Hitachi 43UWX10B Calibration... Maybe?

[Ason12]

My neighbor recently got a nice new Panny HDTV, and gave me his old Hitachi 43UWX10B. Now this is by far an upgrade to my SDTV so I gladly accepted. I've turned it on and fooled around with the picture a bit, and have noticed two things. First is that color seems to bleed a bit, red in particular. The second thing is that everything seems rather dull. Are there settings I can change to improve those two things?

Thanks for the help,
Ason12

[JasonR]

How is it connected?

[Ason12]

With a Component Cable

[JasonR]

As long as your player is outputting the correct resolution, I would look into calibrating your TV.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=32738

[kaitoe]

If you aren't afraid of going into the service menu, the tweaks in this site will help a lot -- it did my TV.

http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/.../t-273639.html

[Ason12]

I did a lot of tweaking and things look a lot better, but the picture still looks dull. Lacks sharpness at all. Any Ideas?

Clarification: It is very difficult to read text, etc.

[kaitoe]

What "picture" are you looking at exactly? Is it from your PS3, XB360, cable, etc...

[Ason12]

Picture from my PS3

[Ason12]

To clarify further, when I'm looking at white text, there tends to be a reddish blur coming up from one side and a blueish from the other

[kaitoe]

That would be a convergence issue: what you need to do is press the automatic "Magic Focus" button. If it doesn't improve, look for a manual "Magic Focus" setting which will give you the ability to align the red and blue to the green, getting rid of the reddish and blueish blur beside white objects.

[Ason12]

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes

[Ason12]

Alright, sorry but any idea how to do that manually?

[kaitoe]

If you go into the menu and go "Setup" --> "Magic Focus" and press it, does it just do magic focus automatically? If so, then manual convergence within the user menu is impossible, and the procedure for manual convergence will be a little risky and difficult. The instructions for it are...

Manual Convergence for the Hitachi
1) Receive an NTSC signal.
2) Press Magic Focus to begin magic focus
3) Press magic focus again during the magic focus process to get the ‘stop’ screen
4) While stop screen is up, press STATUS or INFO on the remote control (R/C) to bring you to DCAM mode and the service grid (64 point grid)
5) When you first get in here… I believe red is the selected color by default (it is flashing).
6) To choose other colors to converge, use the following buttons on the R/C:
a) “STATUS” - Green
b) “0” - Red
c) “ANT” – Blue
7) Start from the center of the screen and work your way out on one color at a time. I adjusted red across the whole screen to match green. Then I switched to blue, and adjusted that to green as well. After you adjust blue, you may want to go back and adjust some red again… etc. until the convergence looks good.
(a) Use 4, 6, 2, and 5 on the R/C to move the cursor position(dotted lines).
(b) Use thumb stick to move the convergence point color.
** There have been other posts in here to tape together the color filters found in the Avia DVD to help converge lines more easily. I have used this method, and it works well for adjusting to a greater detail. Basically, you put the red filter next to the green and adjust your red to the green line both horizontally, and then vertically. Then you do the same with the blue next to the green. Some people recommended you should be at normal viewing distance. I did mine from just a few feet back from the set. Maybe my eyes aren’t as good… maybe I just felt like it worked better this way. There are some other posts also recommending using binoculars. I think it’s great that people suggest things to make the process easier… but my girlfriend would think I was insane if she saw me with binoculars on the couch adjusting the convergence. I don’t know… whatever works best I guess.
8) I did not adjust the green at all. I use the green as the guide and did not adjust the location of any green point. This is highly suggested unless you have geometry problems.
9) When going along the lines and adjusting, you may run into the problem of getting an ‘S’ curve on the line. You’ll know if you get there. Basically, no matter what you do to adjust the line to be converged, the middle of the line between the points will not straighten out (it bends between the points). To fix this, the manual recommends going to the (7x5) mode which gives you less points to adjust. I had this problem, and the solution worked. There is also another mode (3x3) which gives you even less points. Basically, if the set looks good, you only fine tune it in (13x9) mode (64 point). If you have serious problems, the grids work as:
3x3 – ‘coarse’
7x5 – ‘medium’
13x9 – ‘fine’
10) To get to each of these patterns use the following on the R/C: (only if you need to)
1. (3x3) Press “STATUS” 5 times (only works when DCU is in uncorrected state)
2. (7x5) Press “0” 5 times
3. (13x9) Press “ANT” 5 times
11) If you adjust the 3x3, then you should go to the 7x5, and then the 13x9. You get the point… depending on where you start, work your way up, and always finish on the 13x9
12) When finishing up the 13x9 mode, to get additional ‘grids’ on the edges of the screen, press the PIP CH button on the remote control while in the digital convergence adjustment mode (DCAM). Fine tune the edge convergence as necessary. To exit, press PIP CH again.
13) When convergence is acceptable, press PIP MODE to write data to ROM memory. ROM WRITE? is displayed to alarm system that ROM will be overwritten with new data. Press the PIP MODE button again to write displayed data to ROM.
14) DATA WRITE TO ROM will take approximately 4 seconds and no picture will be displayed.
15) Green dots will be displayed when operation is completed.
WARNING: YOU MUST DO THE FOLLOWING STEPS TO COMPLETE MAGIC FOCUS INITIALIZATION!!! THERE HAVE BEEN MANY POSTS THAT PEOPLE HAVE HAD PROBLEMS WITHOUT DOING THIS STEP BECAUSE THEY LOOSE MAGIC FOCUS!
16) Press MUTE to return to convergence pattern, then confirm again convergence is acceptable.
17) Press PIP MODE and then PIP CH to initialize Magic Focus. The initialize operation starts and several windows appear during this operation. It takes about 30 seconds or less.
18) When green dots appear, initialize operation is finished.
19) Turn power OFF.
21) Wait a few seconds. Turn the TV on, and you should have your normal signal. Press Magic Focus button just to make sure the magic focus still works (and that you did the last few steps properly)
Note: I wouldn’t recommend doing any of this unless you have the service manual. There are some things in there that I have not included that you might need. (if something goes wrong during convergence you will get error codes to tell you what went wrong, CONVERGENCE ERRORS pg. 56) Don’t get scared… none of this happened to me… but it’s a good idea to have the manual in case!

If the red and blue are your only problems, don't adjust the green; instead, match the red and blue to the green.