Color adjust issues on New TH-42PWD7UY

[AlanDC]

Received my TH-42PWD7UY on Wednesday and I am unable to adjust color to my satisfaction. I've spent a lot of time working with the settings, and I am thinking it is a problem with the display. I am not that picky. I've read about calibration, and borrowed a copy of the DVE disk to do the limited adjustments it coaches a user to perform. I haven't touched the service menu. Set is driven by an HD Tivo through component cables. The color balance issue is also present on the composite video input.

Green is the problem. With standard settings normalized, grass fields and foliage tend toward a intense lime shades. Dark parts of images (suits and dark hair of guests on the News Hour in SD, or dark interiors in HD), tend to have a green tinge. Lighter backgounds of interior scenes tend to look yellow or muddy. Complexions of actors often look jaundiced, especially those with light brown skin. When I push the tint to -3 or -4 to de-intensify the greens, caucasians often get skin tones with magenta highlights. Turning the color level down to avoid these highlights, makes the whole picture look washed out. These issues are more pronounced in SD, but are clearly present with and HD signal also.

One thing that makes me think the problem is with the display, is the fact that several of the controls in the "advanced settings" menu have no effect on the image whatsoever. The "Input Level" and all the controls beginning W|B, ( white balance?) have no impact on the screen image. Is this normal behavior?

I am used to looking at an NEC 42" plasma, which has been used for four years, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, in my workplace. It has some burn in and fading problems, but I've had this unit at home and I think its colors look better! Other owners, please advise me on whether or not I've got a defective Panasonic.

Thanks in advance!

[nuke]

Something doesn't sound right. I have a 50HD6UY and there are no problems with the component in color quality.

I will say though that setting up to the DVE disk only calibrates to your DVD player. Those settings will not necessarily translate to the HD tivo as a source.

But still, if you just plug in and use the defaults, it ought to make a decent image. The only other thing I can think of is make sure the panel is set for component and not RGB input. It is selectable on the component inputs.

[Knievel]

Also make sure you are not using HD color to watch SD, or vise-a-versa. They use completely different colorspace.

[AlanDC]

nuke and Knievak, thanks for your responses.

The TIVO provides recorded HD and SD progaming to the panel over the component cables at 1080i. It can also feed the panel over a composite video cable if I adjust the TIVO's output to 480i. I see the color imbalance on both inputs, but more pronouncedly in SD. The NEC plasma panel connected to the same cables does have this green tinge issue.

I guess what I'm trying to figure out if I just have a set that is grossly mis-adjusted, in which case I could try to convince the seller or panasonic to have someone come to adjust it, or if I should assume it is defective and have it swapped out.

What about that second page of advanced color (W|B) controls? Should they create a visible effect on the image? Could these controls solve the problem?

Are the bright greens just a result of the fact the set is new, and the phosphors need to get broken in?

Are Panasonic panels green, in general, when compared to NEC plasmas?

The worst result I could create, is to impose upon the (internet) vendor to exchange the Panasonic plasma, and then get another unit with which I have the same problem.

Thanks again.

[Eddy13]

do this and you will notice a difference turn color management off... Its in the second page after the regular color and contrast options. when you turn color management to off the greens become more normal

[JWhip]

Eddy13 is 100% corredt. Turn the color management off. I have the same set and it has picture perfect greens with the color management set to off. ON is another story and sounds like what you are experiencing.

[AlanDC]

Thanks for pointing out the color management, but I had already tried it to no avail. I ended up figuring out how to get a normal looking image on the screen, but here's what I had to do.

I turned advance settings "ON" and then set all the White Balance sliders to the maximum. (Individuallly, they had no visible effect.) This turned off the green neon. I now have natural looking grasses and folaige, and all the dark parts of images are no longer tinted green. In fact the panel looks great.

I purchased a new set of premium cables, in case they were causing the problem. Panasonic really shouldn't ship a unit requiring this level of adjustment, to get a decent image. In case this indicates an underlying problem, I'll probably return my unit, and have it replaced with one which displays properly when settings are "normalized."

Thank to all for help and advise.

[cheridave]

AlanDC,

What you have described is most likely a "Grey Scale (White Balance)" issue.

This can be corrected by having your Plasma Pro-Calibrated by a calibrator after about 300 hrs.

The key is finding a person in your area that can provide this service.

The ISF Foundation is a starting point for locating a Calibrator.

Good luck.

Dave

[AlanDC]

Dave,

I wonder why I should have to spend $100s on professional calibration when all I'm looking for is a normal image. Though, I guess I have figured out how to get this, using extreem adjustments.

Are you pretty confident that my panel's problem is a service level adjustment and not an indication of a failing component somewhere?
Have you seen a lot of this kind of thing?

Thanks,

Alan

[cheridave]

AlanDC,

What you have done by adjusting the "White Balance" sliders is skewed the "Grey Scale", aka "Color Temperature". Your "Color Temperature" is now higher which means it is "Cooler" and more "Blue" which is probably masking what you were seeing with the "Greens".

I understand your comment about spending money for a calibration, but try to understand that it is cost prohibitive to the manufacture to calibrate each and every Plasma. They will calibrate 5+ Plasmas at one time using the RS-232 connection from one control point. They will most likely use two data points (40 ire and 80 ire) for the "White Balance (Grey Scale)". The "Color Decoder" will most likely be set to the same values on all sets. But as we all know not all components are created equal. They may have tolerances but components can fall in at either the high or low end of those tolerances. That is why one member can't share his settings with all the other members, because no two Plasmas are the same.

We have seen Plasmas that have displayed excessive "Green Tint" as you have described and they were corrected by a Pro-Calibration. I truly believe that your Plasma is not defective, it just needs some tweaking as I have described.

Good luck.

Dave

[Eddy13]

guys my set came with a green tint push as well not overwhelming but enough. I notice by leaving color tempeture at cool it calms it down or niormal. At warm you can see the yellow tint.. Now I tried what alan explained by pushing the wb levels up and it helped i mostly pusged the high blue wb and the low blue wb to about +15 on both and now everything looks more natural and the ocean now looks like a aqua blue.. is to much blue bad..

[Eddy13]

anyone else know of its a good idea to puch blue wb adjustment up a notch to get less green and better blacks..

[Eddy13]

thanks guys

[cheridave]

Eddy13,

You are making blind adjustments by doing this. A calibrator would have the proper measuring equipment and would make the needed adjustments according to his measurements. I suppose what you have done will not hurt your Plasma but do understand that this is not the correct way of correcting "Color Temperature"/White Balance".

Good luck.

Dave

[Cholerabob]

I had my 7UY (it had blue push) ISF calibrated and it was worth every penny. I now have the best picture that i can . And i can see the difference, colors are amazing. Even the Tech. could not believe the quality he was seeing. It was his first Panasonic, he had done Pioneers and others, and he said that the PQ was comparable to Pios...I really recommend it if you have the $$$.

[biffster]

For what it's worth, I'm coming up on about 100 hours of use on my new TH-42PWD7UY and lemme tell ya, the first night I had it running the colors were certainly, um, interesting. Green haze was all over the dark colors and blacks. Blacks and whites looked crushed under many settings scenarios. Reds looked candy-apple and blues were kind of muted.

But nothing appeared failed or failing, or even out-of-spec, for that matter. I guess I was used to seeing friends' out-of-calibration plasmas, and I guess mine didn't look much worse. And I knew I could get it much, much better.

Who would've known that it would've gotten better on its own?

After about 10 days and maybe 50 hours of runtime, the colors have certainly become more vivid, and some of the white-crush and green haze have subsided. Perhaps I've gotten used to some of this but I do think these panels certainly need some run-in time.

I have set all NR, Auto Color, and AGC to Off. After playing with the Advanced settings, I've reset all of those to defaults. Black Extension was totally crushing blacks. I'm using the "warm" color temp setting, and I've got sharpness down -3, tint and color down -2 and -1 respectively, and am still playing with various low-negative setting levels on brightness and contrast.

After considering buying a cheap used CP288 color analyzer off of eBay to do a calibration myself, I am already biting off more than I can chew -- I have to get all the plasma panel's wires in the wall, pull some power to it via a Panamax setup, and put in in-wall speakers. I don't have time for spending at least 10-12 hours just to begin to understand the linear and nonlinear color functions, and how to tweak settings to line-fit those functions.

BTW, have you seen the C.A.T. menu settings for this sucker? RGB drives and cutoffs? Axis gains? Sub-bright/contrast/phase/chroma? Who's got time to tweak those?

My previous monitor was ISF calibrated by Bob Busch in 1997, and it was an amazing difference. I'm just going to do it again and be done with it -- and happy!

[Eddy13]

ok but I can't hurt my plasma by just tweaking the high blue wb and the high blue wb.. My picture has always had a little bit of a green push not to bad but noticeable and the picture has a slight yellow haze the wb runs towards the greenish yellow side so by adding some blue i feel i will correct wb to a more normal level correct... I use black extension as well to about 1 or +2