Sony Pearl arrived! But what happened to the color? (See Screenshots) - Page 3

I'm not saying that all Pearls are identical OOTB. They are not, or else we could all just use the same settings. But the cartoonish appearance of wide color mode is the problem I am having, and this is consistent with end-user reports and with professional reviews which report that the Pearl cannot be calibrated for luminance and gamut simultaneously.

It also explains the normal mode "filter." According to GregR's review, the normal color mode decreases red luminance significantly and blue to a lesser degree. This gets rid of the cartoonish appearance, but compromises color brightness. I believe that normal mode exists specifically because of the oft-cartoonish look of Wide Mode.

Gremmy, have you confirmed any of what you think is happening by measuring with the proper instrumentation? I have been watching and measuring very carefully calibrated projectors for quite some time now and when properly calibrated they tend to expose many source problems, not the other way around. But you are surely entitled to believe whatever you you want. Good luck!

I've been very clear about the fact that I have not.

Nor have you, unless I've misinterpreted your posts.

I'm not trying to start an argument here, but the fact is that the points I'm making are supported by measurements.

Here's the crux of it, Bob.

1) Several users, including myself and you, have reported cartoon colors in WIDE mode.
2) GregR has reported that Wide mode has the correct luminance
3) Normal mode, which you recommend, is reducing the brightness of red and blue. GregR already measured this, so I don't need to. So normal color mode has inaccurate luminance.

And then there is the subjective part, which no test could accurately measure. And that's whether or not a particular user finds the luminance loss of "normal" mode or the garishness of "Wide" mode objectionable or the degree to which it would matter to someone.


What are you wishing me luck with? This sounds sort of smart ass, Bob.

And I was just sayin' that excluding all of the above attributes that without proper color reproduction(based on the OP's ISF'ed Pearls' screen shots), I would see no reason to own the Pearl. After seeing drapp's pics, it changes my perspective completely and I think the color looks great and could be very happy with that.

fugueness sent me the calibration spreadsheet - and indeed the tradeoff of reducing luminance of color which also reduces color depth to REC709 gamut is what was done. NOTE: I refuse to use the word saturation as it is used in both context depending on color science or video engineering domains

I agree with Bob - better to get the color decoder correct - and leave in the candy colors. That is why someone buys the Sony - and it is the perceptually least offender compared to screwing the color decoding over for getting correct colors.

If it is anything like the Ruby based on my own calibration review, RCP adjustments are sufficient to get the color decoder perfect you just cannot do the gamut aside from hue. And there are a lot of PJ that cannot be adjusted to do perfect color decoding!

The Infocus SP7210 has the deeper reds as well - and without a reference I at first found it pleasing - but then you start noticing red shades that are not quite right - they are too deep - like a stop sign becomes Ferrari red.. But I would take that over bad color decoding any day!

I gave him some AVIA RGB filter advice on resetting the RCP - so hopefully he reports back with new screenshots. The grayscale done by AVS will not be impacted - just fixing the color tradeoff from gamut to decoder.

I have been experimenting with my Pearl - wide vs normal decoding and manipulating the Pearl color control. I have the Lumagen HDQ that has color and hue controls for each primary (RGB). I don't know where to start with Lumagen manipulations vs Pearl control manipulations, so I have left the HDQ controls at default for the moment. Does anyone have any advice about 1) Can the Lumagen controls help the color situation, and if so 2) what exactly to change on the Lumagen controls and what to change on the Pearl?

smithfarmer

You do realize though that with a screenshot you cannot see candy colors? You see the primary colors of your monitor instead!

usual suspects

I would never use a scaler to calibrate the display except as a last resort - use the scalar to equalize all your basic video adjustments for your sources.. The digital interconnect is always going to be less bits than the adjustment on the PJ - and the PJ has the advantage of correcting at several places within the display chain. Then when you switch PJs like Bob does - you never need to recalibrate your scaler.

drapp's screen shot is not an accurate representation of what his Pearl looks like in real life or are you saying my monitor can't reproduce accurately drapp's screen shot or a combination thereof?

I assume his screenshot is accurate if displayed on his display - but then I presume his skills as a photographer and the worthyness of his camera.

But a screenshot can only say this pixel is 100% red. A screenshot does not say what color that red is. It could be a SD red or an HD red or an EBU red or a Sony red. While his Sony and your SP4805 shot look the same - I assure you that side by side there would be differences. The screenshots both captured max red on his display as max red on the camera - and max red on your display. The SP4805 max red is the SD red (tending towards HD once burned in) - while the Sony max red is well in excess of HD red - or you can show this on an Optoma H30 with an orangy red. You can see the relative brightness of reds in a screenshot (assuming calibrated photography without clipped reds) - but you cannot see the color of red unless you had the same display and calibration he had. Only with a truly wide gamut like Adobe RGB or expanded component in HDMI1.3 can you capture deeper colors - and you need a camera/media/display chain that fully supports that. The PS3 over HDMI1.3 purports to do that very thing - so if games support it and the Pearl supports it (you would hope Sony owning the chain helps!) - I bet they would look great - even though Pearl is just extended the HD gamut and not matching the new gamut specs - it will be better than a display without an expanded gamut for these new games.

RGB is a representational colorspace that gets mapped to the displays actual colorspace. And how it gets mapped depends on how the display has been adjusted - and what its color calibration capabilities are - and support for various color gamut and decoding standards. Compared to a Sharp or Yamaha or Runco (etc) CMS - that is where Sony RCP is lacking - while wide vs. std RCP gives you the impression that it might support standards just based on menu name - it is just different kinds of colorization.

Looking forward to the results.

I agree with those who have said that the candy colors with proper luminance are preferable to the muted near B&W stuff I see in your screen shots. You may have already tried most of this stuff, but here are my recommendations:

1) Switch to the "Low" Color Temperature. Unless the service menu defaults for Low have been modified, this should help a lot.
2) Switch to Wide Color Mode
3) Turn on RCP and reduce Red by 5 to 8 clicks

If the colors are too garish for you, turn off RCP and switch to normal color mode.

Use the factory default of 50 for brightness, color, and hue. Make sure contrast is at the factory default of 80.

Regarding what my Pearl looks like in real life versus the screenshots, the answer is they do not provide a high fidelity representation. (Edit: They do a fair job, after some editing in Photoshop, in depicting the overall color balance, but particularly in rendering detail and other nuances fall short.) No screenshot really captures the image you would see in person for myriad reasons as discussed by krasmuzik.

I included these shots because the OP's colors, brightness and contrast were so far from what I think most Pearl owners have observed. I was concerned that readers unfamiliar with the Pearl might reach false conclusions based on limited information and might benefit from my screenshots. I think the large differences the images I posted and the OP's are illustrative of how different the Pearl can look with different settings.

Dan

Thanks Dan. I was just a bit confused by kras' first post and understood what he meant after his second reply. I'm glad that you posted your shots so non-Pearl owners have a better idea of what different settings will do for the Pearls image.

Very cool, drapp looks best to me. Graysteps look great.

To me your user2 appears to have the best color balance of what you present but with not as bright colors as in my screencaps which are a little blown out or overexposed - this can be seen in the crushed whites on the shirt of the TFE boy and the sides of Leelo's white outfit on the building ledge. Are you using wide or normal color mode?

Dan

Have you tried switching to Low color temperature and recalibrating with AVIA? Colors will look washed out in "middle" as compared to "low" if you're using the factory defaults for these settings.

gremmy

that depends on where AVS stored their grayscale calibration.....

I would hope that they used one of the configurable user settings for RGB gain/bias adjustment.

If they changed the defaults for "low"or "middle" in the service menu, all bets are off.

Use whatever preset they put the D65 calibration in - if you switch to something else it will not be calibrated. You just want to change the RCP settings to get the colors back.

I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that Pearls should be calibrated with a contrast of 80. My picture starts to get a little wonky if I go much higher than that.

Also, I didn't realize that the calibration was done in "middle." I thought you were using the stock "middle" because you had chosen to ditch the calibration entirely, and I was thinking that "low" would be a better choice.

Kraz makes a good point that the accurate grayscale should be kept, so use middle.

But as a test, you could switch over the the uncalibrated low color temperature, using factory defaults for everything, and see if your pictures look more like Drapp's. I'm curious about the calibration, I guess, and you can always switch back to middle color temp in like two seconds.

Also, you might want to try the middle color temp in WIDE MODE with RCP off for a few minutes. Get a feel for whether or not your colors are way oversaturated or garish, especially flesh tones. Adjust RCP colors downward accordingly. Colors are a compromise on the Pearl, as we've discussed, and you have to find the compromise that's right for you.

fugueness

I meant the colorbars patterns called 'Red Color Bars', 'Green Color Bars', 'Blue Color Bars' - I seems you thought I meant the red,green and blue bars in the advanced color patterns or color decoder patterns. I do mean the named patterns! AAck I just checked - the names are actually RedBars, GreenBars, BlueBars

The "RedBar" pattern is for the red filter - and you can align Magenta to Yellow and Red to White by comparing the filtered red brightness

The "GreenBar" pattern is for the green filter - and you can align Cyan to Yellow and Green to White by comparing the filtered green brightness

The "BlueBar" pattern is for the blue filter - and you can align Magenta to Cyan and Blue to White by comparing the filtered blue brightness

With normal tint/color controls- it is just a balancing act. Much more difficult with individual controls. They are intended for use with measurement - but you can get much of it right just using filters and the right patterns. You do not need need CMY filters - only RGB filters - CMY are called secondary colors because they are each composed of two of the RGB primary colors - so you only need RGB filters to check that balance.

The path in AVIA is

AdvancedCalibration->
VideoTestPatterns->
ColorAdjustment->
StandardColorBars->
Red|Green|BlueBars

to get these patterns. Click the ? to step thru instructions.