Got my 47" Panny HDTV: Carlo & other owners, some questions! (1 Viewer)

[Matt_Stevens]

quote: Carlo said this: My PT-47 looked horrendous coming out of the box. Doing basic 9 pt convergence and AVIA calibration made it look pretty darned good. Doing the service menu 64 pt convergence, along with fixing the red push (about 5% now) and cooling down the gray scale makes my set look very good to excellent. If I can get a good ISF'er out here to get 6500K gray-scale, I'll be sound as a pound.[/quote]
OK. My picture looked VERY bad out of the box. I quickly lowered contrast, brightness, sharpness and color to normal levels. Selected Warm instead of Normal. Turned off that Flesh control crap.
Let's forget about broadcast TV and HVS, which look horrible, for the moment. DVD via 480p looks decent, but not nearly as good as I have seen it on this very same set, so I have questions concerning service menu adjustments.
This set has serious red push, which I could easily see with Avia. I need to make SERVICE MENU adjustments to fix this, but damn Panasonic forgot to send me the manual I ordered (and which they charged me for!) so I am currently relying on Net stuff.
I can get into the Service menu and at the top, 480i, 480p and 1080i are listed, but only 480i is highlighted. I assume this means that the listed settings are for 480i only? How does one jump to 480p and 1080i?
I am wondering how I get rid of this red push? Under the service menu settings for 480i, I have the following defaults...
TINT: 2E
CONT: 21
COLOR: 23
B-Y_G: 05
R-Y_A: 06
On one of the web pages, I saw that someone changed their Color from 23 to 42 (and in user settings to 21). Their B-Y_G from 08 to 2A; Their R-Y_A from 03 to 00. Their user controls Tint to 26, Brightness to 30, Picture to 27.
Right now, using Avia, there is no way to make this set right with the Red push and blazing hot gray scale.
So can anyone aid me in moving forward? This is my first HDTV and therefore, the first time I have had to mess with sub-menu adjustments.
One more question, when I got out of the service menu, all my previous adjustments were erased and the set had defaulted back to torch mode. How the heck can I avoid that again! I never want to see all my hard work erased. That would drive me nuts.
I should also mention the SVM is TERRIBLE! I hope like hell there is a way to shut this off because in a darkened room, it's clearly visible. Especially with the Avia test patterns.
[Edited last by Matt_Stevens on August 13, 2001 at 05:14 PM]

 

[Jeff Leigh]

In order to jump to 480p or 1080i, you need to send that source to the TV. BTW, 480p doesn't have many settings you can change. It looks like it takes most of its info from 480i.
I was able to virtually eliminate red push through some trial and error. I don't have the settings in front of me, but there are a number of posts over at:
http://63.249.150.205/panny/
that describe various settings that should work.
User setttings are always erased when exiting service mode. Just write them down and they should be easy to re-enter.
SVM is annoying. There appears to be a manual hardware fix, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm kinda waiting for a software fix since I'm kinda scared to go messing around inside the electronics.
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[Matt_Stevens]

Guess I'll try the settings from Brett's Panny webpage. The defaults were slightly different than mine, but it can't hurt as I can always return to the defaults. I wish I could figure out how to get to 480p though, as I was feeding it 480p from my DVD player and the menu was stuck in 480i. Being new at this is a bummer.

If only these companies would give the option of having real world, properly calibrated settings in addition to the damn torch modes.
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www.deceptions.net/superman

 

[Carlo_M]

Okay, I'm short on time so I'll answer a couple of things and then try to get back here either tomorrow or the next and follow up.
1. The USER values will always be reset after exiting service menu. You can't help it. What I would do before doing any service menu color/brightness/contrast adjustment is to set all the USER MENU color, tint, brightness & contrast to dead center (31? I think). Then go in to the SERVICE menu, feed your set a 480i signal, and calibrate using AVIA. That way, when your USER menu is reset, the only thing you'll have to adjust is contrast (which for some reason defaults to 100%--like 60 or 61, and back that off to 31).
2. Eyeballing gray scale is near impossible. Luckily for me, I have a PC in the house. It has a near-6500K setting. I run my AVIA gray scale on that and try to match it with the HD set. Mind you this is a very poor substitution for ISF linear gray scale calibration, but it's the best I could do until I get the set ISF'd. It was sheer trial and error with the cuts and drivers and I still don't know what I did, but I got it close by just playing around. Mostly I turned down the values, but you have to realize that changing one affects the other for all values.
3. Do the 64 pt convergence. I know it's a pain in the ass and an eye strain. Wait until your service manual gets here. While viewing the FINE convergence adjustment, start in the center and work out in a concentric circle. Choose one color at a time to work on, be it red, blue or green. Do the center -> out convergence and then...do it again, you'll need to because some spots get pulled out of whack by adjusting other spots. This whole thing should take you an hour or so. Take breaks. Don't let the convergence lines burn in your new set. Do it for like 30 minutes, then turn the TV to something and go have a beer. You'll slowly get the hang of it, and by the time you're done, you'll feel like a pro.
4. Brett and others have isolated the SVM pins that go to each CRT gun. However it seems like the pins are connected so tightly, cutting might be required. Still waiting to hear what the verdict is on this method, should know in a week or two.
I was able to get red push down to about 5%, which to me is negligible. And the gray scale really needs a reference picture if you're going to try and eyeball it. Try to find a monitor (a nice 17" or larger should have 6500K or 8000K settings on it and are fairly accurate) and run the AVIA signal through there and your TV. Or try to take AVIA somewhere you know is ISF calibrated and try to "memorize" what it looks like and back your set off to it. You won't be close, but you can't do worse than the torch mode the set comes with!
Good luck, and we'll be here to help.

 

[Jim Tudor]

(Most of this post was in Brett's forum, but I haven't gotten an answer there, so I figured I'd try here. I hope the replies help Matt & the others like myself, who just got this set...)
I also just got the set, and I've tweaked it as stated on this site & HTS posts. So far, I love it, although I'm a bit concerned that the settings I wound up with (using VE) are too bright, and I may be risking burn-in. Here they are:
Color = 20
Tint = 39
Brightness = 35
Picture = 39
Sharpness = 0
I've been in the service menu a few times, and fixed the red push, but I'm waiting on the service manual I ordered to arrive before I go in and disable the SVM problem. I've been avoiding the 4:3 mode until I hear if these settings are safe.
Thanks in advance...
JiM T

 

[KevinO]

Carlo, I don't have a DVD drive in my computer. Could you post your settings for the cuts and drivers? I could be wrong, but I figure your values would be better than the defaults for all Panny owners. Thanks!

 

[Carlo_M]

Kevin,
I will post them as soon as I get my A-Board swapped out, since I think it will hose all of my service menu settings anyway. I don't want to get in the service menu just yet because it will reset all of my USER settings and since I'm going to have to recalibrate I'd rather just do it once.
Hopefully the company will be out this week to do the A-Board swap and then I'll post my full service menu settings (as it pertains to cuts, drivers, color, tint, brightness & contrast) here and/or at Brett's site.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

Carlo,
Once you get a chance, I'd love for you to write down all the menu settings you have (sub & normal menus). This will give me a baseline to go with. I've been at this for two days now and am no closer to getting the red push fixed than before.

I'll do the 9 point convergence today, as a warm-up for the 64 pt.
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www.deceptions.net/superman

 

[Jeff Leigh]

Here are a few tricks I discovered last night that will help to calibrate a set for 480P.
1) You can use the CUT_OFF register to isolate individual guns. Makes it much easier to check the color decoder and color bars. (Thanks to Rod U at HTS for this tip).
2) You CAN adjust service mode registers that affect 480p while in 480p mode. Here is the trick. Enter the service mode while watching a 480i source. Preferably a TV channel. Choose the register you want to change and hit action to edit the value. Now hit tv/video to change to your progressive input. You can still edit the register and see the effects while looking at the 480p source. If you want to edit a different register, hit r-tune to change back to 480i, choose the new register and then hit r-tune again to go back to 480p. Works pretty nicely. You will find out that some registers don't affect 480p. COLOR is one of them. You have to go into 1080i mode to fix that. (JohnnyG at HTF found this). There may also be others, but I don't have access to a 1080i source, so finding them will be difficult.
You will still have the problem about only having one input memory, but the above should help you balance out any compromises you have to make when calbirating this set.
I too found the SVM connections too tight to disconnect with breaking the board connectors. Might have to snip the wires, but haven't gone that route yet.
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[Carlo_M]

FYI the guys are coming to swap out my A board...hopefully then I will be able to use the 480p input.
Tonight and probably tomorrow I will be recalibrating depending on if the new board hoses all my service settings. Once I do that, I'll post the values here on the board.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

I'm about ready to give up on this set. I will be taking pictures of the set with cable, VHS, SVHS and LD, so that you can see how horrid it looks. Hopefully these pics will come out. I don't have a digital camera, so it's 35mm.
If my SVHS and LD collection is useless on this set, then the set is useless to me. It's that simple. Plus the white streaking problem. Can someone with this set that owns PRINCESS MONONOKE please pop it in with subtitles ON and tell me if the subs during the very beginning cause streaking to the right. On my set, the yellow subs streak terribly during the credits. There are other examples, but this is the mist extreme.
Sears will be out here on Friday to see if they can fix this. We'll see.
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www.deceptions.net/superman

 

[KevinO]

Matt, sorry to hear things aren't going well.
Carlo, what was wrong with your set. What do you mean you couldn't use your 480p input?

 

[Carlo_M]

Kevin,
When you input a 480p signal, these white dots appear sporadically all over the picture (light areas). Switching to 480i (same component cables & inputs) solves it.
Here's the kicker, the tech comes out with the new A-Board and installs it. Convergence is horribly off, like each gun is about 2" from each other. The trapezoidal is very off, bowing heavily at the sides and top. Tech spends several hours converging it, it's still not perfect (not close) but watchable.
Then we try the component input. Problem solved. Picture is fine. Then we notice that the aspect button doesn't work. Can't toggle between 4:3, Zoom, Full & Just. Then on picture adjust 2, there's this 5th option that I've never seen: Aspect 4:3 but it's grayed out (can't affect it). Then in picture adjustment 3, the V-position option is not there! This means I can't move the pic up and down after zooming (and zooming doesn't work anyway). I'm getting real suspicious so we go back to Service menu and, yup, there's no SBPOS value (this means Sidebar Position, the gray bars around a 4:3 picture on a 16:9 set). We go to the VER (version) option and switch it from 4:3 to 16:9. No change in either service or user menu option.
Guess what?
They must have sent us the board for the 4:3 version of this set. That's why convergence was off. That's why the initial size was off (like 4" of overscan top and bottom, I could see this from the inside of the set, looking out at the screen). That's why convergence was horrid.
Grrr: 4 hours wasted. Weird thing is that the part # for the A board was right. But the settings were for 4:3 TV. And at least we know that the initial white dots problem is due to the A-board as the new one didn't exhibit that problem.
The service company is closed all next week, but that's okay since it took Panny 3 weeks to get this first A-board to them.
Now I'm watching interlaced (again) but the set's line doubler and 3:2 are pretty darned good. I'll live with it until they get us the right part.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

And I thought I had it bad!
I was able to improve my 16x9 SVHS tape playback. Most of the noise is gone, but edges and certain things have a strange dot crawl to them and I am thinking it is the SVM, because sharp edges have the same dot crawl with VHS nd SVHS sources.
Laserdisc still look absolutely God awful because the Zoom mode is so poor.
P.S. This forum is so slow of late that it is agonizing using it. I wish they could solve their ISP problems.
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www.deceptions.net/superman

 

[Jeff Leigh]

The service manual says you have to remove power after changing the VER register and the TV will then come up in the right mode. You might try doing this.
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[Carlo_M]

Crap! Thanks Jeff! I wonder if it's too late to contact the guy. Oh well, it can wait until two weeks from now...