TPM Edge Enhancement Paranoia aka Ken is a Dimwit (1 Viewer)

[Ken_McAlinden]

I was visiting my Sister-in-law for the holiday, and, being the somewhat obsessive compulsive fool that I am (I did actually ask for permission first), I tweaked their 35" Sony TV to reduce overscan, fix the resulting geometry problems around the edges, turn off the red push, and improve black level retention (all easily done via the service menu and a few test patterns). I then set all of their normal color and contrast controls to acceptable levels.

I put in a few discs to see how things looked. One of these was "The Phantom Menace". The edge halos were absolutely horrendous. Every one in a Tatooine exterior looked like they had chalk outlines around them. I double checked the "sharpness" controls and they were set to zero. I remembered it being present but not nearly so horrible on my 36" WEGA at home. After verifying this at home, I prepared to write my HTF manifesto about how these edge halos were likely decoder dependent (my Pioneer player's decoder obviously trumping the one in my sister-in-law's Toshiba). Hey, maybe I should fire an e-mail off to Bjoern Roy? I had previously thought that EE was just a problem for those with much larger projection systems who sit closer to their screens than me, but now I could see the problem on a smaller TV from almost anywhere in the room. Now, I knew what everyone was complaining about.

This morning, I woke up and had another idea. I spun up Phantom Menace. Selected the first exterior scenes on Tatooine, and set "Velocity Modulation" to high. Sure enough, it looked just like my sister-in-law's television. I don't think her TV had a "VM Off" option in its standard menus, so I have one more trick to play in their service menu the next time I visit. I guess this explains why no matter how much I lowered the sharpness on her TV, I never quite got the "edge artifacts" off of that darn indian-head test pattern either. :b

What's to be learned from this little story? Two things actually:

1) Always turn VM Off

2) Ken is a dimwit

Regards,

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I have VM disabled (yanked the cable) on my set, and the image still looks like Saturn for the amount of ringing.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Some Sonys that do not have a listed SVM option do have multiple picture modes (Pro, Standard, Movie, Vivid). If the set in question does have these modes, try 'Pro', as it typically kills SVM.

TPM definitely has EE, but SVM can definitely make it worse.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

There is no question that TPM has halos aplenty, but they are a comparatively mild annoyance on modestly sized screens from a reasonable viewing distance. The larger your screen and the closer your viewing distance relative to the screen size, the more troublesome they become.

Since SVM (or VM or VSM or whatever they call it this week) "enhances" high contrast areas by creating halos, and the pre-existing halos themselves are high contrast areas, any object that already has edge ringing will look positively radioactive with SVM applied.

Regards,

 

[Artur Meinild]

Yep, it's still edge enhancement hell no matter what. I run my DVD with a direct signal to the screen without sharpness setting or anything like that.

 

[Dave H]

I have a 61" Sony KP-61V80 and what I don't like is that the owner or service manual says NOTHING about the SVM and the only way to turn it off is to physically unhook the wires inside the set - information given to me by people on this forum, thankfully. This was the greatest picture improvement - even more so than the ISF calibration. The SVM was severe that at one point I seriously thought there was some actual defect with my TV. On any rate, there is NO excuse for Sony not making this an option to do in the menu and informing its viewers about it.

 

[Kwang Suh]

Word is that those halos aren't EE. The DVD version is in fact the director's cut, and Lucas wanted to show the "Force" around the actors.

Ok, so I'm a day late.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Whatever happened with that 'Edge Enhancement Workshop' or whatever that they announced when we first started complaining about this disc? Did it ever happen?

 

[Joseph Young]

The DVD version is in fact the director's cut, and Lucas wanted to show the "Force" around the actors

Seriously, though.. I had never noticed the EE in TPM, but I had an unfortunate revelation the other day. I watched the scene (during the pod race) where you can see Padme and the others in the tower, gazing down on the races. The dark outline of Padme's silhouette against the Tatooine sky suddenly revealed a prominent chalky white halo. From that point on, I realized that EE (or the appearance of EE) actually robs the viewer of detail. It's kind of like the way that lens glare obscures a photograph.
Oh, and my television: A WEGA KV-32FV27 with VM turned off, the white/black levels adjusted through basic and service menus.
Joseph

 

[Scott Burke]

I have a standard sony 27 inch television. How do you turn it off. Can I turn it off? I have my viewing mode in Movie calabrated with VE. I do not have a "Pro" optionn.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

PRO mode is a fairly recent thing on Sonys. If the set is circa 97 or 98 and has a MOVIE mode, svm will be turned off in that mode. I verified this with the needle pulse pattern on my 98 model KV35XBR-48.

In the service mode on the newer sets, svm is called UVML, and can be turned off for each mode and is also input specific. Don't know if this applies to older models, but if you find UVML in the service mode it's probably SVM. This may have several levels, ranging from 0 for off to 3 for highest svm.

 

[Ken Stuart]

First off, I resent this thread Subject !
Second, AFAIK all Wegas have SVM on/off in the menus - yet another plus for Wegas !