Sony VPL-VW60 Tweakers Thread

I do, but I don't have my VW60 yet. But I am very interested in the best way to tweak it when I DO get it.

Whoever starts the thread, however, should be willing to update the original post with all current tweaks and information on a regular basis. That way, it will be very easy to have a summary of all tweak information.

My calibrations outside the service menu are here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=915045

Kemet,
Which Iris mode do you use.
I've discovered Auto 1 pushes blacks(on the gray ramps pattern) toward red.
Iris off leaves them gray.

scott

If I am not mistaken, Greg utilized BOTH Auto 1 and Auto 2, and found one to be more effective with a lot of light (football games, etc.) and the other (do not remember which) was more effective with darker movies ("Batman Returns").

Experiment w/ the Auto 2, and get back with us on that.

I always use Iris 1, no red push detected when watching B&W content with my settings.

I had a blue a slight green push to blacks that I trimmed. Never tried changing the iris setting on the gray scale.

If I change my color settings from medium to low I can sure get a sepia push tho.

I'm picking up my VW60 tomorrow morning at the post office, so I'm pretty excited. It's replacing my venerable VW10HT, originally purchased in August 2000. Interestingly, my 3rd lamp finally quit on me yesterday, with ~2150 hours on it... :-).

I did a service menu calibration way back then using Steve Smallcombe's SMART II program, and installed a CC40R red filter to help contrast. I'm sure my max ever CR was about 300:1, and with the nearly dead lamp is was *much* lower. So I suspect I'll be blown away with the comparison to the VW60. However, maybe a good calibration would be helpful even with the new model, so I'd be interested in following this discussion...

Larry

I received my VW60 a couple of days ago but have not had time to mount it, I am really interested in this whole calibration discussion, especially if you know of any good calibration cd's and how do these calibration cd's work and how much do they cost? Thanks. I will be back after I mount the projector and tweak it

Hi all,
I've just gotten my vw60 and am very pleased. But I'm having trouble filling my screen. With the zoom set to fill the screen with the blue of a non-signal input, the output of my DirecTV/RCA receiver (my only hd source at the moment) leaves about 10% of the width unfilled with a 16:9 signal, even with the Wide Mode set to full. In my old 10HT, there was a width adjustment for that, but I can't find it on the VW60 or in the manual. What am I missing?

Bill

I hooked up my Sencore VP401 and set it to 1080/24P and checked grey scale with my OTC1000 and my VW60 has fairly big blue push. How is everyone else's checking out?

Also I could not find a "blue" only mode in the service menu? Does Sony include one?

[This is modified from what I originally posted in Kemet's thread to include a few updates, corrections and clarifications since my original post.]

Hello, got my unit in the day before yesterday, I literally "stole" my local dealer's demo unit from him, hehehe. Poor guy never got to hang it up in his shop or open the box.

My VW60 is replacing my Runco CL-710 (720p DLP). I use a Vu-Tech Silver Star screen, 103" and a 6.0 gain. The throw distance is about 12 feet. Right now I'm waiting for the tech to come hang it, and it's sitting on top of a table and two boxes right below my Runco.

I'm running in HDMI from a Denon 2930 outputting a 1080p upconverted signal. My Sammy 5000 will be in in about a week (drool), so no HD player yet. These calibrations were made using DVE, AVIA and (for Color/Hue only) the THX Optimizer. I've found it's much easier to use than the others and just as accurate. The only thing I miss from my Runco is the Blue overlay for calibrating Color and Tint. I hate standing there with the stupid little card to my face from DVE, but it's better than nothing I suppose.

Settings. I've spent several hours fiddling. Though I don't have any test equipment, I have several thousand hours clocked in watching a projector that was calibrated ruler flat, so I have a good idea what to look for, especially with my standard demo/calibration material.

I'm going to stir up the waters a bit with the second half of my calibration report...but on to the more conventional NTSC side, I have found I use the same calibrations whether the lamp is set to Low or High. Some may want to bring their Brightness up or down a notch or two depending on the lamp level, though.

I've found that Auto Iris 1 crushes whites. I noticed this in the Superbit edition of Spider-Man. Right after Peter beats up Flash in the school hallway, the camera turns to Harry and he says, "Peter that was fantastic" (paraphrasing here) and with the iris set to Auto 1, all the detail in his forehead is simply gone. He looks like an alien. Changing to any other iris mode alleviates this.

I experimented with Auto 2 "recommend" (haven't tried fast or slow) and I could see the iris changing--which became very annoying, very quickly--and though it was a truer image than Auto 1 (which heavily pushes red and crushes white), I just don't like the look of it. It's not "quite right" and I can see the contrast changing as it bee-bops in and out, especially frequently in brightly lit scenes. What I found works VERY nicely is to use the Manual Iris setting at 75% (Iris Off, I found by simply looking at the thing, opens the iris to 100%. I tried this at first but it washed out the image). This gives an extremely nice tight contrast without any defects of a moving lens and no red push.

A Gamma 1 setting goes very well with the Manual Iris setting of 75%. I still get great blacks (the opening scenes of Underworld are amazing), and more detail than I got with Gamma Off, which I favored initially.

Also, according to calibrating with both DVE and AVIA, a Max contrast works perfectly well. No crushing of whites beyond the three vertical dots in the contrast screen on DVE, no loss of the finer white bar in the contrast adjustment on AVIA.

CINEMA:
Lamp: High
Auto Iris: Manual @75%.
Color Space: Normal
Contrast: Max
Brightness: 48
Color: 50
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: +5
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 1

I fiddled a bit with RCP, but went back to turning it off in the end.

For Low lamp level I was ultimately able to use the same Brightness, though mileage may vary a +/-1 on this for others.

USER 1
Lamp: Low
Auto Iris: Manual @75%.
Color Space: Normal
Contrast: Max
Brightness: 48
Color: 50
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: +5
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 1

Now comes the controversial part. And before I say this, please understand I'm just as much of an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, "I want to preserve the filmmaker's original intentions", geek as the next A/V freak. But I gotta tell ya, if you want you movies to look like real life--like you're looking out your window at the real world, the Wide Color Space is where it's at. At first this color space looks like carnival colors and you say, "Aaahhhh! Take it away! Give me back Flatland!", but all that needs to be done is to turn down the color saturation a bit and watch something with nice, natural daylight colors for a little while until your brain adjusts, and you won't be able to go back to "normal". The truth is, NTSC is just a sucky standard from the 50's and is not realistic. Wide Color gives redder, more natural flesh tones and greener greens WITHOUT screwing up basic white, and this is what makes it very, very nice. And very natural. Give it a try with T2 Extreme Edition. Go to the scene where the kids are outside the ATM. That blue jean jacket actually looks like a blue jean jacket, now. The kid's red hair looks REAL (I know, I have red hair), it never did to me with "correct" color calibration. And the flesh tones are perfect. I flipped back to Normal and they looked like zombies out of the crypt. Wide Color really has it. The key to using this mode for me was to decrease color saturation a bit until the exaggeration of the added color space is taken away. I did it by eye and came out with very good results. Anyway, here's my settings as that goes:

USER 2:
Lamp: Low
Auto Iris: Manual @75%.
Color Space: Wide
Contrast: Max
Brightness: 48
Color: 48
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: +5
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 1

USER 3:
Lamp: High
Auto Iris: Manual @75%.
Color Space: Wide
Contrast: Max
Brightness: 48
Color: 48
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: +5
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 1

Cheers,
Omar

[Note--Can't wait to hook it up to my Exact Power EP15a. This power conditioner made dramatic improvements to my PQ with my Runco, so hoping it will do the same with the Black Pearl.]

NOTE: Please see my current "final best settings" here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post12090123

I officially reverse my opinion about Wide color mode after viewing true HD material in Normal

I noticed that your contrast is maxed out. If the Black Pearl's auto iris is like the Ruby you need to leave some headroom. Best practice IIRC was to calibrate with contrast around 80 to 90. IIRC you also need to do seperate calibrations for iris auto vs. iris on/off.

Thanks for the info. I'll give that a try!

I have contrast at 85 now I remember with my Ruby I kept it at 72...

Thanks for the honest review, Omar. Now that you chose these settings, surely you'll post some screen shots, too!

In the midst of reworking some settings...will post shortly

Hey Joe (or anyone else willing!),

Try these out and tell me what you think? With Auto 2, there doesn't appear to be any white crush as there is in Auto 1 with contrast max'ed out. Though HHF was right about having to turn Contrast down with Auto 1. Thanks for the tip, it led me to playing around some more and getting what might be pretty interesting settings. It's certainly the best black and contrast I've seen yet with this projector.

Fabbas, alas...I have no digital camera.

Lamp: Low
Auto Iris: Auto 2, "Fast"
Color Space: Wide
Contrast: Max
Brightness: 48
Color: 46
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Low
Sharpness: +5
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 3

Omar

I still definitely prefer Auto 2 to Auto 1. Auto 1 pushes red and if you try flipping them back and forth at the brightness/black level test pattern in DVE, it seems apparent that Auto 2 gives a more symmetrical treatment to gray scale. Putting it in Fast Mode fixed my issue with being able to see the iris wee-waa'ing as it changes. Now it's transparent.

Thanks, I will try AUTO 2 with those settings. I should also clarify my earlier statement. I like Wide color rane when watching football. I leave it in Normal for movies. I also like the Standard Picture setting for movies. Sports is fun to go Dynamic with. Gives the picture that pop look. Which I prefer for football....

Using these settings I was then able to go into the service menu and adjust panel drivers (gain) and gamma settings and get gray scale dialed in to almost perfection. With the standard setting (which has blue push) I could not even get close. So Omar, you are on to something here....

Omar,

I'm glad to know someone else feels the same way. On my VW50 I always used the Wide Color setting. Once you do, you cannot go back to the normal setting. I remember the red velvet seats in Phantom really popping. I know on my VW60 I will use Wide also when I get it set up.

Hey Mark,

Glad they work out well for you. Wish I knew how to do the finer tweaks myself. Let me know if you're ever coming down to FL, and I'll drop some coins in your hand

RW,

Yup, can't go back either. Watched Hero last night, probably one of the most color intensive films ever made, and loved every eye-popping second

Anamorphic Zoom works perfectly for those few precious non-anamorphic letterboxed DVDs you have.

Omar

Has anyone else put the color temp setting in custom 1 and then tweaked it? I really like how even the black bars on top and bottom are very deep and inky. From custom 1 if I can tweak it I would be very happy. I am working on that one tonite with help from my crystalio II. The picture has a lot of POP in it...

Hey Joe,

I hadn't touched the custom settings until just now when you suggested it, and I very quickly realized that Custom 1, 2 and 3, correspond respectively to High, Medium and Low. The Custom modes each start with their corresponding base color temp, then allow the user to tweak from there. I was surprised at how much whiter Custom 2/Medium were than Low (which is what I'd been using from the start), and I can't go back to Low now. Custom 1 is too blue-white for me, but 2 offers a very clean white. Interestingly, Custom 1 had the green gain turned all the way up to 30 before I ever touched it, don't know if that was a factory thing, anyway, I reset it back to zero and still liked 2 better. Here are my current best settings, though I *might* fool around with Gamma 3 again tomorrow with this white setting.

I suspect you're getting more POP now, as I am, because all your whites and colors aren't washed out in YELLOW. Live and learn is our motto

Lamp: Low
Auto Iris: Auto 2, "Fast"
Color Space: Wide
Contrast: 99
Brightness: 48
Color: 47
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Custom 2
Sharpness: +12
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma Off

(PS, I sent you second PM the other day, don't know if you got it)

Ok, well hell, I went ahead and did my Gamma 3 with Color Temp Custom 2. I found that the Gamma 3 gives a bit less detail but more 3 dimensionality than Gamma Off...in any mode, but noticeably in Color Temp Custom 2.

Lamp: Low
Auto Iris: Auto 2, "Fast"
Color Space: Wide
Contrast: 99
Brightness: 50
Color: 44
Hue: 50
Color Temp: Custom 2
Sharpness: +12
Black Level Adjust: Off
Gamma Correction: Gamma 3

I'll look for your PM. I have had quite a few lately so it has been hard to get to all of them.

I noticed that with custom 1 about the green. I was trying to dial it down and even it with red. When you say green was up to 30 are you talking about in the service mode?
I have to admit I am going back between Custom 1 & 2 now. I spent so much time tweaking 1 I want to still see if I can make it work. I do like 2 as well though... Damn, one in between would do the trick!

I'm talking about the Green Gain under the Custom 2 submenu in the Color Temp menu. I just dialed it down to 0 from 30 and it seems to balance out with all the others (that are at 0 by default). Go to the standard Menu (big blue button), scroll down to Color Temp, then either click or right arrow to get into the color temp choices, then go down to Custom 2 and do the same to get into the RGB Gain and Bias settings. Dial the Green down to 0 and things should look fine without having to compensate by turning up any other colors. I don't know how to get into the service menu, I assume that requires some specific code.

Has anyone tried the Gamma Calibration Disc that came with the projector? Is a serial to serial cable all you need?

Custom 2 is far better than 1...1 is too bright for me.

Omar

I know custom 1 is very bright. I was using my crystalio II to dial it down some. I have not played yet today but I will work on your custom 2 settings.