Panasonic TX-50EX700B / John Lewis

[Armageus]

Bought this TV just over 4 months ago, but recently experiencing a lot of pixelation/blockiness issues with dark content.

I've tried different source content (SD TV/DVD/Blurays/Sky HD downloads), and it's consistent across the board. I've tried various different settings (e.g. recommended ones from AV Forum etc), as well as a factory reset and although it can be reduced to some degree, it's still very visible.

It doesn't appear to be an isolated issue as evidenced over at AVForums:
https://www.avforums.com/threads/panasonic-ex700-owners-thread.2121811/page-27

Have reported to John Lewis who sent an engineer out who essentially said there was "no technical fault", and suggested it was just a case of tweaking settings (although he couldn't tweak the settings to resolve the issue), and consequently John Lewis are saying they cannot do anything even under Consumer Rights as there is no fault and they have fulfilled their obligation to provide a repair.

Despite having escalated to a Customer Manager, all they have been able to suggest is to send further example images, which they will open a case with at Panasonic (which I have now done).

Just wondering if others have had issues dealing with John Lewis, and what the best approach is going forwards.

Some examples:

Spoiler

 

[Armageus]

Daft question .. how come you didn't remark problem initially ? (how did you explain that to them?)

I was initially happy with the screen - no other defects, no backlight bleed, HDR looked good e.g. on PS4 Uncharted, and noticed the blockiness/pixellation little if at all. After owning for a little (probably around the 1-2 month period) I noticed it to some degree, but put it mostly down to the large amount of SD TV channels still watched, made some adjustments to contrast/backlight/brightness etc which seemed to improve things to an acceptable level. Recently though it had again become more noticable, whether due to the panel being "burnt in" or whatever or just exaggerated by watching a lot of dark content (due to binge watching Walking Dead)

Looks wrong obviously, the walking dead is a 1080 download from sky, rather than sd ? it looks like a very low bitrate source ?

That kind of banding/haloing might come with 10bit/hdr sources since I believe it has an 8bit+frc panel, but should not be expected on 8bit/SDR/rec709 sky material.

Definitely a 1080 source, but other sources are similar e.g. Bluray.

you have taken the picture in the dark, so the phones capabilities maybe contributing , daylight pics maybe more compelling for Panasonic support.

The "engineer" that came out saw it during day light, which whilst slightly less noticeable was still an issue. His response was essentially these TVs are complicated, you need 4K source material, and you need to constantly change the settings to suit the content being watched (but equally could not demonstrate any settings which resolved the issue).


A bit of hope though - after my earlier conversation with a Manager, I sent over some photos (including those above and others) and a John Lewis senior technician tried ringing me back.
Unfortunately I didn't speak directly to the technician, but got through to another Customer Service advisor who was very helpful, after seeing the Photos admitted that things "didn't look right", and that "she wouldn't accept a TV like that".
She was able to track down what the technician had advised, which was a lot more detailed that the "engineer" who visited had suggested. Including testing the in built TV functionality (i.e. excluding any HDMI devices / AV Receiver etc), as well as some different brightness/contrast levels etc.

I've done some testing tonight, the inbuilt Freeview still suffers from the same issues both on SD and HD Channels. Additionally after testing a handful of different 4K Youtube videos, the same issues still occur (although due to having more pixels, the issue is less prominent). I also signed up for a trial netflix account, and tried a couple of programs on there again with similar issue, but additionally with no option to correct as it's defaulting to HDR which boosts the backlight and contrast to max.

 

[Armageus]

Dropped them an email this morning with some photos from my testing last night, and marked it FTAO the two people who were dealing with it yesterday who were actually quite helpful - so will see what happens.

...so cutting to the chase, and suggesting a different model with JL maybe expediant, especially since they tried once already.

That's all I want, just to swap it for a similarly priced model from another Manufacturer - I'd even said I would be happy to be pay a small amount towards the replacement due to me having owned it for a few months, but was told by the customer manager (before photos etc were sent) that because "no fault was found", that replacement/refund wasn't an option.

 

[Armageus]

Spoke to another advisor at JL - despite all my further troubleshooting and photos provided, still unwilling to offer an exchange or refund.

They have arranged for another engineer to come out on Monday (despite me previously being told that as they had sent an engineer out, they had fulfilled their requirement to affect a repair).

Not holding out much hope, but allegedly will be a different engineer.

Next steps after that will be a credit card claim I guess, although not sure what chance that will have if JL are arguing that there is no fault.

Spoiler: 1440P Netflix, 4K Youtube Captain Marvel & Sony Bellagio 4K Demo

 

[Armageus]

Also, try a non streaming source - something played from a USB stick.

Try this: https://download.blender.org/durian/movies/

Thanks for that, will download that and give it a try later - hopefully it still exhibits the same so I can show the engineer on Monday.

 

[Armageus]

2nd Engineer visited early (actually 2 engineers this time).
Both could see the issue (demonstrated on SkyQ HD broadcast - XFactor, and also Neflix), but again almost a dismissal of "no TV is perfect - might just be a technical limitation of the TV".
At least they spent more than 5 minutes here this time, took photos and quite a few details (Although one of them tried arguing that I shouldnt be using 1080i output on SkyQ, and that either 1080P or 720P were better - despite SKY only broadcasting in 1080i - 1080p is just the box deinterlacing rather than the TV).

Fairly sure one of them said they would speak to Panasonic regarding the issue, and that also he would speak to his manager to see what else they could do (as he wouldn't be happy with the TV)

Will wait and see if JL contact me tomorrow, as no point chasing today as they need the engineer's report back first.

 

[Armageus]

i think it's a setting issue or an electronics issue.

do you have some sort of processing on? noise reduction, etc?

May well be a settings issue, but defaults shouldn't produce images with such issues imo. Have tried with all image processing off, and all on and various steps in between.

could you post a picture of all the picture settings and advanced picture setting options for your tv?

Will do when I get a chance.

it's basically forming a block of the same colour. this may be just cheap electronics within the tv and it's not a fault per say. it's the way the tv handles certain signals or all signals.

Not something I've experienced on any other TV though, including many cheaper and/or no name ones.

was the ex700B not a rather cheap tv? how much did you pay for it and what size?

i found the same issue you are having on hisense tv's. basically cheap electronics driving the panels. so it's not faulty it's just a cheap tv and that is what it looks like due to cheap electronics.

50" £499. Clearly not in the league of what some people spend, but also not the cheapest end of what's available. It was a replacement for a 10 year old visitron 42" 1080P that didn't exhibit anything similar.

I've also got other cheaper smaller TVs in the house (24" Toshiba, 22" Polaroid, 32" Samsung) and whilst the black performance etc is considerably worse than the panosonic, at least they don't suffer with pixelation/blocking.

 

[Armageus]

it's the scaling chip on the tv which will be crap.

It's the fact it's low bit rate and non native when the TV scaler up scales it's doing a terrible job due to cheap electronics

It's not though - on anything not dark the TV's scaling is excellent - e.g. Doctor Who in HD was pin sharp - just with blockiness on the black areas e.g. on the title sequence

do you have an AVR? if so then it could be a setting on there. or you could introduce an AVR and use the processing on that to upscale 1080i to 4K. so the tv doesn't need to do anything.

Only a "budget" Denon X1300W, so no upscaling.

the only solution i can think of is to use the highest input resolution possible to take the processing/scaling away from the tv itself.

OP you may have to buy sky Q and use that to upscale to 4K if you can't do any of the above. it will have to be the 4K capable box though i think the cheaper one can't do it.

Already have Sky Q - have tried using 4k output from that, and if anything the scaling is worse that the TV's, and it still doesn't resolve issues with blacks

I would like to see op watch a 4k stream off Netflix or a 4k bluray and see if it shows

Don't have a 4k Player, and my broadband isn't quick enough for Netflix to stream at 4k - it manages 1440P but there are still issues with black.
On a variety of 4k Youtube content, however there are still issues with black.


The only source I haven't (yet) noticed any issues on is when playing PS4 (1080P).

Whether it's a "cheap" TV or not, no one in the right mind would accept the blacks being blocky/pixellated and at times even flickering - as far as I'm concerned it's not fit for purpose (i.e. displaying a variety of TV Sources and resolutions as you would expect, without significant issues).

My budget for a TV was £500 - there were cheaper TV's available (i.e. several Hisense you mentioned, and an LG that has an odd panel type RGBW?) - the fact that there aren't any 1080P TV's available to buy new is somewhat a moot point - all 4K TV's are therefore expected to scale SD/HD content at this point

 

[Armageus]

Google crushed blacks.

Sounds like the issue you are having.

Is that correct?

Could be a setting issue if so. It's likely ps4 is using a different signal like limited rgb range.

It's not a black crush issue and not a hdmi full range issue either - it happens on the inbuilt Freeview tuner and built in apps.


It may well be that the TV can't handle low bitrate sources - but in that case it's definitely not fit for purpose as a TV - it's only fit for use as a monitor, if it can only display uncompressed sources without issue (e.g. PS4)

 

[Armageus]

Not heard anything since the engineer visit yesterday, so I've escalated it to the next step - templated consumer rights complaint sent to Head of JL Customer services, stating that I believe the goods to both be Unfit for Purpose, and not of a satisfactory quality.
Will see if anything becomes of it, otherwise next stop will likely be JL Social media and/or Section 75 credit card claim.

Wish me luck

 

[Armageus]

I guess you played with all the relevent options, what did you adopt . ? Personally - min, off, Auto, max, dont have, DH, min, DH

Adaptive Backlight Control - Off
Ambient sensor - Off
Noise reduction - Off
MPEG Remaster - Off
Resolution Remaster - Off
Dynamic Range Remaster - Off
Intelligent Frame Control - Off
Clear Motion - Off

(also tried with noise reduction, MPEG remaster, resolution remaster all set to max, and various stages inbetween), tried varying Sharpness levels all the way from minimum to maximum.

- Tried both 1080p Pure Direct mode (which is supposed to pass colour space information through unaltered), and 1080p Pixel by 4pixels mode (Which is supposed to just display 2x2 pixels for every input pixel, with no interpolation).
- With Adaptive backlight on min or above, I've tried Contrast Control set to Auto, Off and Custom (with options adjusted to both extremes of the scale allowed)
- Tried Color Gamut settings on Auto/Normal and Native
- Have tried "True Cinema" mode which exposes more options for White Balance and Colour Management and tried several settings for these based on AVForums, and a post here for here relating to an older DX Panasonic - without professional calibration equipment I'm not sure this really would make much difference and makes no difference to the issue (just affects the main picture slightly)

- Firmware is the latest available (and downgrading not an option - assuming it maybe got worse following an update, as have done 3 since owning it, as Apps require the latest firmware)

I'm fairly sure it isn't "Posterisation" as mentioned earlier as it doesn't affect any other graduated colours (e.g. sky scenes), and isn't even consistent across all greys and blacks (e.g. it's random black highlights on an otherwise solid area, or random small black highlights flickering e.g. in dark areas of people's hair etc) .

The 4k marvel photo you posted - yes I get the issue there which I don't claim any TV would be able to solve, but also get larger blotches of "bright" black in the shadow on the rooftop scene, and issues in other scenes.

 

[Armageus]

Just an update to say that John Lewis still weren't interested in resolving anything, although they did pass it on to panasonic. However, despite having already provided detailed evidence, Panasonic wanted more details and aside from taking the TV away to a service centre (whereby they likely would still come back with a "no fault found" result, and I'd be without a TV).

However I have found some settings that seem to eliminate the main issue (although likely could do with some further fine tuning when I get time) - hopefully they may be helpful to someone who stumble upon this thread.
Unlike the engineers who said that it was "within technical specification" and "that was the best I should expect from a TV of this price" (or lol cheap electronics), then the settings below are a noticeable improvement.

Given how the situation has been handled by John Lewis though, I will not be buying any electricals or similar from them again.


These are the settings I've been using for SkyQ (set to 1080P), and Non-HDR Netflix content - they remove the random black highlights (e.g. on peoples's hair) in dark scenes on the walking dead, and remove the blockiness from e.g. "The Chase" TV programme, even when viewing the SD broadcast (i.e. it looks lower quality as you would expect, but without huge black "minecraft" style pixels in the dark areas)

Viewing Mode: Custom
Backlight: 35
Contrast: 60
Brightness: +5
Colour: 50
Tint: -5
Sharpness: 30
Colour Temperature: Normal
Vivid Colour: Off
Adaptive Backlight Control: Off
Ambient Sensor: Off
Noise Reduction: Off (Greyed Out)
MPEG Remaster: Off (Greyed Out)
Resolution Remaster: Auto
Dynamic Range Remaster: Off (Greyed Out)
Intelligent Frame Creation: Off (Greyed Out)
Clear Motion: Off

Advanced Settings:
Contrast Control: Custom
Contrast Control Setting
Adaptive Gamma Control: 0
Black Expander: 0
Clear White Effect: 0
HDR Brightness Enhancer: Off (Greyed Out)
Colour Gamut: Normal
White Balance: All set to 0
Colour Management: All set to 0
Gamma: 2.2
More Detailed Adjustments: All set to Defaults

Option Settings:
Game Mode: On (Greyed out)
Film Cadence Mode: Off (Greyed out)
1080p Pure Direct: On
4k Pure Direct: Off (Greyed out)
1080p Pixel by 4pixels: Off
HDMI Content Type: All set to Defaults
HDMI EOTF Type: All set to Defaults
HDMI RGB Range: HDMI1 - Full