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Panasonic plasma powerstrip timings TH-50PHD7UY

840 Views 13 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  phreakocious, 
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After much tweaking with my new TH-50PHD7UY, I have finally dialled in the Powerstrip timings to get this bad boy to run at native resolution with no overscan. Note that it's 1360 instead of 1366 as most video cards can't handle horizontal resolutions which aren't multiples of 8. I am using the VGA connector to do this. Please note that it's going to be better to feed it exactly what it wants than to use the TV's size/position correction functions, which this should do.


TV settings:

Screensaver Wobbling: DISABLED (increases overscan)

Picture: 24

Sharpness: 2 (this is really important)

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PowerStrip timing parameters:

1360x768=1360,42,176,214,768,3,1,34,86674,278


Generic timing details for 1360x768:

HFP=42 HSW=176 HBP=214 kHz=48 VFP=3 VSW=1 VBP=34 Hz=60


Linux modeline parameters:

"1360x768" 86.674 1360 1402 1578 1792 768 771 772 806 -hsync -vsync


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Good luck!
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I forgot to mention that you can verify that this is working properly and make any necessary adjustments by using this 1368x768 test pattern:

tigerdave.com/images/testpatterns/1368x768_overscan.gif
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M
If your findings are correct I can't thank you enough. After hours of arguing with panasonic tech rep about how to get native resolution through vga i gave up.


With my old NEC plasma displays it was never an issue to get 1-1 pixel map if you fed it the correct native res. With my 50PHD7uy it has been hell to even get close.



I will let you know when i get home if your settings work for me also.



Thanks!!


Stan
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It was definitely a PITA to get it right. It far exceeded my expectations when it was, though. :) I am going to do some more experimenting to see what else I can pull out of it, but compared to the native res for a computer image, it's going to be hard to use anything else.


Hope it works for you. :)
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Anyone who uses a plasma as a HTPC should make damn sure they are in the native resolution. I work for a digital signage company and so we get lots of plasmas to play around with. I love NEC for their great compatibility with VGA and DVI for native and non-native resolutions. But they are not geared towards home theatre. For digital signage they are perfect as they are bright and colourful. In a home theatre environment they looked washed out in dark environment and dark content. Hence why i went with Panasonic. But like you said, it’s a pain in the ass to get these screens to work with a 1-1 pixel mapping. I used powerstip on my ATI Radeon 9800 to try to get as close as possible. I also use their h and v size controls to improve (which is very annoying because periodically these setting would reset for no logical reason). However I could never get the horizontal mapping perfect. Vertical mapping was fine.



Have you ever used DVI on your display. With the NEC its great and there is a noticeable improvement. I was a bit concerned about getting the blade for the panny unless I could ensure that it would allow me to use the native res.



Stan
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I am able to display 1366*768 without using powerstrip. I guess it depends on the video card. I use 9800 Pro AIW with cat 4.12 driver. There is negligible overscan....I can see almost the entire desktop.


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Oh yeah...my HTPC is connected via DVI connection.


I use zoomplayer with TheaterTek filters and ffdshow to resize and sharpen. DVDs resized to 1080x720 through ffdshow almost look like HD content.


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Options,


Firstly, are you using DVI, the component adapter, or just the VGA input? Secondly, if you look at black on white text across the whole screen, do you see any variations in the appearance of the characters? I was able to get the card/display to sync up without Powerstrip, but found that the image quality was not what it should be and that I didn't care for the overscan. I am using a Radeon 9700 Pro and Catalyst 4.12.


Thanks..
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If you have any overscan, any at all, then you dont have a 1-1 pixel mapping. And trust me there is a big difference when you get this right. My ATI card is also happy to spit out the 1366 by 768 without powerstrip but it still is not 1-1.


If you are able to get 1-1 through phreakocious method then you will clearly see the difference.


If you dont have 1-1 then the plasma scaler is involved and your image quality on text is significantly worsened. Its questionable how much can be noticed on video content however.


Stan
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I tried your settings and they worked great. The only one I disagree with is changing the sharpness from 0. As soon as I do that the dreaded edge enhancement is visible and all the test patterns are corrupted. Try display mate software to confirm with their resolution test pattern.


Overall I still think the NEC plasmas are better as multimedia displays (better clarity).


Anyhows thanks for the info, it has solved lots of image issues with my pc.


Cheers


Stan
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Awesome. Happy to hear it. Did you have to change anything or did it properly center and size it just as they were? Regarding the sharpness, I should have been clearer in that the default is like 4 and that really looks bad.. 2 seemed to be nice for text and a decent balance.
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i had to reset all the positioning and size parameters and then it was perfect. Try your sharpness at 0 and turn off clear type text anti-aliasing and the text is perfect.
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Thanks, it works great on my TH-50PHD6EX


Another question, don't you loose two pixel rows on each side of the screen running it in 1360x768? as i could notice some black space at both sides of the screen.
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Losing 6 pixels out of 1366 isn't really significant. The horiontal being divisible by 8 is apparently pretty important to most video cards. I would think that each display might require some slightly different centering and sizing but having the right horizontal and vertical scan rates and a reasonable resolution are the most important factors to making this work right.
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