LCD/Plasma/CRT/DLP - questions

[sj33]

Also remember that other peoples settings are a guide... if you don't like the look they result in, don't use them! Personal taste etc.

[themanwithapc]

Anyone got any advice for setting up the picture quality for a new LCD tv. My new sharp tv has all the usual options like contrast, brightness, sharpness, backlight and so on but im having a hard time getting a configuration that i like. Bloody nightmare are these new TV's.

You could do a lot worse than have a look at Lyris' Quick & Dirty TV setup guide.

[Ajay1986]

You could do a lot worse than have a look at Lyris' Quick & Dirty TV setup guide.

Wow thanks for pointing me to that, followed some of the stuff in there and after a few minutes adjusting its already made a massive difference to the look of the screen. I had everything far to brightly lit before.

Just looking around the avforums im gonna have to spend abit of time reading up on there, people really know what they are talking about on there it seems.

[Lyris]

Thanks I forgot I wrote that actually!

[booth83]

not really a question specifically about the tv but...

ive just bought a samsung 26" lcd and am thinking about getting it mounted on my wall, just wondering if anyone knows of/ has a decent bracket they could recommend, ideally with swivel and tilt, for a decent price, upto ?50 with a possibility of going over that if theres no other option, it weighs 10.6kg by the way.

thanks in advance

[EvilBoris]

So my replacement WLT68 finally arrived yesterday some 3 weeks after the courier managed to 'lose' the first but I don't really know what to make of it. It's my first HD screen and while the Xbox 360 and Sky HD look beautiful through it, standard definition material looks pretty rough compared to my old CRT and the Wii looks plain ****ing awful. I finally understand why so many folk here have been moaning about the Wii's output - it's because they're playing it on an LCD.

Ok here is a few tricks to getting the Wii to look better on the WLT68, most of these things apply to everything.

Connect with a component cable and make sure to go into the Wii options and choose 480p widescreen.

Turn off picture processing (Black stretch, DNR, MPEG NR)
Turn sharpness all the way down to -50.

If you haven't done all these things already, this will help no end.

[TheBlackLodge]

Sammy 32" LCD, does anyone have any suggestions for optimum settings in HDMI ? Currently I'm going with Contrast @ 90, Brightness @ 45, Sharpness @ 15 and Colour Tone @ Normal with everything like DNR and Dynamic Contrast all switched off. Now I think it looks pretty great but am always willing to try something else if someone with more knowledge on the subject has any suggestions.

Cheers.

Edit -Apologies and Thanks to Spatial

[Charlie]

Ok here is a few tricks to getting the Wii to look better on the WLT68, most of these things apply to everything.

Connect with a component cable and make sure to go into the Wii options and choose 480p widescreen.

Turn off picture processing (Black stretch, DNR, MPEG NR)
Turn sharpness all the way down to -50.

If you haven't done all these things already, this will help no end.

Appreciate the advice, unfortunately that's exactly how I had it setup (apart from the sharpness set to -50, which I dislike) and the Wii still looked woeful. I really can't stress how much worse it is compared to my old Toshiba 32ZP38 Picture Frame CRT.

Seriously considering going back to CRT or switching to plasma.

[bash]

Seriously considering going back to CRT or switching to plasma.

SD is not bad on my plasma compared to my Toshiba 36ZD26B CRT, I think wii 480p would still look better on your tosh, but not by much.

For PS3 and XB360 hi def though, you cannot compare at all in my opinion. Plasma has great colours and loads more detail.

Tomorrow Im getting Virgin+ which is their HD product. True HD only comes in the form of BBCHd and their video on demand stuff but all SD is upscaled via HDMI to 720p or 1080i and is meant to look alot better than Skys SD.

I'll post feedback here when its setup.

[andrewfee]

Out of interest, what is it you were playing on the Wii that looked so bad? My guess is that it's Zelda, which has a ton of effects that were designed in such a way that they only look good on an interlaced CRT. Most of the effects have "scanlines" running through them, which adds a ton of aliasing / flicker to the game. It's horrendous.

I'm not sure why Toshiba went with a -50 to +50 system for sharpness, as -50 is really "zero."

Sharpness at +50, 0 and -50:



Pay particular attention to the "System Setting" text in the top-left. At +50 it's almost black, and completely surrounded with glowing edges.

At zero, things have improved a lot - you can actually see that it's supposed to be red, but there are still glowing edges around everything.

At -50, the text is the proper red it's supposed to be, and there's no glowing edges. (other than what my camera has added/lightroom)

Yes, it looks a little softer, but that's how it's supposed to look. There's only so much you can do with taking something running at 720x576 and blowing it up to 40" or more. PAL/NTSC resolutions were only designed with screens up to 20" in mind!

These glowing edges that you get at higher settings (and the loss of fine detail) makes stuff like the Wii look even worse, as sharpness tends to really exaggerate any aliasing in games.

I would take some photos of the Wii in action, but I'm terrible at finding stuff that's actually interesting to look at.

[Charlie]

Interesting comparisons in the pictures there. I think maybe I need to come to terms with the fact that in order to reduce grain, artifacts and screen noise I need to accept losing a little definition, it's difficult though having been used to brillian SD pictures for so many years.

[andrewfee]

My point is that it isn't increasing "definition" at all though. Look at those photos - the actual text/fonts are just as sharp in all three pics. The only difference is that the higher sharpness settings have glowing and/or black edges around everything and it makes the diagonals visibly more aliased.

What is meant to be a subtle texture in the lower box along the bottom looks a mess with the higher sharpness settings.

[charlesr]

Can there actually be negative sharpness? My panny plasma has -ve and +ve sharpness. Going from +ve down to zero and as soon as you hit zero, the edge enhancement goes away and it looks natural to me. If you go -ve it looks blurry. Should I be using zero or -ve max? zero looks best to me, so doubt I'd change it, but just interested.

[Brats]

I use zero on mine. Basically you just want whatever setting brings in the least possible amount of processing to the image.

[andrewfee]

Panasonics do actually go into negatives, and start blurring below the mid-point. On my Panasonic CRT, Cinema mode and the mid-point means "no sharpness" but on the Plasma I had a while back, even on Cinema mode you had to go to -1 to get rid of it. (and I couldn't decide whether or not I liked it without EE and blurred, or slightly sharpened)