Turbe
09-29-2008, 11:23 AM
To calibrate or not to calibrate a Pio 5090:
I am interested in squeezing every last drop of performance out of my 9G Pio, and am interested in getting an 1ipro to learn some DIY calibrating.....for two reasons.
1) I like tinkering, tweaking, and technical stuff..
2) I want to maximize the PQ of the set
But the thing is that using DVE Blu ray edition and extensive "by eye" tweaking using a variety of blu ray movies (taking into account that directors intentionally change PQ characteristics for effect, so eyeballing it can be misleading and frustrating...so I used many movies for references and read there reviews to see what the pros say about the PQ and the directors intent)......I have the picture looking absolutely amazing!
As much as I want to tweak and get into DIY calibration, I am worried that I will see NO improvement. The only settings that a calibration could possibly change at this point are the manual color temp adjustments and the CMS (maybe contrast as well...but that is a bit subjective at the end of the day). By eyeballing the manual color temp (just had to drop red high and raise blue high a few clicks each) and the CMS (only changed one parameter three clicks) I have skin tones looking very natural.
I really want to get the i1pro and have some fun, but not if I will see NO appreciable difference. Can anyone that has a good eye and has eyeballed a top tier set like a Kuro vouch for the fact that a calibration holds the potential to make some visible improvement.
Edit: I also have controlcal, and wondered if anyone found the extra gamma controls of any value in terms of PQ, over and above the standard 3 gamma presets?
Originally Posted by gamelover360
I am interested in squeezing every last drop of performance out of my 9G Pio, and am interested in getting an 1ipro to learn some DIY calibrating.....for two reasons.
1) I like tinkering, tweaking, and technical stuff.. You will be a happy camper then since tinkering with this is very fulfilling if you are into such things. That has been my experience at least. Originally Posted by gamelover360
2) I want to maximize the PQ of the set There's the key. With DVE you have reached a very good PQ, but it's not perfect without a perfect grayscale and this you will "easily" achieve with the tools you mention. Of course you can't get the Pioneers to be absolutely perfect (without adding an external video processor with a CMS) since they lack a proper CMS implementation, but very close to perfect and better than what you can do with DVE. How much better is very hard to quantify.
Check out this review (http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Pioneer-PDP-LX5090/) and pay particular to the part about calibration.
Don't expect any miracles though, this TV is no doubt very good in the Movie A/V mode together with for example DVE. By using more powerful tools that last bit to comes together and you will quite easily get very nice looking graphs, but that's not to say that everything is perfect like that, that's why I wrote "easily" above. Calibration is part strict science, part an art and it takes quite some time before you will be great at it, even though the Pioneer Kuros are very easy to calibrate if you stay away from the Color Management or at least use it very conservatively. You still have your viewing environment to consider and that can play a big role if it's not neutral. Originally Posted by gamelover360
Edit: I also have controlcal, and wondered if anyone found the extra gamma controls of any value in terms of PQ, over and above the standard 3 gamma presets? I haven't gotten my hands on a G9 yet. With the 8G I boosted 10% stim by moving all controls together to get slightly better shadow detail, but it's not a huge difference. The benefit with ControlCAL on these sets are, IMHO, mostly to gain access to 2 sets of separate picture memories per input. Particularly with the 9G since the A/V mode User gamma curve is fubar from what I've read from those that have calibrated them.
PS I am talking about the 8-9G European Pioneers above.
You mention the User mode. Isn't the Movie mode superior (that is what my eyes and what I have read tell me nayway), so why would the FUBAR User mode gamma curve be an issue?
You mention boosting 10% stim to get better shadow details, is that a reference to the 9 point gamma controls, or another parameter? Did you sacrifice black level or depth to achieve that better shadow detail?
Lastly, I have brightness set to 0, and I am convinced that this is the correct setting (by my eye watching numerous Blu rays with dark scenes and by DVE BR). The thing is that at a brightness level of 0, the shadow detail are usually excellent in the majority of scénes I view. But there are some scenes I find now and then where it seems that a little detail is lost, and that a brightness setting of 0 shows that last bit of detail. Since it seems to be only certain scenes where a brightness of 0 crushes some details, I have settled on a brightness of 0.
But is is possible that when I see a little bit of black crush sometimes that it may be fixed with a D65 and greyscale calibration, so that a proper calibration may bring out that last bit of detail that I lose in certain scenes? I am thinking that I may be off at a certain IRE, and that is causing some loss of detail in these few instances.
In other words the set usually doesn't crush blacks, but now and then does slightly. Could an uncalibrated set do that, or would it always crush blacks or never crush blacks?
Also, I have made sure to use movies that are not crushing blacks due to the durectors intent and so on. I am using reference quality BR discs.
Thanks.:)
My cables come in the mail this week, so this weekend I will fiddle with control cal.:D
I am interested in squeezing every last drop of performance out of my 9G Pio, and am interested in getting an 1ipro to learn some DIY calibrating.....for two reasons.
1) I like tinkering, tweaking, and technical stuff..
2) I want to maximize the PQ of the set
But the thing is that using DVE Blu ray edition and extensive "by eye" tweaking using a variety of blu ray movies (taking into account that directors intentionally change PQ characteristics for effect, so eyeballing it can be misleading and frustrating...so I used many movies for references and read there reviews to see what the pros say about the PQ and the directors intent)......I have the picture looking absolutely amazing!
As much as I want to tweak and get into DIY calibration, I am worried that I will see NO improvement. The only settings that a calibration could possibly change at this point are the manual color temp adjustments and the CMS (maybe contrast as well...but that is a bit subjective at the end of the day). By eyeballing the manual color temp (just had to drop red high and raise blue high a few clicks each) and the CMS (only changed one parameter three clicks) I have skin tones looking very natural.
I really want to get the i1pro and have some fun, but not if I will see NO appreciable difference. Can anyone that has a good eye and has eyeballed a top tier set like a Kuro vouch for the fact that a calibration holds the potential to make some visible improvement.
Edit: I also have controlcal, and wondered if anyone found the extra gamma controls of any value in terms of PQ, over and above the standard 3 gamma presets?
Originally Posted by gamelover360
I am interested in squeezing every last drop of performance out of my 9G Pio, and am interested in getting an 1ipro to learn some DIY calibrating.....for two reasons.
1) I like tinkering, tweaking, and technical stuff.. You will be a happy camper then since tinkering with this is very fulfilling if you are into such things. That has been my experience at least. Originally Posted by gamelover360
2) I want to maximize the PQ of the set There's the key. With DVE you have reached a very good PQ, but it's not perfect without a perfect grayscale and this you will "easily" achieve with the tools you mention. Of course you can't get the Pioneers to be absolutely perfect (without adding an external video processor with a CMS) since they lack a proper CMS implementation, but very close to perfect and better than what you can do with DVE. How much better is very hard to quantify.
Check out this review (http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Pioneer-PDP-LX5090/) and pay particular to the part about calibration.
Don't expect any miracles though, this TV is no doubt very good in the Movie A/V mode together with for example DVE. By using more powerful tools that last bit to comes together and you will quite easily get very nice looking graphs, but that's not to say that everything is perfect like that, that's why I wrote "easily" above. Calibration is part strict science, part an art and it takes quite some time before you will be great at it, even though the Pioneer Kuros are very easy to calibrate if you stay away from the Color Management or at least use it very conservatively. You still have your viewing environment to consider and that can play a big role if it's not neutral. Originally Posted by gamelover360
Edit: I also have controlcal, and wondered if anyone found the extra gamma controls of any value in terms of PQ, over and above the standard 3 gamma presets? I haven't gotten my hands on a G9 yet. With the 8G I boosted 10% stim by moving all controls together to get slightly better shadow detail, but it's not a huge difference. The benefit with ControlCAL on these sets are, IMHO, mostly to gain access to 2 sets of separate picture memories per input. Particularly with the 9G since the A/V mode User gamma curve is fubar from what I've read from those that have calibrated them.
PS I am talking about the 8-9G European Pioneers above.
You mention the User mode. Isn't the Movie mode superior (that is what my eyes and what I have read tell me nayway), so why would the FUBAR User mode gamma curve be an issue?
You mention boosting 10% stim to get better shadow details, is that a reference to the 9 point gamma controls, or another parameter? Did you sacrifice black level or depth to achieve that better shadow detail?
Lastly, I have brightness set to 0, and I am convinced that this is the correct setting (by my eye watching numerous Blu rays with dark scenes and by DVE BR). The thing is that at a brightness level of 0, the shadow detail are usually excellent in the majority of scénes I view. But there are some scenes I find now and then where it seems that a little detail is lost, and that a brightness setting of 0 shows that last bit of detail. Since it seems to be only certain scenes where a brightness of 0 crushes some details, I have settled on a brightness of 0.
But is is possible that when I see a little bit of black crush sometimes that it may be fixed with a D65 and greyscale calibration, so that a proper calibration may bring out that last bit of detail that I lose in certain scenes? I am thinking that I may be off at a certain IRE, and that is causing some loss of detail in these few instances.
In other words the set usually doesn't crush blacks, but now and then does slightly. Could an uncalibrated set do that, or would it always crush blacks or never crush blacks?
Also, I have made sure to use movies that are not crushing blacks due to the durectors intent and so on. I am using reference quality BR discs.
Thanks.:)
My cables come in the mail this week, so this weekend I will fiddle with control cal.:D