nick_rh
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2003
- Messages
- 86
So, I arrived home last night to find my new PT-47WX53 waiting for me. After a lot of cable wrangling (and about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to snip off the plastic around the AC cord), I finally got everything hooked up to it and tested it out.
First, I popped in a random DVD (About a Boy) to warm up the set before I calibrated. I figured the colors, brightness, etc. would be a bit off initially, but....whoa. I didn't expect them to be THAT off. Everybody was blue! Colors were COMPLETELY wrong. I waited about 20 minutes, then adjusted the convergence and picture settings. Still, everyone was blue. At this point I'm a little unsettled, wondering if the CRTs were damaged during shipping. I switched over to "King of Queens" on the HD tuner and the colors were correct. Waited a little while, then put the DVD back on. The Blue Man Group remained. Something wrong with the DVD player? Now I check the component cables in the back.
Yep. I put the component cables in the wrong order. Blue in the red socket, red in the green socket, green in the blue socket. (Try this sometime. It's probably a good alternative to mind-altering drugs.) Fixed the cables, everything was fine. Now it was time to pop in DVE. I ran through the basic tests; when I was done, the color setting was much lower and the brightness much higher than I expected. In fact, I ended up going renegade and turning the brightness down a bit from the recommended setting. Those settings looked great on DVDs, but on the HD tuner I needed to turn the color up several notches to get a realistic-looking picture.
Since DVE is both extremely useful and extremely boring, I didn't feel like doing the full spectrum of tests just yet; I wanted to play with the TV a little.
So I put in the disc that has christened every major A/V purchase since 1999, The Matrix. My DVD player isn't progressive, so I was prepared for artifacting a-plenty, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even in fast motion scenes, the picture looked great. It was great to see all the details that I had forgotten about from years of watching it on a 27" SDTV...the individual pixels on the monitor in the beginning, the police lights flashing across Agent Smith's face when he's talking to the cop, the details of the dancers' outfits in the club, and many more.
Now I really needed to see this set in its full glory, so in went Finding Nemo. WOW! Now THAT'S a picture. With all the lights off, I was IN the ocean. To be honest, I actually felt a little seasick during some of the high-speed "tracking" shots. And when Nemo and Dorie fall into the trench (right before they see the "light"), the screen was genuinely BLACK. Not the "TV black" that I'm used to, but BLACK black, like as if I'd turned off the set. I did notice a little blockiness on Marlin and Nemo (the two red-orange fish), and there was some slight halo-ing around some of the fish at times. Not sure if that's a function of my DVD player or my TV settings, but I've probably got some tweaking yet to do.
Lastly, I plugged in my DirecTivo. Really not a bad picture at all. On 4x3 material, the "Just" mode isn't quite the panacea I'd hoped for; actors still tend to look squished in many places. I'll probably get used to it in time. I bought this primarily for 16x9 material (HD and DVD), so if I'm going to compromise on something, it should be SD 4x3. One other annoyance: the viewing angle issue is worse than I expected; since my living room is on the small side, you pretty much need to be right in front of the TV to get a clear picture.
All in all, however, I'm very pleased so far. Can't wait to watch some more HD shows (Alias in particular) as well as the Lord of the Rings discs and Star Wars Ep. 2.
And last but not least, thanks SO much to everyone in this group that lent me their advice on the purchase. It's amazing how much I've learned about everything to do with HDTVs by reading this forum for the last month.
First, I popped in a random DVD (About a Boy) to warm up the set before I calibrated. I figured the colors, brightness, etc. would be a bit off initially, but....whoa. I didn't expect them to be THAT off. Everybody was blue! Colors were COMPLETELY wrong. I waited about 20 minutes, then adjusted the convergence and picture settings. Still, everyone was blue. At this point I'm a little unsettled, wondering if the CRTs were damaged during shipping. I switched over to "King of Queens" on the HD tuner and the colors were correct. Waited a little while, then put the DVD back on. The Blue Man Group remained. Something wrong with the DVD player? Now I check the component cables in the back.
Yep. I put the component cables in the wrong order. Blue in the red socket, red in the green socket, green in the blue socket. (Try this sometime. It's probably a good alternative to mind-altering drugs.) Fixed the cables, everything was fine. Now it was time to pop in DVE. I ran through the basic tests; when I was done, the color setting was much lower and the brightness much higher than I expected. In fact, I ended up going renegade and turning the brightness down a bit from the recommended setting. Those settings looked great on DVDs, but on the HD tuner I needed to turn the color up several notches to get a realistic-looking picture.
Since DVE is both extremely useful and extremely boring, I didn't feel like doing the full spectrum of tests just yet; I wanted to play with the TV a little.
So I put in the disc that has christened every major A/V purchase since 1999, The Matrix. My DVD player isn't progressive, so I was prepared for artifacting a-plenty, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even in fast motion scenes, the picture looked great. It was great to see all the details that I had forgotten about from years of watching it on a 27" SDTV...the individual pixels on the monitor in the beginning, the police lights flashing across Agent Smith's face when he's talking to the cop, the details of the dancers' outfits in the club, and many more.
Now I really needed to see this set in its full glory, so in went Finding Nemo. WOW! Now THAT'S a picture. With all the lights off, I was IN the ocean. To be honest, I actually felt a little seasick during some of the high-speed "tracking" shots. And when Nemo and Dorie fall into the trench (right before they see the "light"), the screen was genuinely BLACK. Not the "TV black" that I'm used to, but BLACK black, like as if I'd turned off the set. I did notice a little blockiness on Marlin and Nemo (the two red-orange fish), and there was some slight halo-ing around some of the fish at times. Not sure if that's a function of my DVD player or my TV settings, but I've probably got some tweaking yet to do.
Lastly, I plugged in my DirecTivo. Really not a bad picture at all. On 4x3 material, the "Just" mode isn't quite the panacea I'd hoped for; actors still tend to look squished in many places. I'll probably get used to it in time. I bought this primarily for 16x9 material (HD and DVD), so if I'm going to compromise on something, it should be SD 4x3. One other annoyance: the viewing angle issue is worse than I expected; since my living room is on the small side, you pretty much need to be right in front of the TV to get a clear picture.
All in all, however, I'm very pleased so far. Can't wait to watch some more HD shows (Alias in particular) as well as the Lord of the Rings discs and Star Wars Ep. 2.
And last but not least, thanks SO much to everyone in this group that lent me their advice on the purchase. It's amazing how much I've learned about everything to do with HDTVs by reading this forum for the last month.
