why does my new Toshiba 42H81 look darker than the one it replaced? (1 Viewer)

[Rob Michaw]

OK...this sounds like a dumb question...once you hear why I replaced the old one.

The first one I had, had an issue with holding black to the edge of the screen... while models in stores or friend's TVs with similar settings all held black fairly close to the edge. The middle of the picture looked perfect to me on the first set.

This new set holds black much better to the edge of the set. The overall picture looks darker though...as if I don't have as much detail as before.

Both sets were set using Avia, and although the contrast setting is somewhat subjective, I think I got them very similar.

What gives? It is hard for me to say, but the middle of the 1st set almost looked better, while the entire uniformity of this set looks better.

Am I just halucinating :b? Would a proper grayscale calibration make a difference with the amount of detail I will be seeing on this new set?

Thanks.

 

[Eliab]

Rob,
Every display device’s CRTs will output slightly differently than other CRTs. As a result, every TV’s white balance will be unique. This is the reason why it is unlikely that one TV’s settings will be optimum for another TV. This is certainly part of the issue with your current 42H81.
In as far as the “holding black to the edge of the screen” issue, this is a factor of two things. The first being what I just mentioned above, and the second being greyscale uniformity.
On the 42H81 (and most other RPTV’s for that matter), the CRTs are positioned red, green, and blue within the cabinet of the RPTV and aimed towards the mirror mounted on the back of the set. The red CRT is to the far left and angled to the right, the green in the middle, and the blue CRT is to the far right and angled to the left. Because of this orientation of the guns, the red gun will naturally cover more of the right side of the screen and less of the left side, and the blue gun will cover more of the left side of the screen and less of the right side. This causes the far sides of the screen to differ in light intensity from the center of the screen.
Guy Kou (creator of the AVIA test disc) has a technique to minimize this effect. He calls it “lenstriping.” lenstriping is a relatively low-tech, easy, yet very effective technique of partially masking the blue and/or red lenses on an RPTV to achieve greyscale uniformity throughout the screen (particularly bad on 16x9 sets).
If you’re interested, e-mail me and I’ll send the instructions on how to perform this tweak. I hope that this helps you some. Good luck!
Eliab

 

[Marc Colella]

I was going to ask about this darkness issue with the new Toshibas.

My buddy purchased the 50H81 recently and I noticed that the overall picture was darker than what I'm used to.

My TW40X81 isn't near as dark as my buddies 50H81.

Adjustments to his contrast and brightness settings did it's usual thing, but even with a very high contrast and brightness setting - the overall picture still had a dark look to it.

He had it hooked up to S-Video (component cables coming soon). A 9-point convergence was done already.

Different lighting conditions did have any effect on this problem.

Is this the general look of the new Toshibas?