In my case, specifically a new LG LH90 LED set.
I bought a 47" LH90 at the usual Black Friday gig at Best Buy, like a lot of us tech addicts do. It's replacing a 40" Bravia which I dearly love, but is going to a relative as a Christmas hand-me-down. In fact, they have it and are in HDTV heaven.
As I expected, the picture out of the box wasn't ideal. It seems none of them are. What I didn't expect was for the LG to fight me almost every step of the way in my hunt for the ideal picture, or close to it.
It does have a TON of parameters to tweak. However, half of them are arcane, and the DVD manual doesn't explain them all that well. Also, undocumented quirks, name an input, and suddenly a bunch of the tweakable parameters for it gray out, so you can't get to them anymore.
I have a few main issues:
My Bravia wasn't even one of the high end XBRs, just a W series, and it was almost a breeze to get going with a wonderfully vivid picture with just the right brightness. The only issue with it were blacks that weren't quite black, but I could easily live with that.
This LG is giving me fits, being just off enough in a few areas to make me consider returning it for an LCD XBR Bravia. I also game a lot, so plasmas are out of the question for me. Besides, the Bravia engine has impressed me with the quality of its color processing.
Now, I'm close, and the LG is one of the most lauded of the LED sets because of the excellent display and lower price, but I'm looking for someone's advice for settings to take it one step closer to perfection. CNET has a setting example, but the image was tinted a weird peach color, so I don't know what the heck they were doing. Maybe drinking or watching the naughty stuff. I could buy a calibration DVD or Blu-ray, but I'm not sure one is available for this TV, and I'm not about to pay for a technician to come out to set it. Surely someone has the thing and displaying properly.
Anyhow, this is what I have so far, and it does give the TV a darn good image.
isf Expert settings
44 (Backlight
85 (Contrast
0 (H, V Sharpness
60 (Color
0 (Tint
Expert Mode
Off (Dynamic contrast
Off (Noise
Low (Gamma
Low (Black level
(Real Cinema and True 240 irrelevant)
Wide (Color gamut
Off (Edge enhancement
Cool (White balance
10 point (pixel Method
Outer (Pattern
137 (Luminance
Now, here comes the isf settings. I'm not quite sure what exactly it is, but seems to be 10 brightness levels, and their associated red, green and blue values for each isf level.
3, 0, -3 (100
4, 0, -5 (90
4, -1, -5 (80
3, -1, -3 (70
2, -1, -3 (60
1, -1, -2 (50
-1, -1, -3 (40
0, -1, -2 (30
-2, -2, -3 (20
-1, -1, -2 (10
Color management (only non-zero values listed)
-1 Yellow tint
-1 Magenta tint
So, does anyone have anything to share? Or should I just go back to Best Buy and demand an XBR Bravia? Speaking of which, maybe I should post my Bravia settings if anyone wants to try them.
I bought a 47" LH90 at the usual Black Friday gig at Best Buy, like a lot of us tech addicts do. It's replacing a 40" Bravia which I dearly love, but is going to a relative as a Christmas hand-me-down. In fact, they have it and are in HDTV heaven.
As I expected, the picture out of the box wasn't ideal. It seems none of them are. What I didn't expect was for the LG to fight me almost every step of the way in my hunt for the ideal picture, or close to it.
It does have a TON of parameters to tweak. However, half of them are arcane, and the DVD manual doesn't explain them all that well. Also, undocumented quirks, name an input, and suddenly a bunch of the tweakable parameters for it gray out, so you can't get to them anymore.
I have a few main issues:
- Brightness which isn't glaring.
- Contrast with blacks which don't swallow up dim details - and the balance between brightness and contrast has been a huge struggle.
- Color which is rich but doesn't cause saturation issues.
- Whites which aren't tinted peach or teal.
My Bravia wasn't even one of the high end XBRs, just a W series, and it was almost a breeze to get going with a wonderfully vivid picture with just the right brightness. The only issue with it were blacks that weren't quite black, but I could easily live with that.
This LG is giving me fits, being just off enough in a few areas to make me consider returning it for an LCD XBR Bravia. I also game a lot, so plasmas are out of the question for me. Besides, the Bravia engine has impressed me with the quality of its color processing.
Now, I'm close, and the LG is one of the most lauded of the LED sets because of the excellent display and lower price, but I'm looking for someone's advice for settings to take it one step closer to perfection. CNET has a setting example, but the image was tinted a weird peach color, so I don't know what the heck they were doing. Maybe drinking or watching the naughty stuff. I could buy a calibration DVD or Blu-ray, but I'm not sure one is available for this TV, and I'm not about to pay for a technician to come out to set it. Surely someone has the thing and displaying properly.
Anyhow, this is what I have so far, and it does give the TV a darn good image.
isf Expert settings
44 (Backlight
85 (Contrast
0 (H, V Sharpness
60 (Color
0 (Tint
Expert Mode
Off (Dynamic contrast
Off (Noise
Low (Gamma
Low (Black level
(Real Cinema and True 240 irrelevant)
Wide (Color gamut
Off (Edge enhancement
Cool (White balance
10 point (pixel Method
Outer (Pattern
137 (Luminance
Now, here comes the isf settings. I'm not quite sure what exactly it is, but seems to be 10 brightness levels, and their associated red, green and blue values for each isf level.
3, 0, -3 (100
4, 0, -5 (90
4, -1, -5 (80
3, -1, -3 (70
2, -1, -3 (60
1, -1, -2 (50
-1, -1, -3 (40
0, -1, -2 (30
-2, -2, -3 (20
-1, -1, -2 (10
Color management (only non-zero values listed)
-1 Yellow tint
-1 Magenta tint
So, does anyone have anything to share? Or should I just go back to Best Buy and demand an XBR Bravia? Speaking of which, maybe I should post my Bravia settings if anyone wants to try them.
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