Owners ONLY thread >>> 60"/70" XBR2 <<< Settings/Tweaks - Page 15

Originally Posted by jbug

David, I also had the 40XBR800. I sold it to one of my wife's co-workers. Do you still have your?

Originally Posted by makado

I have been using a HD DVD player to watch SD DVDs on my 70 XBR2. I am thinking of trying the new Oppo 981 HD which upscales to 1080p to watch the SD DVDs. Has any one tried this new DVD player with XBR2?

Originally Posted by rlgold88

Buying a scaler video processor for this tv (kdsr60-xbr2 sxrd)a good idea or not worth it?????

comments appreciated on how it could help or and how it wouldnt.

Rob

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

Hey htwaits (and others concerned with ISF calibrations for this set),

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

Hey htwaits (and others concerned with ISF calibrations for this set),

I was approached by Avical to do a little write up of my XBR2 calibration. I know that you already have some comments from me but these are more specific and are more representative of the entire process. It'll be on their webpage but I'll post it here too for inquiring minds:

I recently had my Sony KDS-R60XBR2 HDTV calibrated by David Abrams
as part of his tour through Arizona. David was very professional
and was willing to go out of his way to answer all of my questions
before, during, and after the calibration. Pre-calibration, I
noticed the following: my primary colors were inaccurate
(especially blue and green), a loss of detail in dark shadow
scenes, and some video noise. After calibration, I noticed
substantial performance gains in color accuracy, shadow detail,
video noise, brightness (mine was too high), and contrast. In
addition, some minor uniformity issues were address which I had not
yet noticed but surely would have over time.

David went above and beyond by taking advantage of a feature of my
set that allows me to more easily remember my default calibration
settings in case I ever wanted to change anything (highly unlikely,
of course, since it looks great!). In addition, my DVD player
settings were optimized and this has made a nice different in terms
of upconverted video. David also suggested that I purchase a back
light from an independent company, which turns out to be about the
best $50 that I could have spent to squeeze a little more benefit
out of my system.

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No offense, and I’m glad you’re happy but …………..

there are calibrators and there are calibrators……………………..
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post9039425

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No offense, and I'm glad you're happy but ..

there are calibrators and there are calibrators..
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post9039425

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No offense, and I'm glad you're happy but ..

there are calibrators and there are calibrators..
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post9039425

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

I'm pretty sure it isn't fair to bash David

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

PS - Do you even own this TV?

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Well first of all I didn't bash David.

I said that there are calibrators and there are calibrators.

Just like there are mechanics and there are mechanics or there are doctors and there are doctors.

Some are completely competent, some are world class. should complications arise.

People should just do their homework, the best they can so as to make an informed decision as to what service provider meets their particular budget, their timetable and their expectations regarding the entire experience.

I'm sure that David did a quality job on your TV, I would be surprised if he didn't. My implication was simply that there are choices out there to be made. Again, I am glad that you're happy. I mean that, sincerely. I don't think that you did anything wrong with your choice.

Originally Posted by AikenGhoti

My (many-times-over) revised KDS-R70XBR2 settings and tweaks:

While I was initially happy with the original settings I posted on the owner's thread, and managed to tweak them to look even better, in the end this happiness was only the result of the contrast between them and the factory defaults, which are awful.

The reason why I never succeeded in overall happiness was because there are some problems inherent in the color decoder that are not easily/properly correctable outside of the service menu. No matter how "correct" I previously tried to make my picture, I never managed to get it to be correct in every way. Finally, I gave up and endeavored to make the picture match the picture of my old Pioneer Elite Pro-510HD, which had a magnificent picture: crisp, clean, and without any questionable colors. I had good success with SD, and HD is doing all right. I'm not sure how appropriate it is to post my settings as examples, since they are very subjective and have only indirect connections to calibration. My old TV is calibrated, but has been tweaked a few degrees in every direction since (think of the Steaming Rat method mentioned below) and is not necessarily "correct," so these new XBR2 settings that closely approximate it are very subjective and may not be good for everyone else. If you're interested, click here for an overview of what I ended up doing.

That said, my original post from the owner's thread still had some useful general information in it, so I'm going to take out the misinformation and re-post here with the new values.

I've now tuned three different inputs/devices. I think tuning color, at least with analog (non-HDMI) transports, is going to be rather inconsistent, so keep in mind what I'm tuning when you look at how I tuned it. I'll color code the results for easy reading:

• white = All inputs/devices
• red = Series 2 TiVo directly tuning noisy analog SD Comcast cable. Connected via S-Video. Note that, due to the analog noise, the settings for this input are skewed towards reducing the noise and the color washout it causes.
• green = Series 3 TiVo using cablecards to tune digital SD and HD Comcast cable; tuned specifically for HD content, but SD looks okay too. Currently connected via component to avoid the 5.1 sound warnings. This is the input/device which is probably most typical of an average person's equipment, but since SD and HD programming varies so wildly at the source, it's been difficult to come up with a happy medium, so keep that in mind.
• blue = Zenith DVB318 upconverting DVD player set to 1080i, using the older LG firmware that allows upconversion over component. Connected via component. (At some point, I'll switch back to the Zenith firmware and use HDMI.)

IMPORTANT: Several of the settings below are interdependent. The main element is the adjustment of Hue to G 2 to account for the iffy color decoder in these sets. That, in turn, requires something at least similar to my adjustments to white balance, or some fleshtones will go yellow and some greens will go blue. If you want to try my settings, avoid picking and choosing until later.

Picture:

• Picture Mode: Custom
• Advanced Iris: Auto 2 seems to work well in my environment, day and night. It's a little bright in the dark, but I think I'd rather set up a backlight than have to diddle with the setting all the time.
• Picture (a.k.a. Contrast or White Level): 86 84 88. Between the red push inherent in the color decoder, and the apparent increase to red gain/bias inherent in the Warm 1/2 settings, red values well below 100% can max out the LCOS panel while blue and green can still rise. This results in red crush and an effective shift to cyan at the upper end, and tends to make bright areas of faces washed out and featureless unless you lower Picture to allow more headroom. You probably need lower still for Warm 2.
• Brightness (a.k.a. Black Level): 49 51 45. This is where the noise on my analog SD TiVo sets it apart; not only does it wash out colors, but it also lightens the image and requires me to drop the brightness to 49, while my digital TiVo is higher. The DVD player is a lot lower because it encodes black as a lighter shade to keep details from getting lost in black crush, but we have no black crush and need to compensate to make black look black (an alternative would be Black Corrector, below).
• Color (a.k.a. Saturation): 55 48 48. The washing out of colors on my noisy analog SD TiVo results in a seemingly-high setting of 55, but the digital HD TiVo's value is lower because the colors are what they should be. DVD is similar to the HD TiVo. This is probably very subjective, but most people will be happy with something between 40 and 50. Also note that some shows, like Lost, seem to crank it way up at their end, so don't use them for adjusting settings.
• Hue (a.k.a. Tint): G 2. The color decoder in this TV seems to rotate or skew the color space inappropriately, making reds more fuchsia and flesh too pink. Since the fleshtone correction in Live Color is abominable and doesn't fix red anyway, we fix it here. Note, however, that this in turn requires consequent fixes in the White Balance to fix some tones that are now too yellow, and also some tones that remain a little too fuschia (since we can't afford to use G 3 or higher).
• Color Temp.: Warm 1. Supposedly Warm 2 is closer to correct, but I just can't handle the beige whites, no matter how hard I try.
• Sharpness: Min 17 Min. Note I set sharp to Min (zero) on analog SD to minimize noise, and also on the DVD player because it's already as sharp as it's supposed to be. 17 for the HD TiVo just happens to look good, but I bet I really shouldn't.
• Noise Reduction: Medium Low Low. I use Medium or sometimes High for the analog SD because there's a lot of noise, but High will produce visible smearing at times and I'd rather have some noise. Higher settings may be the source of some complaints about "motion blur." Most non-computer sources will have some noise in them (either analog noise or mpeg mosquito noise) and do benefit from the Low setting.
• DRC Mode: Mode 1. Mode 1 is for true SD content or true HD content. Mode 2 is for SD content that has been scaled to HD externally (external scaler, some HD cable boxes, etc.). Obviously, if your external device may be scaling either SD or HD and the TV has no way of knowing which is coming in, you're kind of screwed. If so, use Mode 1, because it's okay for SD scaled to HD, while Mode 2 is not okay for true HD content. Note that if you're using an actual external scaler to generate 1080p, you probably don't want DRC on at all, since your external scaler is where that functionality should be happening. Note that turning off DRC entirely also turns off the 1080i deinterlacer, so if you have 1080i coming in and don't want any processing, you might be better off using Mode 1 with a 1,1 palette (below) than turning it off.
• DRC Palette vertical,horizontal: 0,100 SD:1,1/HD:50,20 1,1. The horizontal axis appears to cause the picture to become softer, and the vertical causes it to become sharper. Obviously, these seem to be at odds with each other, so it's difficult to say exactly what the intended use is. 0,100 certainly seems to help clean up analog noise. Note that this is set per DRC mode, per resolution, per input, so you're going to have to set it up many times.
• Advanced Settings
  • Black Corrector: Off. This is actually another good way to deal with DVD players' tendency to elevate black in order to avoid black crush. As mentioned, our TV's don't have black crush, so you might want to try turning this on. I'm not sure yet if this, or Brightness, is the best way to fix it. They don't seem to do the same thing. This would not likely be appropriate for any other device.
  • Gamma: Off. Bleh. Stuff is authored for default gamma, why would I want to change it? Note that enabling gamma correction also throws off many of the settings above. Mind you, it's a good temporary fix for programs that were authored way too darkly.
  • Clear White: Off.
  • Live Color (a.k.a. Fleshtone Correction?): Off. I think this is fleshtone correction. However, it seems to change a lot of colors, randomly saturating and changing hue. I tried it on Low for a while for pure analog content, but it looks bad and now it's off for every input.
  • White Balance: I had to change this to accomodate the Hue adjustment above that brought red into alignment, because it caused a couple of other tones to be too green. Note that the Gain is percieved to affect the high end more, and the Bias the low, so some adjustments aren't symmetrical where I found things like fleshtones being, say, greenish at the upper end and purpleish at the bottom. In a way, it's lucky that we have to reduce green, as the set is supposed to have significant green push. Technically, it's not the right way to correct green push, but if you have to do it for other reasons, it's nice that the side effect is minimized thusly. Obviously, these settings vary by individual TV and by input device, so don't take them as gospel.
    • R Gain: 0 0 0
    • G Gain: -9 -9 -9
    • B Gain: -4 -2 -4
    • R Bias: 0 -2 -2
    • G Bias: -2 -1 -2
    • B Bias: -5 -8 -6
    • Detail Enhancer: Low.
    • Edge Enhancer: Low.

Screen:

• Display Area: Normal. Of course. Who needs more overscan?
• Horizontal Center: Almost all of my inputs are showing up just slightly off-center to the left, so I'm using +2..+5 here, depending on the source. Your mileage will certainly vary. Do check it out, though.
• Vertical Center (Zoom mode only): -1 for TV sources, because almost all broadcast letterboxed content is shown slightly above center. DVD letterboxed content is usually centered correctly, so use 0 there.
• Vertical Size: For Zoom, I actually changed it -1 to be just slightly squished vertically to offset the overscan. I can't see the difference and I get a little more real estate. YMMV. For Wide Zoom, I changed it to 5, because Wide Zoom is way oversquished by default and I prefer to crop more than squish, not that I'll ever actually use Wide Zoom.

Setup:

• Game Mode: Off, even for games. It looks crappy to me. Just turn off all of the "enhance"-type settings and the noise reduction and you're better off, in my opinion.
• Color Matrix: ITU601 for SD, ITU709 for HD. I initially thought there may be cases where my cable company is delivering digital SD video to me in the wrong color space, and so I switched 480 from the analog ITU601 to the digital ITU709. However, after finding that it's really the color decoder in this TV that's at fault, I'm back to using the default values (ITU601 for SD and ITU709 for HD).
• Power Saving: Auto. I've noticed no problems so far. I'll try it like this until I do.
• CineMotion: Auto for 480i material. Note that this is actually OFF by default (?!?) and you have to actually be in 480i mode to turn it on. Without this, SD looks like crap. With it, some material can look almost as good as an upconverting DVD player.

Adjusting optical trapezoid and rotation:

• http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8789315

Removing pincushion/hourglass due to screen bowing:

• http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8716833

A remote control macro that toggles closed captioning:

• http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8753245

Further reading:

• KTTV Images is maintaining a similar list of settings, two posts above, and has some interesting observations regarding the various settings related to sharpening/enhancing.
• An interesting take on calibration in general is the Steaming Rat method. It's a lot less technical than traditional calibration, but might offer insights on what you want vs. what calibration will give you. There's something to be said for both. The Steaming Rat method heavily influenced the results above.

Originally Posted by rlgold88

Just trying to get a direction for who and how to get a quility calibrator.

Originally Posted by rlgold88

what is the best way to find a good calibrator?

Some of the questions I should ask?

When calibrating this tV should calibrators know exactly what settings and modes to get optimum performance or do they test all modes and settings in conjunction with each other.

I had an 2 year old samsung calibrated by an isf certified calibrator. But the resultsI got were so so seemed way to dark on some material. The samsung had alot of less settings and modes to adjust and I dont know if I would trust that same guy just because he seemed to do it more of a hobby then a real job. Not that thats bad but I want someone that knows the in and outs of the 60" XBR2.

Also the calibrator said that I would need to get the TV recalibrated after every bulb replacement is the true for sony TV too.

Just trying to get a direction for who and how to get a quility calibrator.

Thanks Rob

Also what is the best DVD calibration disc to get for adusting the user settings?

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

Hey htwaits (and others concerned with ISF calibrations for this set),

I was approached by Avical to do a little write up of my XBR2 calibration. I know that you already have some comments from me but these are more specific and are more representative of the entire process. It'll be on their webpage but I'll post it here too for inquiring minds:

I recently had my Sony KDS-R60XBR2 HDTV calibrated by David Abrams
as part of his tour through Arizona. David was very professional
and was willing to go out of his way to answer all of my questions
before, during, and after the calibration. Pre-calibration, I
noticed the following: my primary colors were inaccurate
(especially blue and green), a loss of detail in dark shadow
scenes, and some video noise. After calibration, I noticed
substantial performance gains in color accuracy, shadow detail,
video noise, brightness (mine was too high), and contrast. In
addition, some minor uniformity issues were address which I had not
yet noticed but surely would have over time.

David went above and beyond by taking advantage of a feature of my
set that allows me to more easily remember my default calibration
settings in case I ever wanted to change anything (highly unlikely,
of course, since it looks great!). In addition, my DVD player
settings were optimized and this has made a nice different in terms
of upconverted video. David also suggested that I purchase a back
light from an independent company, which turns out to be about the
best $50 that I could have spent to squeeze a little more benefit
out of my system.

Originally Posted by SonyHome

What is this "back light" thing? Is there a place on our XBR2 sets to install a backlight? Which backlight are you using and where did you get it?

Originally Posted by SonyHome

What is this "back light" thing? Is there a place on our XBR2 sets to install a backlight? Which backlight are you using and where did you get it?

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

I'm using the ideal lume standard from cinemaquest (see link from Penton Man). It makes a big difference and is totally worth 50 bucks. I thought it was totally gimmicky and was really skeptical but I love it now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist
I'm using the ideal lume standard from cinemaquest (see link from Penton Man). It makes a big difference and is totally worth 50 bucks. I thought it was totally gimmicky and was really skeptical but I love it now.



I second this, I ordered one about a month ago and it is such a huge help for my eyes at night. I just mounted near the top so it's easy to turn on/off but aimed the light back at the wall behind it. I also went to walmart and got a roll of velco to put across the whole light to hold it there instead of the two strips that didn't really hold it at the angle.

Was well worth the 50 or so dollars for it. Now just to get the harmony remote that can control lights!

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist

I'm using the ideal lume standard from cinemaquest (see link from Penton Man). It makes a big difference and is totally worth 50 bucks. I thought it was totally gimmicky and was really skeptical but I love it now.

Originally Posted by Hodnick

I second this, I ordered one about a month ago and it is such a huge help for my eyes at night. I just mounted near the top so it's easy to turn on/off but aimed the light back at the wall behind it. I also went to walmart and got a roll of velco to put across the whole light to hold it there instead of the two strips that didn't really hold it at the angle.

Was well worth the 50 or so dollars for it. Now just to get the harmony remote that can control lights!

Originally Posted by XBR2Mike

I also concur. It has significantly improved my veiwing experience - and no more eye-strain!

The remote is a no brainer - very convenient

Originally Posted by RipRocK

Sorry if this is an obvious question, but did you guys then end up using three of the Ideal-Lume Standard from Cinemaquest to have one go across the top and the other two on each side, or just one at the top is good enough with this particular lighting from them?