New Toshiba 27AF61 Black Level Trouble (1 Viewer)

[Nathan_B_Schmidt]

I recently purchased this nice tv, and have had it for about a month now. It has been calibrated using VIdeo Essentials. The problem i am having is the black bars during bright scenes are not staying black. They bighten just enough for me to notice it happening. This concerns me a great deal. My cheapo Zenith i had before, had bars that stayed black. Yes, the black level is hard to calibrate, i keep the contrast at 50 and the brightness at 40. I also set the black pluge on my toshiba DVD player to enhanced. This seems to make the colors more vivid and the bars to stay a little darker. I use the component inputs into the tv. Is this normal on most televisions? Am i just being picky about my new tv? I only notice it when the lights are all turned off, when they are on, i cant tell. Has anyone else had this problem. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks
Nathan

 

[ThomasL]

Are you saying that with the Avia half black/half white pattern that both bars are clearly visible? If this is so then your brightness is set too high. Have you used the half black/half grey Avia pattern to set your brightness? Normally people will use this pattern as a good in between.
Most tvs hold black level with varying amounts of success. You may want to quantify how bad the problem is. What is the scale on the 27AF61's brightness setting (1 to xx?). How many notches do you have to lower brightness to have it properly set for the all black pattern, and how much do you have to raise it to have it properly set for the half black/half white pattern?
good luck,
--tom

 

[Nathan_B_Schmidt]

The setting for each go to 100. Contrast is set at 50, brightness at 40. ON the half white, half black screen, both bars become invisible. On the other brightness setup where you have the black bars and the grey scale the right bar becomes visible, a dark gray. Could my contrast still be too high?

 

[ThomasL]

Nathan, I'm not familiar with Video Essentials and their test patterns. Sorry, I missed you mentioning Video Essentials in your initial post. Brightness (black level) and contrast (white level) do interact so you may want to try different contrast settings and see if this helps at all. I own a Toshiba 20AF41 and I found that this set has a high contrast picture (I have contrast set at 15 out of 63) and holds black level fairly well (this is not the case for another direct view Toshiba I own). I would be interesting in knowing if the new bigger flat tubes (both analog and HDTV-ready) from Toshiba behave in this manner. I've really found that the lack of decent black level bugs me on the other Toshiba...dark scenes tend to look washed out even though more detail is available.
good luck,
--tom

 

[Nathan_B_Schmidt]

Actually i think the tv is fine, i must have the contrast way to high.I also have the temperature set to wam. I might need to set that to neutral.