Does anyone have a Panasonic P50VT30 Plasma?

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SteveFari

108 posts

Master Geek

#92236 29-Oct-2011 02:22

Hello,

I have the tv mentioned in my subject and one of the many great things about this plasma is the amount of manual picture calibration you can adjust but, I was wondering if anyone has found a sweet settings adjustment and wouldn't mind sharing their settings for me to see how it looks.
I have messed about with some of them myself and have found one website with a reviewers calibration settings but it made the picture very dull, I wasn't impressed.

I'm just trying to get the most of the tv without blasting it on Dynamic :)

Cheers,
Steven.

fahrenheit

757 posts

Ultimate Geek

#538991 29-Oct-2011 12:31

One man's "dull" is anothers 'just right'. Its hard to qualify these days with people so accutely in favour of what I would consider overblown, oversaturated colour. I don't know where you sit on the matter but I'm firmly for accurate imagery and so what follows will be in regards to that.

As you've found out, using other peoples settings can lead to unsatisfying results. Every TV is different and these are phase-changing phosphor based technology. That means they will change as they age and each TV ages differently depending on how it is run.

Although the VT offers the adjustments required to dial it in, none of those are useful without instrumentation (colour/spectrophotometer). Even with the right equipment and software, the TV actually has a few problems this year that require compensations that all but the most experienced of calibrators will struggle to workaround.

THX mode will give you the most accurate colour out of the box, but its poor gamma makes the over all image washed out (dull). All the other modes will require you to dial back the colour setting to compensate for the green push that these Panasonics feature in all the other picture modes.
Cinema with 2.4 gamma would be a good place to start.

You need to make sure that you set contrast and brightness appropriately and thats not something you should borrow from someone else. Get the free AVSHD calibration disc and use the black and white clipping patterns to set these. Brightness is the control of black and Contrast is the the control of peak white level. Your playback device settings will also affect how these patterns look and you'll want to make sure you have them appropriately set.

Grayscale, gamma and the CMS can't be adjusted without instrumentation, so there isn't much you can do. Using other peoples settings for those controls could actually be wildly out for your particular unit, so best to leave them alone.

As I said, these displays change over time, especially in the first 500 or so hours. You'll want to recheck the contrast and brightness as you clock up more hours and adjust accordingly.

Gather the test material and tell us what your source devices are and we'll take it from there.

SteveFari

108 posts

Master Geek

#538997 29-Oct-2011 12:47

Awesome information thanks!
I'll download that tool and calibrate it accordingly (a bit later today). Other than MySky HDMi my other input sources are Apple TV (HD) and my PS3.

Yeah I agree with the one person's settings may not be anothers'. My tv is brand spankers so it sounds like I'll need to check it every 2 weeks or so for the burn in phase. A re-tune like new guitar strings :)

Cheers!!

Steve.

fahrenheit

757 posts

Ultimate Geek

#538999 29-Oct-2011 13:06

SteveFari: Awesome information thanks!
I'll download that tool and calibrate it accordingly (a bit later today). Other than MySky HDMi my other input sources are Apple TV (HD) and my PS3.

Yeah I agree with the one person's settings may not be anothers'. My tv is brand spankers so it sounds like I'll need to check it every 2 weeks or so for the burn in phase. A re-tune like new guitar strings :)

Cheers!!

Steve.

I would go easy on the contrast (peak white) in the first 200 or so hours. Stay clear of letterboxed movies and game huds or TV channels with fixed banners etc as much as possible. If you do watch that content, give the tv some time with fullscreen mixed content before you turn it off as this will help clear any IR.
Many people just switch the TV off after a game session or a letterboxed movie and find the IR has baked itself in overnight. Its far harder to clear it the next day compared to just doing it then and there for 5-20 mins.

Each input (HDMI 1, 2 etc) will store its own settings and so you need to adjust each for the source that is connected to it.

MySki is 50Hz and has a different baseline luminance to the PS3 (60Hz for games). If for example you were to set brightness and contrast with a 60Hz source, you couldn't then use those settings for the myski and be gauranteed they are suitable.

24p on the PS3 will give very similar results to 50Hz signals, so you can enable 24p in the video menu, do the adjustments, then use those brightness and contrast settings on the MySki's input. Then disable 24p on the PS3 and this will then output the disc at 60Hz. You can then adjust that to set suitable levels for gaming and the Apple TV.

bfginger

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#539104 29-Oct-2011 22:11

Turn overscan off.