Compatability and calibration...

[tnlandsailor]

I am not a connoisseur and I sure as heck don't speak geek - but I like to watch movies on a kick-butt display and "feel" the rumble when needed. That being said...

I'm upgrading my TV from a Panasonic TH-42PX60U to a Panasonic 65" VT30. I have the funds to do it right and this seems to be a really nice display and a high value with the VT50's coming out shortly. I have a Yamaha sound projector, YSP 4000, that acts as my receiver with a single HSU VTS-1 sub-woofer. I want to keep this and just hook it (along with the sub-woofer) to the new VT30. I have a Blu-ray player with a high quality HDMI cable running to the YSP, with another HDMI running from that to the TV.

My question is two-fold:

- Is there going to be any problem with this audio/receiver combination with the VT30 as far as providing a high quality picture to the VT30 to really take advantage of what the TV can do? In other words, if I buy this big beautiful TV, am I limiting its capabilities with what I have upstream?

- As long as everything is compatible and the TV can really dazzle me, what is all this talk about calibration? This is new to me. Do I need a professional to come into my home and do this for me? Is it something I can do myself even though I have no idea what any of these high dollar terms are, and who the hell is D-Nice?

This will not be my daily TV. It is in a theater room, watched mostly for movies in the dark (no daylight will be visible and minimal if any ambient lighting), or perhaps some sporting events with some additional ambient lighting but still no daylight.

Can anyone help a newbie figure this out? I'm too old and too far behind the power curve to fully understand all this stuff. Thanks in advance.

 

[FirstReflection]

There's no problem in terms of your new Panasonic TC-P65VT30 (excellent choice of TV, by the way!) getting a good signal from your Blu-ray player. I'm not entirely familiar with that model of Yamaha Sound Projector and what inputs it has. I took a quick look at the specs and the YSP 4000 appears to have 2 HDMI inputs and one HDMI output, 2-in/1-out component video and two each coax and optical digital audio inputs.

Specs say the HDMI inputs will pass through 1080p and 1080p/24, so there should be no problem at all. Just run an HDMI from the Blu-ray player to the YSP 4000 and then another HDMI cable from the YSP 4000 to the new Panasonic TV.

The specs make no mention of 3D Blu-ray support though, so if you want to play 3D Blu-rays, you first have to make sure that your Blu-ray player is a 3D player. Then you would have to run HDMI directly from the 3D Blu-ray player to the TV and use a separate optical or coax digital audio connection to go from the 3D Blu-ray player to the YSP 4000. That's only if you care about 3D though

I'm not sure how you get your TV signal. If you have an HD cable or satellite box, you'll simply run an HDMI cable from the box to the YSP 4000. If you are running an over-the-air antenna straight into the TV, the TV has an optical digital audio output that you can run to the YSP 4000 to get Dolby Digital sound from the TV.

Displays have well documented and defined industry standards. Every primary and secondary color had an exact coordinate position on the chromaticity diagram. White has a specific coordinate position. And the rate at which black rises to grey and then white is defined by the "gamma" for video. If you want the image you see to be truly accurate, you need to have your display calibrated.

Every display that was used to make the video you are watching was calibrated to the same industry standard along the way. So it only makes sense that I you want to see what the director truly intended for you to see, that you would calibrate your TV to that same standard!

Why aren't all TVs simply pre-calibrated to this industry standard, you might ask? Because the image that reaches your eyes is also dependent on the ambient light in the room. The THX picture mode actually IS pre-calibrated, but only for a pitch black room. THX can't anticipate what the lighting will be like in your room, but pitch black is the same anywhere So if your room is pitch black, the THX mode is already calibrated.

If you have ANY ambient light though, then you need to recalibrate. The Panasonic VT30 plasmas already have pretty accurate color and greyscale if you put them in the THX or Professional 1 or 2 picture modes. All you really need to do in those modes is adjust the Brightness and Contrast settings so that you see all the detail in the deep blacks and peak whites that you're supposed to. You can easily do this for free with any THX Blu-ray or DVD. Simply go into the disc menu and look for the THX Optimizer. That will run you through some easy setup test patterns to dial in your picture fairly well.

If you want "perfection", you cannot do it by eye. You need a measurement device and some software. And that'll run you several hundred dollars at least. For a single display, the more cost effective route is to simply hire a professional calibrator. He will bring some very expensive an accurate measurement equipment and truly calibrate your TV to the industry standards. For most people though, this is overkill. Since the VT30 already has some picture modes that are pretty close out of the box, a simple user setup with the THX Optimizer will get you "close enough" to be entirely satisfactory to most people

 

[tnlandsailor]

FirstReflection: Thanks so much for a detailed and understandable reply! All of that made complete sense. I do not yet have a 3D Blue-ray player and evidently the YSP 4000 does not support 3D (but the 4100 and 5100 do). I might change things eventually to make that happen, I think it would be very cool to play around with the 3D eventually, but right now, I just want a great big kick-*** picture. The way my room is configured, rear speakers just aren't possible and the sound projectors are actually pretty amazing at what they do. I have really enjoyed the one I have.

For 90% of the viewing on this TV, the room will be pitch dark. It would be good to have another calibration setting for when the room is lit like during a sporting event when people are over - but it sounds like I can use the THX feature on a Blue-ray disc that you mentioned to get that and I won't have to resort to anything resembling a moon launch or atom smashing.

While I have your ear (hopefully), do you have any advice for buying the TV online? There seem to be fairly good reviews for Amazon and I saw another company named One-Call who would price match. What about receiving the shipment to make sure there is no damage? What about extended warranties? Any info would be appreciated. I'm looking to pull the trigger in the next 30 days or so.

Thanks again for taking the time to educate a noob.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

btw: How big is your room? It might be too big for "a single HSU VTF-1 sub-woofer" to ""feel" the rumble"

is it open to other rooms/spaces?

 

[Phantom48v]

First, the easy part, Huppin's One Call is great. I bought my parents home theater system through them. They matched the price on everything I bought (their price was a little to a lot higher than other places), in some cases their advertised price was cut in half (power conditioner listed $665, sold to me for $350). Their support is decent, and they stand behind their products. My favorite part is that with every order they have a check box to require a signature, that way FedEx won't leave your new TV sitting out in the rain until you get home from work (yeah, I'm talking to you Crutchfield).

As for calibration...I'll bet it's expensive to get a guy to come to your house with a vectorscope to set levels that you'll probably not even notice any more than just using what you think looks good. I used the poor man's method and burned a DVD with color bars. Most people don't notice the 3 grey boxes in the lower right corner...you adjust your black level until the box on the far left disappears into the black, then up it so the darkest grey box is just barely visible, this will get you close to 7.5 (proper black level for broadcast). The tall left bar is 50% (midway between black and white), the square on the bottom left is pure white, using these 3 you can set your brightness.

Color is more difficult. If you really want to do it yourself, you can hold a blue gel filter (Kodak Wratten #74B) over the bars and adjust Cyan and Magenta until all the bars are full blue and black. The yellow bar (2nd from left) should be pure yellow, too much red makes it orange-ish. Too much saturation will make it look like the yellow and red are bleeding into the adjacent bars.

It sounds complicated, but it's easy if you have all the right stuff. Spare Room Media has a good walk through on how it works if you're that set on broadcast quality calibration settings. I think the best thing to do is pay attention to flesh tones, watch something with fire (Transformers), water (Tree of Life...if you can stand a stupid, pretentious flick), and greenery (Avatar, Apocalypto), and if it looks good to you it'll be great...as long as you don't install another TV next to it to constantly compare it to.

 

[cpp]

I say get your TV into your room, watch it for a few weeks then decide if you need to spend the cash for calibration.

 

[tnlandsailor]

Thanks to everyone for chiming in. This helps a lot.

The room is pretty big - about 14' wide x 35' long, and an 8' ceiling but the viewing portion of the room is pushed to one end with the screen up against the far narrow wall. Ceiling is not vaulted and the main viewing seating is about 8-9 feet from the screen. I'm actually pretty happy with what the VTF-1 can do right now. There doesn't seem to be a port for a second subwoofer on the YSP-4000. Is adding a second as easy as just using a Y splitter to the existing subwoofer port?

TV right now is satellite (DirecTV), but as I said, 90% of the time, it's going to be DVD viewing.

Sounds like the whole calibration thing might be a bit overblown. While it is important to get things looking right, it seems to be the consensus that my eye will tell me what looks good and perhaps the men in lab coats with expensive illudium-pew36-explosive-space-modulating-light-measuring gadgets might not be necessary. A careful look at the brightness/contrast and some slight adjustments may suffice.

I'm probably going to hold off replacing the YSP with one that supports 3D for now. I can always run the Blue-ray direct to the TV if I want to play around with it. Thanks for that tip.

Thanks for the advice about OneCall. They seem to have their act together and will play ball on price. Now I'm just wondering if there will be one last price drop on the VT30's before the VT50's come out. I'm in no big hurry - do you think there is any advantage to waiting another month? I think I can get the price from OneCall to match Amazon at about $2800.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks to everyone for chiming in. This helps a lot.

The room is pretty big - about 14' wide x 35' long, and an 8' ceiling but the viewing portion of the room is pushed to one end with the screen up against the far narrow wall. Ceiling is not vaulted and the main viewing seating is about 8-9 feet from the screen. I'm actually pretty happy with what the VTF-1 can do right now. There doesn't seem to be a port for a second subwoofer on the YSP-4000. Is adding a second as easy as just using a Y splitter to the existing subwoofer port?

TV right now is satellite (DirecTV), but as I said, 90% of the time, it's going to be DVD viewing.

Sounds like the whole calibration thing might be a bit overblown. While it is important to get things looking right, it seems to be the consensus that my eye will tell me what looks good and perhaps the men in lab coats with expensive illudium-pew36-explosive-space-modulating-light-measuring gadgets might not be necessary. A careful look at the brightness/contrast and some slight adjustments may suffice.

I'm probably going to hold off replacing the YSP with one that supports 3D for now. I can always run the Blue-ray direct to the TV if I want to play around with it. Thanks for that tip.

Thanks for the advice about OneCall. They seem to have their act together and will play ball on price. Now I'm just wondering if there will be one last price drop on the VT30's before the VT50's come out. I'm in no big hurry - do you think there is any advantage to waiting another month? I think I can get the price from OneCall to match Amazon at about $2800.

imho:
3920 cu ft is a pretty large room and a single vft-1 should be struggling to pressurize it and to provide 20Hz extension... you could do double vtf-1 with y-splitter (bass is mono) - it will increase the bass levels (from 6db - both subs at same spot to 3db subs across the room) and help to fight room models, but would do nothing to provide more visceral bass feelings ... In the long run you might want to consider seriously bumping the budget for bass.

Regarding good deals on Panasonic 2011 xxxxx 30 models, I recently purchased from electronic expo TC-P55ST30 for $1080 including delivery (see boredom thread on the unfortunate events about this delivery)
I hope end of this week I'll finally get to enjoy it
ST shares the same infinite black 2 panel as VT/GT 30 but lacks the THX certifications and advanced controls. 2012 VT changed the processing engine slightly on all models and VT got brand new panel, but the difference in price doesn't justify the purchase imo (for now)

 

[Grador]

For 90% of the viewing on this TV, the room will be pitch dark. It would be good to have another calibration setting for when the room is lit like during a sporting event when people are over - but it sounds like I can use the THX feature on a Blue-ray disc that you mentioned to get that and I won't have to resort to anything resembling a moon launch or atom smashing

The other thing to keep in mind here is the importance of proper color. Calibrated for pitch black the TV will look very good in higher ambient light conditions, and lets face it, do you really need to see the absolute correct color in a sporting event? Half the time I find that the broadcast itself is way off during football games.