LCD/Plasma/CRT/DLP - questions

[Flompy]

Well I've just spent a long time taking literally hundreds of measurements off my 37WLT68, as I came across some fantastic 3rd-party software for my Spyder 2 sensor that lets me visualise the adjustments I'm making much better than before. (particularly colour settings, which is why they're so drastically different)


As far as I'm concerned, these are the only settings to use on the 37WLT68's, and I don't plan on making any more changes:

Back light: 1
Contrast: 100
Brightness: 58
Colour: 44
Tint: +10
Sharpness: -50
Black stretch: Off
MPEG NR: Off
DNR: Off
Colour Temperature: Normal

Colour Management: On
Red: 0 -4
Green: -6 -9
Blue: 0 -6
Yellow: -5 -5
Magenta: +2 -7
Cyan: -9 -7

Active Backlight Control: Off
Cinema mode: On
Active Vision M100: On


I did a bit of testing, and black stretch seems to dynamically adjust the gamma, making the image a lot darker, but I've yet to see shadow detail totally disappear with it on, so if you prefer a darker look, you might like it.

I prefer to turn Active Vision M100 off for gaming. (and I usually disable cinema mode unless I'm actually watching a film; but if you don't want to mess with it, leave it on)

EDIT: Adjust the backlight as you see fit, of course, but I find 1 to be the best setting for viewing in a dark room. (though the set does seem to take longer to warm up like this)

Ignored this post up until now but WOW! This makes the HD stuff pop from the screen with these settings! Everybody with a WLT68 use these, NOW. Andrew, you're a god. I have backlight at 15 however, 1 is *too* dark for my liking.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Goes without saying the backlight should be higher in a well lit room.

[Lyris]

For anyone out there being driven totally insane by how shoddy most Digital TV broadcasts look - then I've just reviewed this little device that tries to repair the damage:

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=64146

[Baseley09]

Nice review as always, but £835?

£835?

Freeview is lame but not £835 lame.

[EvilBoris]

WHAT!

I thought it was like £60

[Oh_Mutants]

This question probably goes out to Andrewfee and my TV buddy () Boris.
I have a WLT68, and am looking to set up my PS3 to the right settings. I'm aware the WLT68 'does' 1080p, but isn't a native 1080p set? Therefore what is the best resolution to tell my PS3 my TV accepts for best picture quality (720p, 1080i or 1080p)? I'm guessing 1080p wouldn't be best cos some scaling would have to be done? I use my PS3 for both gaming and Blu Ray.
Any advice appreciated

[andrewfee]

Use 1080p, as the PS3 doesn't support downscaling 1080p games to 720p internally. (it drops down to 480p)

The WLT68 does an amazing job of it, so it looks fantastic anyway. (as good if not better than 720p)

[EvilBoris]

Well you might aswell set it to 1080p and squeeze a few extra pixels out of those few 1080p games and Blu Ray discs. The difference is going to be negligable anyway.

[Oh_Mutants]

Thanks guys

Use 1080p, as the PS3 doesn't support downscaling 1080p games to 720p internally. (it drops down to 480p)

The WLT68 does an amazing job of it, so it looks fantastic anyway. (as good if not better than 720p)

Bear with me on this andrew, not sure i follow 100%... If the PS3 downscales games 1080p to 480p then the TV upscales them to 720p, would it not just be better to set the PS3 to 720p to match the res of the set and prevent unneccessary scaling?
Or am i, more than likely, missing the point entirely...

[Flompy]

HD DVD's look slightly better at 1080p then 720p on this set so I'd use that for PS3..

[Benji]

The settings which were posted are pretty cool, turned the backlight back up though.

[andrewfee]

Thanks guys

Bear with me on this andrew, not sure i follow 100%... If the PS3 downscales games 1080p to 480p then the TV upscales them to 720p, would it not just be better to set the PS3 to 720p to match the res of the set and prevent unneccessary scaling?
Or am i, more than likely, missing the point entirely...

Actually, my terrible memory let me down there; the issue was if a game will only run in 720p, but your TV only does 1080i, it drops to 480p instead of upscaling, not the other way around, so it doesn't apply anyway.

Regardless, you're best off just setting the PS3 to 1080p so it's not doing any scaling. (the display should do a much better job of it)

[RLench]

I turned the backlight up as well (since I watch films/play games with some small lights on) but the rest of those settings look good. Colour and skintones look a lot better

Thanks for posting those, Andrew

[Brats]

The only flat panel I could live with for everything is the Panasonic commercial plasmas and the Fujitsu range using the panny glass. They do everything well.

I have yet to see an LCD that I like, I just spent half an hour with a new Bravia W series screen, and with PS3, 360 it looked great, with Sky and Freeview it was shocking!!
Then we put on Gladiator, and the start of that in the Forest was terrible, really washed out, get it looking black and you crush all detail.
Made me think about the games we were playing, Ridge Racer, went back and put Gears on and the same problem, you can't see sod all properly without upping the black level to silly levels. Both decided it was useless and no better than his Panasonic PW6 screen, he is now taking it back and ordreing a 42" Pansonic PHD9 for ?1300.

I'm currently looking around for a new screen after my daughter spilt a drink over my Loewe and knackered it . Because the Loewe was such an amazing CRT, I'm pretty fussy about image quality.

I've quoted Gizze here because every LCD TV I look at has issues with non games stuff. I've looked at two decent plasma panels (the Panny and Fujitsu) and imo they are in another league, especially the Fuji which is out of this world and beats my Loewe for clairity even on 480i stuff.

Am I missing a trick here? Whats the big fascination with LCD displays unless you:

a) are only going to use it for games or PC
b) need a small display

Even the Tosh WLT68 didn't look that great (but then maybe it needs more tweaking). The Fuji on the other hand blew me away just on the standard default settings.

[funkydan]

We've been meaning to get a new TV for sometime as our 7-8 year old Samsung 28" CRT was on it's way out, as I think I may have mentioned previously on this thread.

So, I did a great deal of research over the last 2 months or so (mainly online, but also checking out possible contenders in the shops) before deciding on a Toshiba 32WLT66. It's extremely nice even on standard def. It also allows me to connect my Wii by component now (which I have done and it looks splendid!) and I also FINALLY got myself an RGB SCART cable for the PS2 (Okami looks amazing!)

But the best thing is that I got an Evesham DVD1000 upscaling DVD player as well and oh boy, Kill Bill (House of Blue Leaves scene) never looked so sweet. The TV has 2 HDMI sockets and so when I do eventually get say a PS3 or Sky HD, it'll be handy not to have to swap them around.

And last but not least, the sound is also excellent.

I couldn't be happier with this TV if I tried and can highly recommend both the TV and DVD player