for a while, and was mainly dissapointed with the black levels, which never seemed to be truly "inky" as is always stated. This is replacing a 36" WEGA so of course it's a hard standard to meet. Yesterday I switched to low power mode (which seemed to take out the "pop" when tested previously) and I REALLY am enjoying the improvement in practice. If you aren't running in power save, give it another look.

The other which is hard to settle on is Noise Reduction, which I find DOES help SOME HD content when set to medium or high, but ALSO takes away something of the WOW factor. I have settled on LOW for now, but will manually set to HIGH if watching SD for a while that is really noisy.

Here are my settings:
Auto1 (tried at auto2 but I have settled on auto1)
Picture 65 (have tweaked it several times)
Brightness 50 (a few notches below the 54 I had made a big difference)
Color 51
Huge G1
Color Temp Cool
Sharpness 80 (had at 20-25 but am enjoying the 80 for now)
NR Low
advanced -- all set to off (had played with black corrector, but now it's off)

r gain -7
g gain -7
everthing else 0

I have no way to calibrate grey scale per se, so I am just going with the more moderate suggestions here.

On the stand, I have a 15.8" high stand and found it is a GREAT height. I would not want the TV much higher.

Kudos to this forum and the many positive contributors who helped me with the decision to buy and the tweaks.

Wow, sounds eeriely like misterjensens situation. The delivery guy had his set laying on it's side and new he is seeing a faint greenish tint on the left side of his screen. I wonder if there is a connection?

Oh yea, I'm assuming the convergence can be adjusted in the service menu. I know the color balance can.

I very much doubt that MC can be corrected via the service menu. It may likely require opening up the machine and replacing the prism block. If I had seen my Ruby delivered in any position other than with "this side up" clearly in view, I'd have called my dealer on the spot and possibly not accepted delivery. There's a reason they come with those shipping warnings.

Once you've taken delivery, the only recourse is via the product's warranty. Call Sony immediately and have it serviced. Let them make the determination as to what's wrong and how best to resolve it. They may replace it if they can't fix it in house. If they can't, that's what I'd be looking for rather than waiting a long time to have it serviced elsewhere. That'll only add more stress from the round trip shipping.

Good luck.

BTW, my 60A2000 has perfect convergence. I only wish my Ruby's looked this good. Sony is sending out a tech to correct my overscan and make sure the LPF settings are correct. I specifically asked and was told repeatedly that overscan is correctable via the service menu. I'm still skeptical. I won't have it serviced for about two weeks due to my schedule. I'll post results later.

Are the "Picture" and "contrast" settings the same? I can't find a contrast setting on my tv.

I just used DVE and GetGray to calibrate some killer settings for my A2000 (these settings looks great from both the Oppo 970 and the Xbox 360). Note this calibration is for a dark room, but the nice thing about it, is I did it with power saving mode on. If you are in a normal lit room, you could turn power saver off to increase the brightness by 25% or so.

Picture Mode: Custom
Advanced Iris: Auto 1
Picture: Max
Brightness: 55
Color: 54
Hue: 0
Color Temp: Neutral
Sharpness: 25
Noise Reduction: Low

All advanced options off except...
Clear White: High (removed some red tint)
Detail Enhancer: Medium (I did this primarily for the 360; I might disable it for the Oppo)

Give these a try for hidef sources and let me know what you think. I'm reversing my endorsement of the gamma setting. It brings out shadow detail, true, but it makes the dark areas pretty unrealistic, and washes out some dark areas. Raising brightness by 5 seems to work a little better than turning Gamma on low (IMO) to keep the dark areas of the screen looking proper.

Yes... Sony calls the contrast setting "Picture" (also known as white level). Take note that brightness deals with black level.

Thanks man. It seems that whenever I put on anyones settings, the picture seems washed out. But when i put on vivid, it looks a lot more clear, to me at least. This is on the 360 only. Am I the only one?

I also find that with the power save on the viewing angle is better, at least the perception of a big intensity variation as you move away from center. I find that big variations in intensity are distracting, relative to my plasma which of course has a much larger / more consistent viewing area.

On good HD content the SXRD blows the plasma away though.

I think most people have the color set too low, and the gray's too red. Vivid has high color and bluish grays.

For some reason, the conventional wisdom I've heard is that "warm" is more accurate than "neutral" or "cool". To my eyes, warm1 and warm2 both has a reddish hue (as Sony states in their menu) for the grayscale (cool was clearly blue). Neutral too was slightly red in the lighter grayscale sections, but the "clear white" option removed this reddish hue. I used the GetGray grayscale sweep and my eyes to determine this.

For those of you who believe one of the warm settings are the most accurate, have you looked at a grayscale sweep with the various settings (or any you just taking conventional wisdom)? Especially look at the light areas of the grayscale. It is possible our sets are different.

DVE also confirmed for me that a color level of 54 was accurate for my set in my lighting conditions. As soon as I switched the colors in the custom menu to this, item in my Xbox 360 games just started jumping out at me. I had no idea accurate color could make everything seem more vivid. Every color in the spectrum looks great now. I wasn't just focusing on red or green anymore, my eyes would focus on everything.

I did away with the gamma control and raised the brightness. This allowed a much more even grayscale transition. If you want to tweak the darkness so you still see everything, go with gamma. If accuracy is more important, leave gamma off. The gamma settings help bring out shadow detail, but they also wash out the lower spectrum (such as dark blue colors).

I hope this helps.

I recently switched color from neutral to cool and I think that's giving a more balanced picture during normal viewing. It seems that less accurate colors can look better for an instant, but over time having more even/accurate colors is much better as you get lost in the image and not the TV. The overall realism is just much higher.

I will try bumping color up and maybe play with neutral + "clear white"

thanks for the tips.

"Conventional wisdom" says to use Warm settings because it is usually closest to being accurate - that is, the color of white from the Warm setting on TV's is closest to that of the broadcast standard calling for white to be D65. This initially appears red to many people (yourself apparently included ) because they are so used to watching on displays that are significantly bluer than this. In fact even the Warm settings on most displays are still bluer than they should be - a lot of calibrators and reviewers even say (only half-jokingly) that a better naming scheme for the color temperature settings instead of Warm, Neutral, and Cool would be Cool, Cooler, and Coolest...

I haven't taken proper measurements on my coworker's set with my spectroradiometer yet but to my eye, Warm2 looks half-reasonable to me as a starting place for the white balance (keeping in mind that I reasonably-well know what D65 looks like). YMMV.

recieved my 50''.. what type of hdmi cable do you guys have running?
i've looked on monoprice but there are various kinds..
which do you guys find best suits this tv?

I'll be interested in your findings. One point worth noting, it is not what I'm used to seeing that caused me to go with neutral, it was my noticing of light pink in a GetGray gray test patten sweep (at 5% increments) that influenced this. I presume D65 (sunlight approximation I think) has all the shades of gray looking colorless (not with hues of pink in the bright areas), correct?

You are correct that grayscale should not appear to have color at one brightness and not another - that's an indication that the grayscale response is not flat. This can be caused by several things - one of course is just an inaccurate grayscale calibration (which virtually all TV's have with any of the out-of-the-box color temperature settings). Another could be from the picture / contrast being turned too high - for example, whites appearing reddish at the top-end only could be an indicator that the green and / or blue panels hit its / their saturation point(s) before the red one. If this is the case, turning down the contrast a touch would likely alleviate the pink-looking whites. If this isn't the problem then the other way of fixing this is manually adjusting the white balance controls. If you feel that bright white is too pink, then you'll probably find that turning down the red gain / drive a little bit will bring it 'in line' with the rest of the grayscale. Of course it's also possible that the high end is close to right and the low end is really still too blue and / or green...

Interesting, thanks for your insight Googer. I'll be interested in hearing your findings.