Thanks. Question - how important/useful is it to play that break-in DVD?
The break-in dvd, or sd-card files are useful but not necessary.
From my understanding all PDP phosphors age the quickest in the first 100-150 hours. By using the break-in images you can insure that this aging takes place evenly for all the phosphors in the panel. This gives you a meaningful baseline from which to calibrate from.
If you calibrate prior to this aging of the phosphors, you may find that after a 120 hours or so you need to go back and recalibrate.
If you go out on a limb, and believe some people, you can actually use each others adjustments if you have the same type of panel, and used the same break-in process. Some may argue against this, but I took this approach and dove into my service menu and made offset adjustment to my S1 based on the results of someone else’s ISF calibration report. You just have to know the offsets, not the hex values. I then verified the end results with a calibration DVD I have and found the results to be nearly spot on. I made a few minor tweaks in the user menu, and things appear to be perfect for me now.