>>Sony KDS-XXA3000<< Settings/Tweaks thread - OWNERS ONLY!

Excellent Idea! Thanks for starting this thread.

Ashamed to admit I've made no changes other than to set picture mode to standard in the two days I've had it. Frankly, I'm in awe of this set's picture.

Will be watching with interest as others post their unique settings.

arkiedan

Thanks N3W813!

Can you also clarify the lighting situation when you did the calibration? I think you mentioned you used an Ideal Lume bias light, but I'd like to confirm.

Wow your picture is set WAY up there. When I played around with it in the store, I couldn't go higher than 80 without making the set look unnattural.

Yes I have to admit even at default the picture is great so I cant add to the settings but will dink around.

Source:
PS3 v. 1.92
Calibrated with Avia

Picture:
Picture Mode: Custom

Advanced Iris - Auto2
Picture - 85
Brightness - 47
Color - 57
Hue - 0
Color Temerature - Warm2
Sharpness - 20
Noise Reduction - None

Advance settings:

Black Corrector - Off
Gamma - Off
Clear White - Off
Color Space - Normal
Live Color - Off
White Balance
R-Gain 0
G-Gain 0
B-Gain 0
R-Bias 0
G-Bias 0
B-Bias 0

Detail Enhancer - Off
Edge Enhancer - Off

Video Options:
Motion Enhancer - Off
Motion Naturalizer - Off
(All other options factory default)

The only "tweak" I have found is with the MPEG noise reduction. It does help a bit on an D* HR20 on stations like CBS that are 1080i. As far as the rest of the bells and whistles, the Motion Enhancer and Naturalizer don't really show any appreciable difference to me.

Do any of you guys see SSE with the picture (contrast) set so high? I think I see it with picture set to 80 (I definitely see something and I think it's SSE). I'd have to turn it down to 60 to keep it at a minimal level. I suppose I could get used to it.

I recommend turning "cinemotion" from "auto1" (the default setting) to "off" if you are watching sports. It was causing my score ticker to stutter on ESPN quite often, took me forever to figure out why the ticker would stutter every so often, that setting was the culprit.

I do see SSE, but it is no worse than any other LCos set I have seen. My brother has an XBR2 (we both have 60") and the SSE is no worse than the XBR2 in my opinion. For me, the picture is not very acceptable with contrast at 60 (Avia doesn't exactly have an accurate way to set up Contrast as far as I can tell). From my experience, it is a tradeoff that you have with every LCoS set I have seen... it doesnt bother me that bad so I run the contrast where the picture looks good and ignore the little bit of SSE.


What is your source (cable, D*, OTA)? I have noticed the ticker stutter, but I chalked it up to D* because the rest of the picture doesn't stutter. I would have thought that the entire picture would stutter if it was the A3000 trying to do some weird Cinemotion stuff.

D* is my source. However, "cinemotion" was definately the culprit. I recorded college game day on my HR20 and R15 to try and figure the issue out. On the HR20, the ticker was stuttering, always at the same spots in the broadcast, rewound, replayed, would get the same thing.

I checked it against my R15/SD tv setup, it wasn't stuttering in those same spots, so that narrowed it down to my HR20/A3000 setup. Then tried changing to component, then to composite, nothing helped, stutter at the exact moment as before. I then hooked my daughter's small 13 inch TV up to the HR20 checked the same spot in the show and found no stutter at the spot I had just checked via HDMI, component and the composite. That narrowed it down to the A3000 as the problem.

Was about to call HH Gregg for an exchange but decided to look at some of the settings. I changed "cinemotion" to off, checked that same spot (and a few others that I had previously checked over and over and could replicate the stutter 100% of the time) and the stutter was now gone.

Have not seen it since.

The entire picture may have been slightly stuttering (but if it was, I couldn't tell), but the stutter was only obvious because of the side motion of the ticker itself.

This worked for me also. I'm watching Comcast Cable and I noticed some weird thing going on with the score ticker and turning cinemotion off fixed it.

Thanks for the reply guys. I have switched cinemotion off and it looks like it did fix the problem. I have no idea why it would do that. I just turned it off for all my inputs because everything I have either puts out a HD signal or upscales if it is playing a dvd.

The SSE is basically the same as the other sony models out there.

Are there any tricks or tips when using a computer with VGA? I have a laptop that I wouldn't mind hooking up to the TV once in awhile. Can I just set the resolution to 1920x1080 or is there something else I'd have to do?

I believe there is a lot of discussion on this in the A3000 Owners thread. I haven't tried it, but on the XB2 there are a lot of issues that cause it to overscan the PC input, and I believe the A3000 has the same issue. For some reason you cant just set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 and have it do 1:1 pixel mapping. Check the Owners thread for a lot more info (it is spread about over several pages).

Mine works fine with VGA set to 1920X1080 except that it underscans, not overscans. I can see the whole picture, there is just a black frame about an inch all the way around it.

Brian

Brian,

Please see http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post11590074

Although it does accept 1920x1080 over VGA and underscans it, it doesn't have a 1:1 pixel match.

Nikhil.

Can someone explain the difference between Motion Enhancer, Motion Naturalizer and Cinemamotion? Are the Motion Enh. Naturalizers the two that are unique to Sony only? And what they are supposed to do.

Aren't most setting the "motion enhancer" to "Standard".

Lastly, the detail enhancer.. i thought i read somewhere that this made the image look better? Noone seems to leave it on in this thread.

Cheers

Yes, I'd like these features explained as well. Am I correct that this TV always does 120Hz refresh, even with 24fps?

I had done custom settings but I was having what appeared to be motion blur. As I said in the other thread, I know that RPTVs don't have this, so I assumed it was a setting I had done. It wasn't any of the motion features, it was that my settings were too close to "Vivid". When I changed it to Standard, the picture was great (and the "motion blur"-like problems went away completely). Now I will tweak my settings starting from Standard rather than Vivid.

Has anyone accessed the service menu/mode on their new A3000? And if so how? I've tried several remote key sequences I've dug up on AVS Forum and elsewhere but have had no luck getting in.

Not that I NEED to mind you, but I'd like to nose around.

When looking at the sony in the store.. they had it set to vivid.. but i still found it a bit better looking than some of the other sets.. I guess it looks even better using standard or custom settings

I'll take a stab at it, but I am by no means an expert, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong

Most of the settings you mentioned seem to be proprietary to Sony and are various algorithms to "improve" picture quality. In my personal experience, most of the bell-and-whistle type settings only help in certain special circumstances, and can often times cause problems as some have already seen in the form of flickering. That being said, here is my very basic understanding.

Cinemotion should handle the varying cadences present in DVD video, such as a 3:2 pulldown to take 24 fps source material to 29.97 fps. This is how a normal 60 Hz tv would display 24 fps source material. I'm not sure exactly how the 120 Hz A3000 handles it, but it would seem simply enough to display every frame twice instead of once since the refresh rate is twice as fast.

As for the rest of the settings, we may never know exactly what they do unless Sony is willing to tell us. I think most people assume that the Motion enhancer and Motion Naturalizer do something with the extra frames (due to the TV being 120 Hz and source being 60 Hz) such as insert a black frame every so often, or maybe interpolate frames to make the scene appear more fluid.

As for the Detail and Edge Enhancer, I would guess they are specialized algorithms similar to the Sharpness setting, but probably better at what they do and specialized to certain areas of the picture (hence their names).

I personally leave all the bells and whistles turned off, although I have not noticed any negative effect from having Motion Enhancer set to standard. I have not yet run across any material where I can see a real difference between the Motion Enhancer turned off vs. standard, but I'm sure it does make a difference on some video. I haven't tried the Edge or Detail enhancer, mainly because the picture looks pretty sharp already and, if they are similar to Sharpness, they could introduce artifacts if they are turned up too high. I'll try to mess around with them and see if I can tell any difference.

Again, all of this may be wrong. It would be great if someone knew exactly what these settings were doing because we could use them much more effectively.

This is a settings thread ... Lets post some settings.

I have had my 60A3000 for one week and not much time to play, so this thread is great and I appreciate it. I have two quick questions that I would be grateful for some feedback.

1 - I have read almost the entire A3000 thread and I am a first time HDTV person, I think that I have figured out most of the acronyms but for the life of me I cannot understand what SSE is and what I should be looking for, can anybody clue me in?

2 - I also bought a Sony upscaling / upconverting DVD player, I put in 300 and it looked pretty bad until I hit the theater mode, is there some other settings I should use? I have seen comments about letting either the TV or the DVD do the upscaling, is this a setting I need to set? And lastly, 300 came up on my full screen, I then put in the underworld evolution DVD and it came out with bars on top and bottom, same with a old verion of my wife's Grease DVD (it was part of the condition to be able to buy the set). Do I have something set wrong, or is the narrow horizontal picture the widescreeen (I should say that when I bought 300 it was the normal screen 4:3 version so maybe that is it.

Again this is great thread and thanks in advance for any and all help

Motion Enhancer seems to do frame-interpolation. On Standard it seems to do more blending and thus looks a little more natural, while on High it uses a sharper method that results in more detail and/or "crisper" motion, but can look a little un-natural, to my eyes. I use Standard most of the time.

Motion Naturalizer appears to add black frames and just causes flicker, so I leave it off.

Here's my current settings. I have only calibrated with the Mk. I Eyeball and a variety of program material, but it looks pretty good to me. I did run SMPTE bars w/pluge to set the black level, but I brought it up another notch or two after some viewing to bring out more shadow detail. My room lighting is anywhere from daylight from one window to the side, to very dark at night (one 9 watt CFC torch lamp).

Picture
Picture Mode: Custom

Advanced Iris - Auto2
Picture - 50
Brightness - 54
Color - 52
Hue - 0
Color Temerature - Warm2
Sharpness - 10
Noise Reduction - Off
MPEG Noise Reduction - Off

Advanced settings
Black Corrector - Off
Gamma - Off
Clear White - Off
Color Space - Wide
Live Color - Off
White Balance - (all default - 0)

Detail Enhancer - Low*
Edge Enhancer - Off

Video Options
Motion Enhancer - Standard
Motion Naturalizer - Off
CineMotion - Off

General Settings
Power Saving - On

*I sit 10ft back with a 50" screen, the Detail Enhancer -on low- brings out a little more detail without adding too much noise, but if you have one of the larger models and/or sit closer, watch out for added noise/grain when using the Enhancer(s) or too much Sharpness.

Are there settings hiding in the menu somewhere that let you change individual colors like red, green, blue, pink, etc?

Yes. Off the top of my head I think it's in "advanced settings" -> "white balance".