RGB Full Range - Does your TV support it?

Inoshishi

Inoshishi

Inoshishi

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Until recently I have been using 'Full' mode for RGB Full Range on my PS3, that was until I discovered my TV didn't support it, so what I thought was a properly calibrated TV, actually wasn't, I was loosing a lot of detail in dark areas of movies and games.

So how can you tell if your TV Supports RGB Full Range? - Many HDTV's do not!

What your about to read is blatantly stolen from andrewfee on the NeoGAF forums.

So how do you find out what your display supports? Well if you're hooked up to a monitor, it's 99% certain that it will be expecting a Full RGB signal.

So how do you know if your TV supports it? TVs generally have a hard cut-off on the 16-235 range, turning anything outside that to pure black / pure white. (eg 15 would be jet black, no matter how high you set brightness)

Make sure your PS3 is set to limited and download this image onto a memory stick, load it up in the PS3 browser etc:

http://sr-388.net/images/patterns/Brightness.jpg

Turn up the brightness control on your display until you can (hopefully) see all four numbers. (1% grey, 2% etc) Assuming you can see all four, adjust brightness to the point where 1 is just about to turn solid black. (if the lowest number you can see is 2, then adjust it until that is almost black)

Now, enable Full RGB. If your screen supports it, you should still be able to read the same numbers. If not, it will turn pure black. However, many TVs that support both won't auto-switch between the two, so you may need to check your TV's menus for a "black level" setting. (may be called something different) If you have that, change it and you should see the numbers pop back up onscreen.


If you can't see the numbers at all when you enable Full RGB and don't have any options that bring them back, you should be using limited. If you can still see them all, you're probably fine using Full RGB.

If you do use Full RGB, check your contrast setting is ok. If it is set too high, you may not be able to see the 99, 98, 97, 96% grey in this image:

http://sr-388.net/images/patterns/Contrast.jpg

Note: Just because you may be able to max out contrast and still see all the numbers does not mean that is the correct setting. This can only tell you if it's clipping highlight detail, not if it's too bright.
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Once you have discovered if your TV Supports Full Range or not, it would make good sense to calibrate it correctly. Below is a link to AVSForum which provides test paterns that you can burn to DVD, and instructions on how to use them.

Blu-ray & HD DVD Calibration Disks

Might seem like a lot of effort, but by doing the above you know your getting the most from your equipment, now GTA4 isn't too dark at the default settings.
 
I normally just use the THX setup on most of the pixar DVD's, ill give this a wihirl though and see which gives the best results
 
kidloco said:
I normally just use the THX setup on most of the pixar DVD's, ill give this a wihirl though and see which gives the best results
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Only problem with that is it won't tell you if your TV Supports RGB Full Range, a lot of people have this enabled on PS3, but what they don't realise is it is crushing black levels, unless their TV supports it, which in the majority of cases it won't.

Also the THX is optimised for SD displays not HD displays, should still do a good enough job though.
 
I thought if you could adjust the brightness and get the numbers to show up on 'Full' then your TV supported it?

I had mine set to 'Limited' after calibrating the brightness and it was fine. So i turned 'Full' on and it went full black as mentioned, but i thought you then just increased the brightness more to get the numbers back. I can't actually tell the difference really on my Samsung LE40M86BD, so im not sure if it supports it.
 
Nymins said:
I thought if you could adjust the brightness and get the numbers to show up on 'Full' then your TV supported it?

I had mine set to 'Limited' after calibrating the brightness and it was fine. So i turned 'Full' on and it went full black as mentioned, but i thought you then just increased the brightness more to get the numbers back. I can't actually tell the difference really on my Samsung LE40M86BD, so im not sure if it supports it.
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From what I understand, correct me if I am wrong, when you raise the brightness to compensate your eventually bringing a 0 black level past level 16. So your black won't be pure black if that makes sense.
 
Another test for PS3 owners who have Warhawk (not as accurate as in my first post) if you move the cursor in XMB onto the Warhawk Icon, if you can't see the sewer grid near the Warhawk logo (bottom right) then you are crushing your blacks and loosing a lot of detail.
 
quickly tried the burned DVD, just tried the basic test. I turned full rgb off and sure enough I could just see 17 and above flashing, pretty much spot on. Turned the full rgb back on and I couldn't see any flashing bars at all. So I'm guessing my panny plasma doesn't support it, bit odd seeing ad it only 6 months old and supports every format going (1080p signals, 25fps etc)

If left it switched off until I run all the tests
 
Hmmm just tired this on my lg22 ls4r when i turned rgb full on all numbers disappear however i have something called XD, when i go to the demo of it with it 'on' no numbers
'off' then they appear, problem is i cant turn it off as the xd nr is grayed out :(
 
See this is the thing about calibrating. When one calibrates a computer display/tv, it depends on how bright the environment is. If it was done at night, everything appears quite dull as in dark during the day for the picture. If it was calibrated during the day, it appears so blooming eye hurting at night.

What looks good to one person may not appear good to another. So how is calibrating done correctly, when the above happens...
 
Inoshishi said:
Another test for PS3 owners who have Warhawk (not as accurate as in my first post) if you move the cursor in XMB onto the Warhawk Icon, if you can't see the sewer grid near the Warhawk logo (bottom right) then you are crushing your blacks and loosing a lot of detail.
Click to expand...

Yes I can see this perfectly on my LE40M87, so this result along with the other people's should mean that the LE40M87 does indeed support it. I noticed a difference last year when I first got the TV anyway when I turned on this setting.
 
just done this on my PC monitor and cant see the "1" and my brightness is at 100% - suggestions?
 
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