People who has Sony KDS-55A2000

[noneatall]

I use the VIVID picture mode to watch Blu-ray movies and the picture looks awesome. Has anyone got theirs professionally calibrated and can you let me know if the picture quality is actually better than the VIVID mode. I appreciate for any input.

[Tyler2106]

When your tv gets calibrated it looks tons better then VIVID!!! VIVID is like torch mode...I mean the contrast is really high and so is the brightness...something that when you get it calibrated those go down and are not as high...Some people don't like it when they get their tv calibrated because it makes it "seem" to dark because everyone is used to that really bright picture that you get when you turn it on for the first time...

[krazeyeyez]

Originally Posted by Tyler2106

When your tv gets calibrated it looks tons better then VIVID!!! VIVID is like torch mode...I mean the contrast is really high and so is the brightness...something that when you get it calibrated those go down and are not as high...Some people don't like it when they get their tv calibrated because it makes it "seem" to dark because everyone is used to that really bright picture that you get when you turn it on for the first time...

once you adjust to the new picture, i say give it a couple days, when you see vivid mode again you will wonder how you ever watched that mode at all. vivid is what i used to watch, now i only use my calibrated custom mode, going back to vivid i realize how messed up all the colors are and just how much vivid ruins a picture and highlights all its flaws.

you can look up people's calibration settings here on this site to get an idea of calibration settings if you are interested.

[cartman781]

Vivid is way too brite. I watch mine in standard

[Sylin]

I followed David Katzmeier's calibration recommendations on my SXRD and I realized it looked VERY washed out and gray. I keep mine at Standard now, but I've ordered that Blu-ray calibration disc so we'll see how it works out.

[Blu_Ray_Fan]

I have my A3000 calibrated and it looks amazing! I use to watch in "vivid" untill it was calibrated, now I can't go back. It hurts my eyes.

[Hillside Trece]

Originally Posted by cartman781

Vivid is way too brite. I watch mine in standard

Hey Cartman,

You still on this site? I'd like to get your opinion of your A2020's Standard mode -- my exact TV with the exact same picture mode...

[Steelmaker]

Originally Posted by Sylin

I followed David Katzmeier's calibration recommendations on my SXRD and I realized it looked VERY washed out and gray. I keep mine at Standard now, but I've ordered that Blu-ray calibration disc so we'll see how it works out.

Yeah I had wondered if David Katzmeier hired Ray Charles to calibrate his set. I have a 60A2000 and followed his recommended calibration and thought it looked terrible. The best one I've found so far is the one from tweaktv.com. I used that as base and then did a few minor tweaks here and there. Unfortunately where I live, I cannot find a local certified person to calibrate my set professionally so this was the next best option IMO. As it is I'm pretty happy with my picture though I'm sure a real calibration would improve it even more.

[Hillside Trece]

Originally Posted by Steelmaker

Yeah I had wondered if David Katzmeier hired Ray Charles to calibrate his set. I have a 60A2000 and followed his recommended calibration and thought it looked terrible. The best one I've found so far is the one from tweaktv.com. I used that as base and then did a few minor tweaks here and there. Unfortunately where I live, I cannot find a local certified person to calibrate my set professionally so this was the next best option IMO. As it is I'm pretty happy with my picture though I'm sure a real calibration would improve it even more.

Hey Steel,

The worst thing to do is take someone else's settings and apply them to your set -- I understand if you were looking for "baseline" settings to go off of, but even still, you should start with a fresh slate, with factory defaults and use a setup disc (or three, like I did!) to adjust for your room and lighting conditions. That's why I never understood people taking readings from online reviewers and plugging them in exactly as the reviews read -- each set comes off the factory line a bit different, and although these new digital HDTVs, it can be argued, are very similar to each other in many ways (companies getting the factory grayscale and presets closer to "more ideal," etc.) you should still use your own setup disc and go from there, from scratch.

That said -- do you keep your SXRD in Standard or Custom picture mode?

[Steelmaker]

Originally Posted by Hillside Trece

Hey Steel,

The worst thing to do is take someone else's settings and apply them to your set -- I understand if you were looking for "baseline" settings to go off of, but even still, you should start with a fresh slate, with factory defaults and use a setup disc (or three, like I did!) to adjust for your room and lighting conditions. That's why I never understood people taking readings from online reviewers and plugging them in exactly as the reviews read -- each set comes off the factory line a bit different, and although these new digital HDTVs, it can be argued, are very similar to each other in many ways (companies getting the factory grayscale and presets closer to "more ideal," etc.) you should still use your own setup disc and go from there, from scratch.

That said -- do you keep your SXRD in Standard or Custom picture mode?

I use Custom. Using Standard blocks your access to customize certain settings (why I dont' know). I haven't dared to try and change anything in the service menu. I have only adjusted the standard settings in the menu screen. I am about 10' away from my TV and my room is fairly dark. Like I said, I only used tweaktv.com's suggested settings as a starting point. I thought the picture looked pretty good under their recommended settings but I did tweak it a little. I'm sure it's not technically "right" but it looks pretty good to my eyes. What calibrations disks would you recommend Hillside? I might consider using one if you think it makes that big of a difference.

I will say this, I bought my TV in February of 2007 and still to this day I think it has a gorgeous picture! It's a shame Sony abandoned the SXRD technology because I still think it provides THE best balance of sharpness, clarity, and yet still preserves that nice "film" look that I think has been somewhat lost with all the newer plasma and led/lcd flat screens.

[Hillside Trece]

Originally Posted by Steelmaker

I use Custom. Using Standard blocks your access to customize certain settings (why I dont' know).

99.9 percent of SXRD users calibrated and run in Custom. I don't. I just "like" Standard better -- less settings to "fool" with, which brings me to the second part of your statement.

Indeed, on early-ish SXRD models (apparently the one I have too from the A2020 series), the "Advanced Settings" menu is locked out, and the only color temperature selections available are COOL and NEUTRAL. Now, I realize most enthusiasts say to use the WARM temp selections, specifically the extreme WARM 2, but being that they're not available to me in Standard mode is okay -- I just keep the set on NEUTRAL, which seems to be a lot less blue in hue push than COOL.

For whatever reason, Sony, on these models, would not allow user access to the Advanced Settings menu via Standard (or Vivid) mode -- the logic must have been that Standard was to be chosen as a kind of "halfway adjusted" kind of picture that just needed additional user tweaking, if desired, through setup discs or calibrators...and that most casual users (i.e. not your hardcore videophile tweakers) wouldn't want to mess with any of the "Advanced Settings" anyway, so that was bundled in the Custom mode. Now, in most TV setup menus, Standard DOES unlock the access to the white balance, etc. so I don't know why that train of thought was abandoned.

Further, in my case, I happened to be one of these people who wanted a good image with lots of detail, good blacks and shadow depth and eye popping color, but I didn't want to play Russian Roulette with sixty million settings in Custom's Advanced menu (especially white balance, which you can tweak color by color to get rid of certain hue pushes and such, but it's daunting) and I wasn't hiring an ISF tech. So, I picked Standard mode for my cable and Blu-ray inputs, and adjusted the Blu-ray input with setup discs. My thinking was, Standard must turn on some of the Advanced menu tweaks like "Live Color" or perhaps "Detail Enhancer," but they must be turned on in a MUCH less aggressive manner as compared to Vivid; in my way of thinking, I figured Standard just adds little bits of whatever is supposed to make the picture "pop" a bit more without me being able to control it, and that's okay, as I would just adjust from there for standard brightness, color, contrast, etc...

Make sense?

I haven't dared to try and change anything in the service menu. I have only adjusted the standard settings in the menu screen. I am about 10' away from my TV and my room is fairly dark.

Okay -- you're TV is 10 feet away from your primary position and the SXRD is how big?

When we watch films on our 50", I always subdue the lighting in the room, so that there's a dim "night light" on only as part of a fancy torch lamp in the corner of the room, towards the subwoofer and left front tower speaker...this gives the screen a tad bit more of a "theatrical presentation."

Like I said, I only used tweaktv.com's suggested settings as a starting point. I thought the picture looked pretty good under their recommended settings but I did tweak it a little. I'm sure it's not technically "right" but it looks pretty good to my eyes. What calibrations disks would you recommend Hillside? I might consider using one if you think it makes that big of a difference.

Do I think the setup discs make that big of a difference versus setting things with your eye and after baseline cNet settings? Absolutely. The discs have test patterns to properly set black levels (brightness), contrast and other parameters...things that are difficult to do with program material by eye that constantly moves. Even if you're on a static, paused image and you attempt to adjust by eye, the patterns just seem more "correct."

Here's what I would do. Get a DVD calibration disc like "DVE Essentials" or the Monster Setup Wizard, or any of the standard definition calibrators (I use one from a company called "DiscWasher" and it contains verbal instructions on what to look for during each test, which made it REAL easy...for example, during the contrast pattern, the disc put up a white square in the middle of the screen and the voice prompt said to look for distortions in the box's edges as you raise and lower contrast...but if nothing was changing, as it was on my set, then it said to bring contrast to "80 percent of maximum" and move on to the next test...thus, I left my contrast setting at "80" on my SXRD) PLUS you should look into a Blu-ray version of a calibration disc, one of the best being Joe Kane's HD Essentials in HD/Blu-ray (this disc came with the Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player in the box).

Use the standard definition setup discs to get your basic adjustments dialed in, and then use the Blu-ray disc to confirm these settings or make final touches -- in my stuation, I used the DiscWasher DVD calibration disc to dial in brightness, contrast and some color, but found that the tests on that disc were NOT effective for setting my overall color or sharpness. For that, I needed to turn to two other discs -- one was a THX Optimizer that is found on THX certified DVD's (in my case, I used STAR WARS EPISODE III) and the other was the Digital Video Essentials Blu-ray I mentioned above. The THX Optimizer has a color pattern test that was the best way for me to set the color of my SXRD -- there are color bars on the screen, and you need to look at the red and magenta boxes in a darkened room. Move your color control up until you see the red box start to "bleed" or flash, which indicates too much color. Back it down so that the red box is just RED, and not blooming or bleeding. It's not easy, and you have to do it many times to get it near spot on. I ended up with a setting of "45" for color using the THX pattern. It seems that's about right, and the contrast setting of "80," for many Sony rear projection displays based on reviews I found online. You can double check brightness on the THX test too, by looking at the screen that has the ramped up black boxes above and below the THX logo -- follow the directions and make sure the seventh blackest box (or something like that) is just barely noticeable from the others; just check the directions.

SHARPNESS is where I found the THX Optimizer and the standard definition DVD calibrator to be useless; I couldn't get a reading no matter what I tried on these discs -- probably due to the high def nature of the SXRD screen, I could NOT tell if the sharpness patterns were moving or not when I used the DVD discs. When I used the Sharpness patterns on the Blu-ray calibrator, I could easily tell that the "ringing" around the edges of the patterns was changing as I moved the control up and down. You need to bring the sharpness of your SXRD down to where you JUST notice the outlining of white, hazy lines around the patterns, and make sure the setting is just before those halos begin. On my set, sharpness seemed right at "25;" from what I understand, Sonys and SXRDs are about correct here, as anything higher than 25 or even 30 the image becomes too riddled with grain on Blu-rays and riddled with too much "compression noise" on bad DVD transfers. The 50% default setting Sony puts this control at out of the box seemed excessive according to the sharpness tests I did.

I keep NOISE REDUCTION at LOW. I have no access to Advanced Settings, as we discussed.

I will say this, I bought my TV in February of 2007 and still to this day I think it has a gorgeous picture! It's a shame Sony abandoned the SXRD technology because I still think it provides THE best balance of sharpness, clarity, and yet still preserves that nice "film" look that I think has been somewhat lost with all the newer plasma and led/lcd flat screens.

Seems like that's the concensus of SXRD owners. I personally like that "floaty, surreal, cartoon-ey" look of the LCD's running at high refresh rates better than the very film-like, kind of "flat" look of the SXRD, but that's just me and I know I'm in the minority.

[Steelmaker]

Originally Posted by Hillside Trece

99.9 percent of SXRD users calibrated and run in Custom. I don't. I just "like" Standard better -- less settings to "fool" with, which brings me to the second part of your statement.

Indeed, on early-ish SXRD models (apparently the one I have too from the A2020 series), the "Advanced Settings" menu is locked out, and the only color temperature selections available are COOL and NEUTRAL. Now, I realize most enthusiasts say to use the WARM temp selections, specifically the extreme WARM 2, but being that they're not available to me in Standard mode is okay -- I just keep the set on NEUTRAL, which seems to be a lot less blue in hue push than COOL.

For whatever reason, Sony, on these models, would not allow user access to the Advanced Settings menu via Standard (or Vivid) mode -- the logic must have been that Standard was to be chosen as a kind of "halfway adjusted" kind of picture that just needed additional user tweaking, if desired, through setup discs or calibrators...and that most casual users (i.e. not your hardcore videophile tweakers) wouldn't want to mess with any of the "Advanced Settings" anyway, so that was bundled in the Custom mode. Now, in most TV setup menus, Standard DOES unlock the access to the white balance, etc. so I don't know why that train of thought was abandoned.

Further, in my case, I happened to be one of these people who wanted a good image with lots of detail, good blacks and shadow depth and eye popping color, but I didn't want to play Russian Roulette with sixty million settings in Custom's Advanced menu (especially white balance, which you can tweak color by color to get rid of certain hue pushes and such, but it's daunting) and I wasn't hiring an ISF tech. So, I picked Standard mode for my cable and Blu-ray inputs, and adjusted the Blu-ray input with setup discs. My thinking was, Standard must turn on some of the Advanced menu tweaks like "Live Color" or perhaps "Detail Enhancer," but they must be turned on in a MUCH less aggressive manner as compared to Vivid; in my way of thinking, I figured Standard just adds little bits of whatever is supposed to make the picture "pop" a bit more without me being able to control it, and that's okay, as I would just adjust from there for standard brightness, color, contrast, etc...

Make sense?



Okay -- you're TV is 10 feet away from your primary position and the SXRD is how big?

When we watch films on our 50", I always subdue the lighting in the room, so that there's a dim "night light" on only as part of a fancy torch lamp in the corner of the room, towards the subwoofer and left front tower speaker...this gives the screen a tad bit more of a "theatrical presentation."



Do I think the setup discs make that big of a difference versus setting things with your eye and after baseline cNet settings? Absolutely. The discs have test patterns to properly set black levels (brightness), contrast and other parameters...things that are difficult to do with program material by eye that constantly moves. Even if you're on a static, paused image and you attempt to adjust by eye, the patterns just seem more "correct."

Here's what I would do. Get a DVD calibration disc like "DVE Essentials" or the Monster Setup Wizard, or any of the standard definition calibrators (I use one from a company called "DiscWasher" and it contains verbal instructions on what to look for during each test, which made it REAL easy...for example, during the contrast pattern, the disc put up a white square in the middle of the screen and the voice prompt said to look for distortions in the box's edges as you raise and lower contrast...but if nothing was changing, as it was on my set, then it said to bring contrast to "80 percent of maximum" and move on to the next test...thus, I left my contrast setting at "80" on my SXRD) PLUS you should look into a Blu-ray version of a calibration disc, one of the best being Joe Kane's HD Essentials in HD/Blu-ray (this disc came with the Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player in the box).

Use the standard definition setup discs to get your basic adjustments dialed in, and then use the Blu-ray disc to confirm these settings or make final touches -- in my stuation, I used the DiscWasher DVD calibration disc to dial in brightness, contrast and some color, but found that the tests on that disc were NOT effective for setting my overall color or sharpness. For that, I needed to turn to two other discs -- one was a THX Optimizer that is found on THX certified DVD's (in my case, I used STAR WARS EPISODE III) and the other was the Digital Video Essentials Blu-ray I mentioned above. The THX Optimizer has a color pattern test that was the best way for me to set the color of my SXRD -- there are color bars on the screen, and you need to look at the red and magenta boxes in a darkened room. Move your color control up until you see the red box start to "bleed" or flash, which indicates too much color. Back it down so that the red box is just RED, and not blooming or bleeding. It's not easy, and you have to do it many times to get it near spot on. I ended up with a setting of "45" for color using the THX pattern. It seems that's about right, and the contrast setting of "80," for many Sony rear projection displays based on reviews I found online. You can double check brightness on the THX test too, by looking at the screen that has the ramped up black boxes above and below the THX logo -- follow the directions and make sure the seventh blackest box (or something like that) is just barely noticeable from the others; just check the directions.

SHARPNESS is where I found the THX Optimizer and the standard definition DVD calibrator to be useless; I couldn't get a reading no matter what I tried on these discs -- probably due to the high def nature of the SXRD screen, I could NOT tell if the sharpness patterns were moving or not when I used the DVD discs. When I used the Sharpness patterns on the Blu-ray calibrator, I could easily tell that the "ringing" around the edges of the patterns was changing as I moved the control up and down. You need to bring the sharpness of your SXRD down to where you JUST notice the outlining of white, hazy lines around the patterns, and make sure the setting is just before those halos begin. On my set, sharpness seemed right at "25;" from what I understand, Sonys and SXRDs are about correct here, as anything higher than 25 or even 30 the image becomes too riddled with grain on Blu-rays and riddled with too much "compression noise" on bad DVD transfers. The 50% default setting Sony puts this control at out of the box seemed excessive according to the sharpness tests I did.

I keep NOISE REDUCTION at LOW. I have no access to Advanced Settings, as we discussed.



Seems like that's the concensus of SXRD owners. I personally like that "floaty, surreal, cartoon-ey" look of the LCD's running at high refresh rates better than the very film-like, kind of "flat" look of the SXRD, but that's just me and I know I'm in the minority.

What do you have your brightness and iris set t

[Hillside Trece]

Originally Posted by Steelmaker

What do you have your brightness and iris set t

I wrote all that to you and all you ask is "what do you have your brightness and iris set at?"

According to the "pluge pattern" tests for brightness on the discs (the black bar tests that makes you look for "above" and "below" black levels to correctly set this) my correct setting, confirmed on different setup discs, was "53." This seemed to bring out some shadow detail on films, without making it look too washed out or too dark.

The Advanced Iris has been the topic of debate amongst owners since the SXRD's were launched (look at the countless pages on AVS about this) -- I have found that "Auto 1" looks best on our set, but you may find "AUTO 2" to give better blacks. I just went with one of the two auto iris settings, and how we came up with Auto 1 was that on one of our calibration discs, there is an image of flowers to which the voice prompt says "if your color and tint are set correctly, this image should be vivid and lifelike" and on Auto 2 iris, the image was noticeably dimmer. When we switched to Auto 1, the image became punchy and more colorful, so we went with that.

Many say Auto 1 is best for brightly lit rooms, but I run it in the darkened environment when we watch films and it doesn't bother me.