Owners ONLY thread >>> 60"/70" XBR2 <<< Settings/Tweaks - Page 33

netvizier , This is a good review. I have asked for some tips on the white balance. If any one could comment this would be great what looks good to You? It can be in the user or service menu Drive, bias, Red, Green,Blue... I have used close to what this review says Red 0, Green - 7, Blue- 9... bias for low light areas of the Picture Red 0 , Green -3, Blue -2... any other sugestions anybody ? netvizier in game mode You are bypassing the DRC . Buy the way for all HD it is better to turn off the DRC. The set does it for 1080 P anyway. DRC helps for 480 I & 480 P. Here is the review... http://ultimateavmag.com/rearproject...br2/index.html

Settings http://ultimateavmag.com/rearproject...r2/index6.html This looks good for quick set up on My set build Date 01/07... Remember it is still the best to get Calibrated by Folks like UMR that can get everything on the mark...

First off, it's kind of scary that somebody who doesn't know the difference between bios and bias is adjusting these parameters.

Second, few sets manufactured will require the same settings for bias and drive. The reason you pay somebody to calibrate your set is to find the best possible combination of bias and drive to make the gray scale as linear as possible. You can't really achieve that by eye - that's why calibrators use color measuring instruments that are periodically calibrated (so the instrument remains accurate all the time).

I agree! I had my set calibrated by Jeff Meier(UMR) and I knew what my service menu gain and bias settings were before he did his magic on my set. I can tell everyone that he came nowhere close to lowering the green gain by 7 or the blue gain by 9. Until someone gets their set professionally calibrated the best thing you can do is put it in Warm 2(closest to 6500k), lower the color setting to the mid 40's(adjust for Sony's oversaturation of primaries) and leave the white balance alone. By adjusting to someone elses settings you are probably going to do more harm than good.

That's not 100% true. Someone with a trained eye, the right source material and some patience can get grey scale tracking pretty close. Not perfect, but pretty close to it.

OK Sorry, (bios and bias) old Tech Joke ...In old Days We Switched the Service Switch & turned the Drives down to cut off no line, Close to 9300...Turn up the red to see a line Ah!!!Close to 6500k ... Some had three bias, some only two Blue, Green, to get best Black. If You had a good Black You knew You had a very good tracking CRT if You did not need to adjust bias for dark areas.. If You had a Female in the room You would ask Her , How does it Look to You ? TV stations had Gray Scale meters but very expensive. You was lucky if You had a friend that worked at the TV station...I did, to look at high Dollar Monitors...

Ok , Lets look at Today. Almost all Manufacture of TV's will tell You they are or can be set to the proper settings out of the box. I am in industrial electronics now but keep up with local TV Technicians . They warned Me with anyone I talk to at any TV manufacture Do Not Talk Calibration... Service Menu is set up the same with all sets. Some check each one for Quality control. Some only every so many to see if everything looks OK. Sony in the Custom Mode will say You can adjust everything You would need in the User Menu that You can do in the Service Menu. You will note from My past statement that People like UMR can get each set He sets up On the Nose. He has had many Hours working with this kind of Display. Plus best equipment to do it right. P.S. Look at the new User Manual for the KDS 50A3000 They tell You what every function of the Menu, but give You no suggestion of Low, Med, or High...

It's nice to be delusional... it makes life so much more simple. I have 34 years of experience with imaging products and image quality assessment with a large imaging corporation. Film (moving and still), digital (video and capture, moving and still), 2-D, 3-D, b&w, color, projection, all sizes and types of video displays. Instrumentation beats the eye every time. And there are many reasons from people not perceiving color the same from person to person, to variations in display technology, to personal preferences (just because someone has a bias to prefer a slightly blue or slightly green display, doesn't mean that is ACCURATE), to ambient lighting, to paint and furnishing colors... the list is extensive. If you want accurate displays, instrumentation is the key. You CERTAINLY can improve on factory settings (except for certain brands that actually do an in-factory calibration, but you'd know if you purchased one of those) to a HUGE extent. But you can't optimize a display without instrumentation. Calibration usually relies on only being able to adjust the top and bottom of the brightness scale (in each color). You have to pick the 6 RGB values that give you the most accurate result across the entire gray scale. Picking the best result between -2, +3, +1, -3, -1, +4 versus -1, +3, +2, -3, 0, +3 is probably impossible without instrumentation readings and a spreadsheet to compare the aim points (ideal RGB values for each step in the gray scale) versus measured points for each point on the gray scale.

maxdb, When I started in electronics they always talked of TV we can hang on the wall. I said I can't wait for 3 D. Our sets with the glass's do OK. RCA was working on some demo sets in the 60s-70s. One of our instructors got to see one. I was reading that someone was trying display with no glass's... Sorry to get off topic...I agree with all you said above even room lighting can make a difference. So if You move You should have it redone again to adjust for different conditions...

Yes, it is, isn't it?


How do you equate your argument that instruments (scientific results) beat eyes (perception) in this field versus your unquantifiable statements about power cords in a previous post?
What instrumentation were you using there?


I've been doing grey scale tracking by eye, both professionally and for my own benefit, for nearly 40 years. I specifically said it may not be perfect. But I'll bet you would be surprised at how close I can get by eye.

My set looks absolutely horrible in Warm 2. It doesn't matter how much I lower the color - I have to adjust the White Balance to get a natural looking picture.

There is a wide degree of variation in these products. Warm 2 is typically closest to correct, but sometimes the error is in a very unattractive direction.

Have you ever achieved correct settings using "Neutral" color temp?

I do not believe so, but it usually does not matter what color temperature you start with. You can adjust the biases and gains in the service mode with any color temperature in almost all cases with these displays to yield a quality result. It is just easier if you start with something close. I also prefer to set D65 as the warmest setting in most cases.

I always suggest watching D 6500 for a week. Get used to it... Then start stepping back. Warm 1 not to bad, Neutral will look to Blue, Cool , You will say why do they have this ? Who wants to watch a Blue picture with some Color in it?Everything is to Blue.. I was wondering UMR if You ever tried setting each Temp to D6500 for a fail safe if someone hit reset on the User Menu & it went back to Nuetral.

You can set the reset color temperature to whatever you like in the service mode.

Good that would be the way to do it...

Solid state displays might survive some moves without needing recalibration - if room lighting and colors are similar. CRTs... yep, even moving them in the same room can upset calibration - especially large screens with long beam paths.

Calibration is a fleeting thing with the sets we have today... whether tube or solid state with a projection lamp... the light output varies over time (tubes and lamps get dimmer as they age). So your calibration with a few hundred hours on the lamp/tube is going to be pretty different than your calibration with 2000 hours on the tube(s)/lamp. It's a slippery thing to deal with.

3-D with no glasses will be VERY VERY special. I could SWEAR when I was maybe 5 years old (1955) a kid across the street had a ViewMaster projector - you put in the normal ViewMaster card and the projector had 1 lamp and 2 lenses. The left lens output the left image, the right lens output the right picture. His screen was nothing more than a sheet hung in the basement. You had to diddle the 2 lenses to get them lined up vertical and horizontal, and when they did, the 3-D image just POPPED into existence. It was like magic. So I know 3-D without glasses is possible. The issue is making it work for an entire theater-size audience - that's a heck of a feat. At home with 1-4 people viewing a 60" to 110" screen... could be easier with a double-projector system since viewing angle wouldn't have to be huge. I'm a huge fan of IMAX 3-D and Disney Digital 3-D - but would definitely like to get rid of the light-gray polarized glasses those systems require.

Over what period of time are you making that judgement? 5 seconds or 1 hour? Most people think Warm 2 is awful coming off one of the colder settings. But after hours of watching Warm 2, switching back to any colder setting is CLEARLY wrong - way too blue. Have you looked at gray fields or gray scale test patterns from a test/setup DVD to see whether the grays look neutral or tinted when you use each color temp setting? With no images on the screen, it becomes easier to see if the grays look too warm or too cold.

Hey guys, I'm really scratching my head at my. Picture and Color settings v. what most of you seem to be using. With Power Saving at Auto and Iris at Low, my picture is 65-70. Anything more just seems to make the whites too bright and standout from the rest of the picture. It's a similar situation with color, 35-40 is the upper limit of what I can tolerate in terms of saturation. Using Avia, I arrived at a saturation level of ~55, but it looks horrible at that level. I've the got the red's knocked down a few notches. Any thoughts?

Try iris at fixed-high, black correction at low, gamma at off; then adjust brightness and contrast.

Turn power saving mode ON - that will reduce the output level of the lamp, not only extending the life of the lamp, but reducing the maximum brightness level - which is way too bright if you are viewing in a darkened room. Set the iris to Auto 2 or Auto 1 depending on how brightly lit the room is (Auto 2 for a dark room). This goes a long way to maximizing contrast ratio and is one of the best features of the XBR2 sets. Unlike other attempts at auto iris, the XBR2s' iris action is undetectable unless you sit there and TRY to detect it working with unusualy video content or test pattern switching.

On any auto setting, I detected it on my XBR1 and now on my XBR2 every time the scene changed. It was most annoying.

I would stay away from black correction as it crushes blacks. Also gamma at low provides better shadow detail and worked better for proper colors at least during my calibration.

I pretty much agree. My XBR1 worked best with pretty much everything "off". My XBR2's blacks are slightly better with black correction at low, but it's close.

With gamma "on" at any level, the picture looks as if I'm watching everything through L.A. smog.

When it comes to gamma and other picture level settings on this display there is a large degree of variation set to set. No single values are correct for all displays. You have to look at the display in question and set everything appropriately.

umr came by a couple weeks ago to calibrate my HT (including 70XBR2).

Jeff is a really good guy, very professional and with a wealth of knowledge and stories (and tools). I'm not usually much of a talker, but with Jeff it was easy to do (kept him there about 6 hours). On to calibration results...

Video:
I've had the set since last October and had basically given up tweaking about 4 months ago. I just couldn't get what I was hoping this set could give. I wasn't unhappy with the picture (thanx to all of the forum members for their insights and suggestions) but there were a few things I was hoping to see that I just couldn't get:

1. A sharp picture without any grain
2. Accurate colors with some pop, but flesh tones that are lifelike
3. Blacker blacks

Jeff (and the XBR2) was able to deliver on all counts and I am very happy with my picture. While analog SD and digital SD look better, they are still analog SD and digital SD. HD via cable (which constitutes the bulk of my viewing) is much better; much sharper, better more accurate colors and depending on the source can definitely have that WOW factor.

My Panny BDP10a was new so I had no way of doing a before/after compare. But, the picture is excellent.


Audio:
Holy crap!!! I can't believe the difference. My receiver is a Pioneer VSX-82TSX (with firmware) and the speakers are Crystal Acoustic THX-3D12 -- a 5.1 setup. I am NO audiophile by any means - I used the Pioneer's auto MCACC and my ear to setup.
Jeff came in and wiped everything out (no loss there, trust me) and worked his magic.
The sound is amazing. Dialog is crisp and clear. Front and surround detail is awesome, I'm hearing things in movies I never even knew existed.
Surround is fantastic. I'm hearing everything, but very naturally - where as before I was wanting to turn my head in the direction of the sound.
No more boomy bass, but lively accurate bass and LFE.

For me, the gain in audio outweighs the gain in video. I'm currently looking more forward to listening to movies than watching them.


Jeff, thanx again for your professionalism, insights, suggestions, and most importantly your magic touch.

Are you sure you're seeing the iris? It moves quite slowly... takes 10 to 20 seconds to completely change in Auto 2 mode depending on scene content. The steps it moves in are so freakin small you can BARELY detect what it is doing with gray-screen test patterns, switching from bright to dark to bright, etc. It's a very gentle action that is extremely difficult to detect. If you are seeing something, it may not be the iris at all.

Then you have other settings that are incorrect or way off from what they should be. Gamma set to LOW produces the best images by far when everything else is set properly.

What other settings would affect this? Nothing else appears to reduce the effect except for gamma, and believe me, I've tried everything.


Then why does the "pumping" effect on certain scene changes (primarily day/night, etc.) disappear when I switch to fixed iris? Perhaps there is a problem with the auto-iris circuit in my set, but I strongly doubt that I could convince a service shop to do anything about it. It is usually subtle, not pronounced, but it definitely disappears when I use a fixed iris setting.


All of this goes along with my opinion that my 60XBR2 doesn't have quite as good a picture as my 50XBR1 had before the green blob appeared. Besides the above issues, the color hue and intensity often changes from program to program and especially from channel to channel. Two examples of this:
* I watch the SD Padres games on the local HD channel (channel4 SD). When the pitcher is facing into the sun and viewed from the side, his face's flesh tone looks good while his neck, which is in the shadow of his head, is greenish. This does not appear if I put the color intensity to "0".
* B&W movies often appear green or blue, rather than shades of grey. This effect also disappears when I turn down the color.

Also, greens like grass and leaves tend to be unnatural in color, too bright - even slightly yellowish, no matter where I set grey scale or color temperature.

I realize that much of the fault for these problems may lie with the source and some with the cable company, but it seems as if the XBR2's correction circuits do not work a well as the XBR1's.

The funny thing is, on the best channels and programs, the picture is still excellent. Many programs on Discovery HD, PBS HD and HBO HD and some programs on other HD channels are as good as the XBR1 showed; other HD programs and channels are not. And SD programming has universally poorer PQ, with blotchier color on flesh tones and more shift of hue and intensity from program to program and channel to channel.