# Calibrating a plasma Panasonic



## asere

I calibrated my plasma going by cnet's calibration and their contrast was + 64 and brightness was + 53. I then bought Disney Wow calibration dvd and for the contrast I got a + 90 and brightness a + 63. I don't know but a contrast at 90 seems to high of a setting and I am afraid it can mess up the tv. Both settings cnets and Disney Wow look good I just don't know which one to keep.


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## mechman

To quote Michael Chen:



> 3 Rules to setting contrast always apply.
> 
> No clipping
> No discoloration
> No eye fatigue


Keep in mind that cnet's environment may be very different than yours. And you may want to check WoW's pattern to another one. I always recommend Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray Edition. But there are a few free patterns you can find out there as well.


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## asere

So if calibration dvds differ, how do you know which one is right?


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## mechman

They mainly differ on what they include and how they present it. WoW and for the most part, DVE, pretty much hold your hand and walk you through the whole process. Spears & Munsil assumes, more or less, that you know what you are doing and just gives you the patterns, clips and sample videos. No one tells you what you need to do or why. There is, however, a brief narrative or help if you push up on your blu ray player.

The big thing I hated most about the original DVE was navigating through the fluff to get to the meat. WoW isn't too bad but I don't recall if they include any decent content to check your adjustments. I know they include some animated stuff but that isn't what you want for checking white and black levels.

The other thing you should consider, regarding your numbers, is that you are introducing at least one other variable to the equation that cnet doesn't - your blu ray player. And maybe your receiver as well. Both of those may have an effect upon the end image as well. I haven't seen where you got the settings from at cnet, but if they were from David Katzmeier, he probably uses a video generator to calibrate and produce his settings.

Lots of variables to think about. :T


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## michael tlv

Greetings

if you calibrate to DVE and then to Spears and munsil and then to WOW ... you get the same answer unless you messed something up. The patterns might be presented a little different on each disc, but the answer is the same.

S&M gives you a bit more precision than the DVE disc so if there is any difference, it is all of one click. No one could ever see that kind of difference on real images.

regards


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## asere

On disney wow I got different results on the brightness from beginners and advanced mode. Why its that? I followed the instructions and did it correct. How do I know which one to use?


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## mechman

I'd have to take a look at the disc again. But I wouldn't think that there should be a big change. :scratch:


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## asere

Is a contrast setting of 90 or 100 high?


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## mechman

asere said:


> Is a contrast setting of 90 or 100 high?


It depends. It could be. Then again, it may not be. :huh: I know that my two main displays are around 50 - on a scale of 0-100. I do have 2 Panasonic plasmas, but I cannot recall what contrast is set at on them. 

Do you have a burner? If so, go here and download the AVCHD disc and double check the setting if it concerns you.


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## michael tlv

Greetings

Contrast too high ... too low ... well that depends.

On the mode you are watching in ... Vivid ... Game ... Custom ... standard ... THX ...

THX mode literally has a limiter on so taking contrast from 60 up to 100 only makes things slightly brighter but will not clip anymore than what 60 did. (And 60 does clip detail ... but this is a design trade off)

On sets like Sonys ... current units have calibrated contrast settings in the range of 90-95 ... no issues. Ditto for Samsung. LGs don't clip much or at all close to 100 either ...

Follow the three rules to setting contrast. There is play with rule 1 on some sets if achieving this robs too much light output from the display. Panasonic THX mode for instance. So some detail is sacrificed to gain dynamic range.

regards


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## asere

This is on Cinema mode. Panasonic TC P50S1 model.


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## michael tlv

Greetings

I just went and ran both pluge patterns from the WOW disc on my LG set. They both give the same answer or within one click as the basic pattern is more coarse than the advanced pattern.

If the differences are greater ... then it comes down to user error. 

From my own experience with clients that tell me they used a calibration disc first ... at least half of them used it wrong. Problem is ... they all tell me they used it correctly. It may not be lying, but just because people tell you they understand something doesn't always make it so.

Regards


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## asere

I downloaded the AVCHD and it brought up some burner and i also got an error while burning.


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## rab-byte

What BD player do you have?

Does one setting look best with TV viewing? If so I'd set the display for TV them tweak the player for movies.


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## asere

I have the Panasonic dmp bd60 player. I calibrated the tv with the cinema setting and also with the panasonic players cinema mode. Thw panasonic also has normal, soft,user and fine modes.


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## michael tlv

Greetings,

For burning iso files, try the image burn program. imgburn... available for free as a download.

Regards


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## rab-byte

asere said:


> I have the Panasonic dmp bd60 player. I calibrated the tv with the cinema setting and also with the panasonic players cinema mode. Thw panasonic also has normal, soft,user and fine modes.


User mode on your player will let you adjust brightness/contrast/color/tint.


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## asere

I know user mode will let me adjust however when I calibrated the tv with Disney Wow dvd I changed the tv settings. How do I set the dvd players contrast, brightness setting? Won't it counter act with the settings I have on the tv?


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## rab-byte

asere said:


> I know user mode will let me adjust however when I calibrated the tv with Disney Wow dvd I changed the tv settings. How do I set the dvd players contrast, brightness setting? Won't it counter act with the settings I have on the tv?


It will. 
You made your adjustments off the disc but I'm willing to bet that your TV/Cable/Sat picture is darker/lighter then your blu-ray player. So tweak the display until it looks good for TV. Then tweak the blu-ray settings from there. 

The idea is that you have only the TV to adjust PQ for Cable. But you have the tv AND the player to adjust PQ on blu-ray.


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## janos666

rab-byte said:


> The idea is that you have only the TV to adjust PQ for Cable. But you have the tv AND the player to adjust PQ on blu-ray.


I think the idea is that you should minimize the image manipulation steps and you should do every processing steps at stages with the highest effective precision possible (to preserve as much digital precision as possible and thus avoid color banding and/or minimize the amount of the required dithering noise added to the picture).

It practically means that you want to output YCC 4:2:2 from the player (4:2:0 would be the best but HDMI [<=1.4a] doesn't support that, so...) without any post-processing after the standardized decoding (+ the necessary 4:2:0->4:2:2 chroma re-sample step) and leave any color management tasks to the high bit internal video processor (HDMI is practically limited to 10 or 12 bit/channel, so everything will be rounded/dithered back when goes through the HDMI cable while display VPs go as high as 16+ bit/channel).


For example, you don't want to expand the levels with the player and compress them with the TV again (or convert it to RGB with the player when the TV will convert it back to YCC anyway...).
This is why you should not play with the Contrast/Brightness settings of the player.


The only reason to use external video processing in some cases is that TVs often have so called "color decoding issues" (like color luminance errors but you can imagine and find other type of color mixture errors, like non-linear gamut mapping, etc).


Of course, it's tricky (may require numerous iterations) to find the "neutral" settings if both the player and the display is unknown. But it's easy if you have a trusted source or you know at least one of the devices.
Sometimes there is no "neutral setting" for either of the devices (or it seems like that because one of them does something behind your back but you don't know which one...)
In this case the best solution is to stick with the subjectively best looking one. But this should not be recommended if there is a solution and you just need to find that.


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## rab-byte

I use a testpattern generator to calibrate the TV then after the display is right I'll verify from the cable box. Then bluray. If the player has picture controls I'll adjust it to the TV. If not I'll adjust the TV to the player and then verify from the cable box. 

I use this method because TV tends to be viewed more often then movies and you can't adjust the cable box.


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## michael tlv

Greetings

Yup ... the way it is taught in the classes is ... do the TV first with the generator. Then fine tune the TV to the BD player if there are no controls on the BD player for adjustments. People watch the BD player and not the generator.

Cannot calibrate to the cable/satellite box since that source is not reference. Cross your fingers really and hope it matches the generator or the BD player. Sometimes a brightness setting adjustment is needed for the cable box ... from the TV end.

regards


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## rab-byte

Exactly. 
The boxes are close to reference (according to Bob Fuchie, i know i spelled his name wrong) but the programing is far from it. So I try to find a good happy medium for the display for the box then adjust the player to match (if I can)


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## yammyguy

Anyone experiencing black levels degrading over time with their Panasonic plasma?


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## Joel Barsotti

yammyguy said:


> Anyone experiencing black levels degrading over time with their Panasonic plasma?


I believe that is "normal". As the TV wears and loses light output, it also loses contrast ratio. The TV tries to compensate by turning the gain up on the picture. This raises the light output, but also the black levels.


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