CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

UncleWill

The Gear:

Electrohome 8500 Ultra
TVone CSC-1600HD (which Athanasios keeps hounding me to get a Lumagen instead Wink

Hello, just bought two calibration DVDs - Avia and Video Essentials - for way more than I should have but learning quite a bit so guess its worth it. Neutral

Anywayze, I am having some problems with the brightness settings. I cannot see the two gray bars needed to properly adjust the brightness on either test disc. No matter how high or low the settings, nothing pops up. Not sure what is going on here. Fiddled around with the brightness settings on both the projector and scaler menus to no avail. I took care of the grayscale adjustment on the projector itself as far as the G2 menu detailed here:
http://etechvideo.com/techtip1.htm

Any ideas on what this could be? A power supply issue? Something that needs adjusting on one of the boards? Faulty capacitors? Is this a contrast interference problem?

UncleWill · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:18 am Post subject:

Oh yeah, and the set was warmed up but it is staying on even longer in the background now just in case I missed something... Smile

CIR Engineering · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 2:39 am Post subject:

What is your video chain?

Is you DVD/BD player set to output RGB at 16-235 or 0-255? If you have it set to 0-255 this isPC luma levels and there will be no blacker than black or black bars because 0 is black.

craigr

UncleWill · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 3:08 am Post subject:

Not sure the DVD player has those specific settings. Is that something standard on most? It is a pretty regular consumer grade player save for the multiregion capability: Philips DVP-3960

Chain is as follows:
Philips DVD Player ---via component-----> TVone Scaler -----via 5BNC RGBHV----> Electrohome

Oh yeah, tried the settings over the composite input just in case but no dice.

UncleWill · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 3:24 am Post subject:

And the DVD player is running raw to scaler at 480i

CIR Engineering · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:34 pm Post subject:

Since you are running all analog, you won't have the settings I noted above.

Instead, you should have settings for "lighter" / "darker" or 0 / 7.5 IRE. You want to set these all to the darker settings. They could also be called video / setup, or other odd denotions.

craigr

UncleWill · Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 1:58 pm Post subject:

Aha! I remember taking care of these adjustments on my older DVD player. Nice to be on familiar territory now. I have already found the original manual for the current player, but there is nothing that indicates a "lighter/darker" setting. The video setup menu allows changing things like brightness, contrast, etc. A full setup list is detailed in the manual on pages 39-41:
http://download.p4c.philips.com/files/d/dvp3960_37/dvp3960_37_dfu_aen.pdf

Thanks for much for everything so far! If it does not work out, I'll probably just switch back to the older player and try it all again.

UncleWill · Posted: Fri May 10, 2013 4:02 am Post subject:

Any thoughts on the Philips manual or what to adjust on the current DVD player?

AVphile · Joined: 02 Dec 2008 Posts: 331 Location: Ottawa, Ontario

The player may not be capable of outputting blacker-than-black. Try a different player or different test pattern that doesn't rely on BTB stripes to set black level.

UncleWill · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:21 am Post subject:

Found the older player and tried to use the test patterns again on both lighter and darker black level settings. Proved to be a no go again. Any other ideas? Where could I find these other test styled patterns by the way? Also, does having a P43 phosphor based Electrohome have any play in the situation here?

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

It is not the player i bet you have the settings in your TV one set wrong.

Which model do you have? I found most TV-ones look best using the RGB 444 color space set to video level( 7.5)

I bet that is it.

Athanasios

UncleWill · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:29 am Post subject:

Nash! Has been a while man! I have it set on darker right now (is that 7.5?) As far as the RGB settings, you need to walk me through here. My expertise in calibration is dainty.

UncleWill · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:33 am Post subject:

Oh yes, as far as the scaler is concerned, settings are fairly plain. Brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. I do not recall an RGB color based setting in the menu. You are right though - at this point the scaler is the likely problem. Urgh, gotta make that upgrade.

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

Just looked at both manuals. The it might be as others suggested your DVD player. or it might be the setting in your tv one.

I assume you have the out from the DVD as YUV( YcbCr) Component and the TV-One converts it to RGBHV out at 1080i?

If so have you tried to use the Tv-Ones brightness control? If that does not alllow BTB then it must be the players.

What is the older player you used?

Athanasios

AVphile · Joined: 02 Dec 2008 Posts: 331 Location: Ottawa, Ontario