[SilverPenguin7]

Ok, could someone give me a clue as to what is happening with this 'problem' I seem to have.

When viewing R1 discs on the HK 2550 on my PW6, I get 'intereference' in the blacks in the form of random dancing green pixels. The player is set to progressive and connected via component so it all seems to be set up correctly. When viewing from a normal distance you can't really see the green pixels but just knowing they are there makes me think I'm not getting optimum results. Also on R1, the picture is much brighter so I have to turn brightness down, but then turn it up again for R2. The only way to remove both of these problems is to set the player to Pal60, which turns the blacks solid again and keeps brightness consistent through R1 and 2.

I would have thought viewing ntsc material in its native colour system would have provided a superior picture to viewing it at pal60?

[LV426]

First up: PAL60 is no worse than NTSC for watching DVDs. In fact the "colour system" isn't recorded on the disc at all; it's added by the player. So it makes no difference whether it is NTSC that is added, or PAL.

Second: The industry standard (Evan knows why) for NTSC is a slightly higher level for absolute black (known as 7.5 IRE) than PAL (which is 0 IRE). From what you describe, it seems that your player is outputting NTSC with the 7.5 IRE level.

The dancing green is symptomatic of a plasma trying to display a very small amount of light. In this case, because youtr black is dark grey. Plasmas actually can't illuminate any colour very dimly; so they achieve this by dithering pixels on and off.

If you can't find any way to tell your DVD player to output NTSC at 0 IRE black level, then you can either:

- stick with PAL60
- set your display up for brightness and contrast that suits NTSC. I'm not familiar with the PW6 but does it have any memories for preference settings? You might be able to save a PAL and an NTSC one separately.

[SilverPenguin7]

Thanks for the reply, I have done some more reading and see that these jumping green pixels are a common thing with plasmas displaying blacks. So I think I'll just stick with Pal60 as the blacks do not have this problem when viewed in this mode

I will have a look to see if I canchange the IRE level for ntsc just to satisfy my curiosity though. many thanks.

[SilverPenguin7]

After a bit more playing about this evening I have found out that in auto mode, when ntsc is selected I can remove the noise from the picture by dropping the brightness right down. So the picture looks great, except I have to turn it back up for R2. Especially as 'V2' mode in the ezmenu only works on R1 discs in ntsc mode. In pal60 mode it has no effect on ntsc material.

So in order to use V2 mode (and thus get the best picture possible) I will have to manually select either pal or ntsc depending on disc to be watched and then adjust the brightness accordingly! And all this because it displays ntsc much brighter than pal. Although I have just had a thought, you can change the brightness/contrast on the dvd player so I'll give that a go and hope it saves different values for both pal and ntsc and that it isn't a generic setting for the overall output of the machine...!?