[KeithR]

I use Avia to calibrate it, and contrast is a toughie. The right white bar seems to disappear at 60ish and 74ish. Owners, could you please post your settings? Brightness, sharpness, and color all were easy.


Also, for instance when I watch LOTR, the title scene seems grayish in background. However, scenes with the ring etc, make the black bars go black. Is this just contrast playing tricks with my head, or do I have another issue here? It almost seems like the grey scale is changing at intermittant parts.


Finally, I know that brightness mode should be set to off, but is it ok to run the lamp mode on high?


Cheers,


KeithR

 

[Rosano]

Keith.....I agree with you.....Color/Brightness/Sharpness...no sweat.Setting proper contrast on any digital PJ is almost impossible its the single hardest adjustment there is. Using a 9000 ES with prog signal on a Firehawk


Theater 1

Sharpness is set to 1

Brightness is 46

Contrast is 60..could probably go a little higher..but 75 I think is too much..but then it all depends on were the "fine menu" settings are!

Color 51

Black 0 IRE

Lamp: High

Hi Brite: Off


Haven't touched "fine menu" adjustments yet.


Can you be more specific with LOTR..exactly where are you on the disc. I have seen various scenes I don't know how many times and see nothing out of the ordinary.The picture is simply awesome.


One little bonus of this PJ at least for me is that even though my screen is a 1.77 aspect ratio...the black boarder on say a 2.35 film is soooo black that it looks like I have a multi aspect screen....the picture just disappears into the blackness of my screen frame and my black wall...Neat.


As for the Hi-Britghtness mode...well if you like the way the picture looks well leave it on!!! Lamp life will suffer a bit thats all.


Did you know that there is a "White Paper" on the S2 at the Marantz North America website. Go to the S2 downloads section and click on the file called " Installation Guide"...not User Manual. There is a lot of good info in this document that was designed for dealers. It adresses the now famous or infamous "component connection with HDTV" issue of the last couple of weeks. This document was on the website at least a month before all the hoopla started so in a sense all the info on "setup" was there... a little hidden but there it was...

 

[glenned]

keith,


Contrast should be the easiest setting to make. With Avia's Needles and step test increase contrast until one of the moving white bars disappears by fading into the white background. That is your max white setting.


You can double check it by puting the 100 IRE white screen or white box pattern from Avia on your screen. Increase Contrast until the 100 IRE white box fails to get brighter. Use the lowest Contrast setting that still yields the brightest white the PJ can make.


Both of the methods above yield the same Contrast setting.


Brightness is the tough setting to make with Avia because the moving black bar test on Avia doesn't work correctly for a digital PJ.

 

[Rosano]

See how confusing this is????


Glenned... I know this has been discussed before in another thread by I think you and several others there as well as Mr Kuo himself. Then another poster said that the brigntness pattern is OK but the way we are told to adjust it is not. We are still supposed to just see the faintest of the 2 bars after adjustment.


All these arguments make sense but can they all be right. What is the definitive answer on this.


As for contrast I can pretty much max the setting and I can still make out 2 bars in the white area....In the end I still go back to a scen from a movie and fine tune from there.

 

[KeithR]

Well, i played around last night with the THX optimode, instead of avia. Brightness was tuned down to 46 from 49, and the overall picture looked much, much better. Maybe Avia really is off? Interesting as the white paper says 44 is the max to use, but 44 seemed to be too dark and lose shadow detail. 46 seemed right.


I pegged contrast in the 60-64 range using the white squares, and it now seems to work better.


Fabulous picture on AOTC...

 

[jeffxjet]

I have mine set to:

Contrast 60

Brightness 44(experimenting with 46)

Color 47

Sharpness 8

Color Temp Middle

Black 7.5

Lamp High

Hi Bright Off

 

[Rosano]

Jeff..try bringing the sharpness down to 1 or 2.I see way too much enhancement at 8. YMMV.


Even the Marantz user guide doesn't recommend anything above 2..but if you like there...then by all means leave it there.

 

[KeithR]

I also have color set to 52 per blue filter on avia. Jeff your color seems low--but perhaps pjs differ from shipment to shipment?

 

[jeffxjet]

Thanks, Rosano I will try that. I'm still experimenting with all the different parameters and some of them are just so hard to tell any difference it drives me crazy. I know with sharpness I moved it all the way up and down and couldn't really tell a difference so I left it in the middle. And now that mention it, my wife for the first time ever noticed enhancement on a movie, I guess that would be attributed to the high sharpness.


I think will have to recheck color also. Do you guys run at 0 black or 7.5? Could that be part of the difference? Color was the same way as sharpness, there was a 6-10 point range where I couldn't see any change in the bars. Now that I've had it up awhile and gotten used to it I guess I should recalibrate.

 

[santellavision]

Black should be set to 7.5 using NTSC sources. O for digital. And yes, S2's all have different correct settings. Not just contrast/brightness, but color balance too.


If you search back to the beginning of the S2 threads, some guys posted their ISF calibration settings and I tried them and they looked way off! So, every pj is going to be slightly different. Use your own eyes/setup disks as guides.

 

[Rosano]

The Black level setting will depend more on what you are putting out with the DVD player or video device... The NTSC standard for NA is 7.5. Now some players let you select bewteen 0 or 7.5. Others don' let you select it when it puts out a prog scan signal. Ideally the PJ and DVD should match.


When all is said and done trust your eyes.

 

[santellavision]

FYI:

I noticed such a difference in sources, that I made a preset for 'boosted color'. Just preset one of your standards with the fine menu gains and contrasts all set to 145. Then re-adjust your overall brightness/contrast using VE or Avia. This gives the entire image a bit more color. This works nice on RGB sources where you cannot adjust the color level.


Looks better on some inferiorly mastered material.

 

[Paul H]

Rosano:
Quote:

As for contrast I can pretty much max the setting and I can still make out 2 bars in the white area....

My S2 does this also with Avia, Bravo D1 and DVI (digital) input, even at 74 both lines are there, but at 75 the left bar goes away and comes back at 76 and up. So I set contrast at 75 and Brightness at 43, color temp set to middle (closest to 6500K). This looks slightly more pronounced using 'Standard 1' than 'Theater (Default)' mode to me.


When using DVI, because it is a digital connection, black setup is @ 0 IRE. There is no access to Color, Sharpness, Tint and Noise Reduction.


Paul