How To Set Contrast On A Plasma - 42" Panny

[meths]

I opted for the Panasonic TX-P42GT50B as a replacement for my broken Bravia LCD and have been trying to calibrate it tonight using the test patterns on my Digital Video Essentials Blu-ray.

All is going well but I'm maxing out the contrast control before the white patches start to bleed together on the test pattern and there is no noticeable colour tinge on the brightest parts either.

So I've just left the contrast turned up full and the picture seems fine for it with no blooming or the like.

It's my first plasma so I'm wondering is this normal to just crank up the contrast on these sets or am I doing it wrong?

 

[meths]

What's the source device.... PS3 or BD player?

PS3. I think you may be on to something here as I've always felt that the video playback from the PS3 was very dark compared to using other input sources either when streaming media or playing from disc and regardless of which TV I was using.

I think it may be incorrectly displaying the pluge pattern causing me to set the brightness too low which in turn is making me try to ramp up the contrast to compensate.

Turning the contrast setting up only increases the light output.

Basically the contrast setting on these panasonic plasmas is like the backlight control on an led tv.


You shouldn't move the contrast past halfway until your tv has had 100 hours use and after that there shouldn't be any reason to have it much past half way.

Basically if you need contrast set too anywhere near 100% your doing something wrong.


Out the box the colours are pretty good you shouldn't need to do much other than;
put it in true cinema mode
turn down sharpness
turn off vivid colour
turn off pnr

If your whites are still wrong try playing with brightness or gamma settings and check to see whether your blueray player is set too ycb444 or rgb.

That's pretty much what I've did so far although I think I'm leaning more towards THX Cinema - Bright Room as opposed to the normal THX Cinema mode.
It's basically a trade off between light output and having ever so slightly washed out colours although it might just be that the plasma is giving off richer colours and an overall darker picture than my old LCD and my eyes just aren't used to it yet.

TBH there's hardly any difference from having contrast at 50% compared to 100% under normal viewing conditions.

 

[meths]

aren't you supposed to leave them stock until the screen has run in before adjusting / calibrating?

also the GT50 out of the box is supposed to be the best tv on stock settings, this doesn't mean it doesn't need calibrating, but it needs less than your average tv.

if you do not know what you are doing leave it at stock. otherwise pay a professional £200-£300 for a calibration. if you cannot afford or justify a calibration then just leave it. you need a colour level monitor in order to do a proper calibration, all you are doing is adjusting to suit your own eyes in the current light setting.

do bare in mind the environment has a huge effect on calibration, therefore if you watch movies with the lights off and the curtains closed, your adjustments will be wrong for this scenario, if you adjusted during the day with daylight, etc.

also if you move the tv from one room to another, it would need re-calibrating.

basically just stop messing about with the tv and just enjoy it, you will never get a reference picture without a professional calibration.

I've read conflicting things on whether you need to leave the panel for x amount of hours before adjusting anything. Some sources say you do and others others say it doesn't matter as much as modern plasmas are less susceptible to permanent image burn.

Also I'm not going to pay £200 to get a £750 tv calibrated but I think I've paid enough to be able to mess about with the settings a bit.

All I'm really wanting to do is check brightness, contrast and that the colour is in the right ballpark using a filter that came with my DVE bluray. I'll be going for one set of settings that suit most scenarios and not trying to fine tune it for all lighting conditions.

This thread really just came about because I thought something must be up as even with the contrast up full the whites came nowhere near the point of over-saturation.

I think lucid has hit the nail on the head in his post and that'll solve my issues.

 

[meths]

I have a 50" GT50 arriving tomorrow I got it price matched for £810 with free 5 year warranty. I also had £105 worth of vouchers (gift), so total cost of TV is £705 to me. I looked into calibration, etc and found that unless your using a monitor there is simply no point, professional calibration costs a lot of money and it needs to be done every time the environment is changed, therefore imo it's only worth doing if you DIY it by purchasing your own equipment and software than calling someone in every time.

That's a great deal on your set.

My tv cost me £25.

They were going to give me it for nothing with a 1 year warranty but I talked them into letting me pay £25 to extend the warranty to 5 years. Plus I managed to get in on the Panasonic promotion for 2 free sets of 3d glasses just before it expired on the 31st March. They're still selling those ones at £60 each so all in my tv cost me -£95.

Point taken about the settings. I'll look into setting up some colour slides to run when I'm out of the house over the next few weeks..

 

[meths]

Ha! Reset the settings and stuck on a film on loop from my media server when I went out earlier and the bloody thing went into standby automatically.

 

[meths]

Do let us know how you get on

Had a play with the TV again last night and observed the following:

-The PS3 was set to RGB Full and the set needs Limited.

-The video signal was defaulting to YCB and not RGB and when manually switching to RGB it looks like some white information is being clipped. I left it set to YCB.

-THX Cinema mode is severely limited in terms of light output and to calibrate to reference standard you have to use the Professional Mode - from various reviews of the panel.

-In order to get the top range of white to bleed into beyond white on the test pattern I have to up the gain setting on the gamma in professional mode. I can then dial back contrast normally to the point where white and beyond white separate.

So I think the plan for now it to leave the set in THX Cinema Mode for a couple of months until it has bedded in and then calibrate it in Professional Mode. Either that or I'll just leave it a couple of months and then ramp the contrast up in THX Mode to a level that I find acceptable.