Question LG EG9100 - Seek help calibrating

[BlackWolf]

Hi everyone,

I recently got my LG EG9109 - first, let me say I love it. Colors seem very good, blacks are great and no clouding issues of course. I do have some trouble calibrating the TV properly, though. I am not an expert in these things and don't have any calibration hardware - I'm just a tech geek looking for the best manually achievable picture.

Maybe you can help me with some of the issues I have or explain them to me. I try to calibrate with the AVCHD 709 Test Patterns via a USB stick.

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1) Using the White Clipping pattern is obviously difficult, as it contains a lot of white, which ends up being gray on an OLED. I actually end up with a contrast value of 100, not sure if this can be right?

2) Brightness Level is not that easy as well - using the Black Clipping pattern I end up at 50, using the Grayscale Colorramp I end up at around 56. Any advice on how to calibrate this properly?

3) The biggest issue seems to be color: When watching content, in my opinion brightly lit faces have a slight(!) greenish tint that I can't seem to get rid of. Looking at the color ramp pattern, I can see that yellow has a noticable green tint. I can't really seem to get rid of this. The green disappears if I change "Color Management → Yellow → Tint" to around -8, but here the brightest yellow block becomes way darker than the block before.

4) Looking at the color ramp, the brightest 3 blocks of green merge together. I haven't found any way of correcting this problem, no matter what settings I can't get these blocks to separate.

5) Looking at the color bar pattern (blue filter), I cannot for the life of me make the flashing rectangles disappear - not even close, neither for tint nor color.

6) Lastly, I also game on the TV using a PS4. Any special care to be taken? Of course I have set up Game Mode. I set Color Temp. to W50, as I've read this is similar to Warm2. Is this an appropriate setting for Gaming? Any other important settings here that are different from normal movie calibration?

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Let me say that I have only used the basic image controls + Colour Management. I don't think changing white balance without calibration hardware makes too much sense, does it? Also, let me say that I'm still quite happy with the TV, but I would really like to get these settings perfect

If it helps anything, here are my complete settings:

OLED Light 55
Contrast 100
Brightness 50
H Sharpness 15
V Sharpness 15
Color 50
Tint 0

Picture Options
Everything set to Off
Black Level set to Low

Expert Options
All Enhancers Off
Color Gamut Standard
Gamma 2.2
White Balance Default
Color Management Default

 

[AndreiNR]

Basic Guide to Color Calibration using a CMS (updated and enhanced) - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

Please read the above as it is very well written.
You should do a basic adjustment if you don't have a meter.

Tonight I'll do a full calibration on this and I'll tell you more about how this behaves.
Meanwhile I suggest starting from gama 2.4 instead of 2.2 and contrast around 74. Then ramp up oled light as you like.
With these setting my brightness is at 55.
Sharpness 17/17 .
Hope that helps

 

[BlackWolf]

Sorry for the late reply.
Thank you for the hints! This was a very interesting read... wish I had a good meter, this would be quite interesting. Did you do your calibration? Can you share any insights?

Starting with a lower contrast was a good advice, it helps to solve some of the color issues, although the picture becomes a little dull and I cannot get white to clip at 235 (I need to go up to 95 for that). I eventually settled with 85 as a compromise.
Interestingly, this DOES work much better on my PS4. Here, I can go up to 95 in contrast without color issues - the color ramp looks much better on the PS4 than on the internal apps. Any idea why that is? I still get the issues with yellow, and unfortunately, there seems to be no CMS in game mode :/

 

[AndreiNR]

The idea is not to clipp under 235 or at that value. It is actually better to have as much as you can WTW space over 235.

For ps4 check black level as it will be o high I guess.

 

[BlackWolf]

The idea is not to clipp under 235 or at that value. It is actually better to have as much as you can WTW space over 235.

For ps4 check black level as it will be o high I guess.

thanks for the reply, really appreciate it!

black level on the PS4 should be ok - I tried Limited+Low and Full+High, which both produces good results. Just for comparison, I attached two images from the color ramp with the same picture settings (556=PS4, 557=SmartShare App). While the images came out really bad (my blacks are not THAT bad ;-)), you can clearly see there is a huge difference, in particular with bright greens and cyans.

As for white level, I still don't seem to fully understand this: Wouldn't a large headroom cause white to become washed out? As I understood it, movies expect white=235, but with headroom, 235 would actually be grayish. So you're saying this is fine, even for movies?

Thank you!

 

[AndreiNR]

As a general rule of thumb you set contrast where you don't clip under 235, you don't see any discoloration in grays and where it is confortable for you eyes. But because we have the oled light setting too I would advise you to set contrast where you don't see clipping in ant rgbcmy channels (that will be at 73 for my set with gamma at 2.4), set brightness with a proper pattern and then adjust luminosity as it is comfortable for you eyes is your viewing conditions. And that's all.

Unless you have a meter to see what contrast is doing to gamma you can't do more.
There are no gray whites only too much or too less luminance.

About your two pictures I guess in the second there aren't the same contrast settings or it is doing something strange in that mode.
What you see with ps4 is as it should look like.

 

[BlackWolf]

As a general rule of thumb you set contrast where you don't clip under 235, you don't see any discoloration in grays and where it is confortable for you eyes. But because we have the oled light setting too I would advise you to set contrast where you don't see clipping in ant rgbcmy channels (that will be at 73 for my set with gamma at 2.4), set brightness with a proper pattern and then adjust luminosity as it is comfortable for you eyes is your viewing conditions. And that's all.

Unless you have a meter to see what contrast is doing to gamma you can't do more.
There are no gray whites only too much or too less luminance.

About your two pictures I guess in the second there aren't the same contrast settings or it is doing something strange in that mode.
What you see with ps4 is as it should look like.

Thank you, that does make sense to me. Using this, contrast 76 seems to be the sweet spot for me.

As for the PS4 thing - contrast settings are actual the same in all regards as far as I can tell, but I will re-check. This is annoying, since I watch a lot from the internal apps (netflix, youtube) :/ PS4 looks pretty perfect. If anybody has an idea about this or can share if this happens on their TV as well I would appreciate it. Otherwise I might try a system restore... don't think it'll help but it's worth a try.

 

[AndreiNR]

Lower it to 72 and tell me if it's the same ..

 

[BlackWolf]

Lower it to 72 and tell me if it's the same ..

Contrast at 72 "fixes" the color ramp in the internal apps. Still, I find it pretty strange that I can easily achieve a much higher contrast on the PS4 without any color clipping occuring... . Didn't notice any white discoloration there as well, picture seems to be pretty perfect from what I can tell. Would of course be nice to achieve that internally as well.

 

[AndreiNR]

Leave it there and rise oled light. It will be better that way.
It has something to do with full range capability of ps4 and black level set to high and I think it is normal to behave like that.
What isn't quite normal is to clipp green with higher than 72 contrast value. But even at that point is ok as long as you may have desired max luminance after rising oled light.

 

[Leonheart]

Contrast at 72 "fixes" the color ramp in the internal apps. Still, I find it pretty strange that I can easily achieve a much higher contrast on the PS4 without any color clipping occuring... . Didn't notice any white discoloration there as well, picture seems to be pretty perfect from what I can tell. Would of course be nice to achieve that internally as well.

Hi what are your settings for ps4?

 

[Leonheart]

Basic Guide to Color Calibration using a CMS (updated and enhanced) - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

Please read the above as it is very well written.
You should do a basic adjustment if you don't have a meter.

Tonight I'll do a full calibration on this and I'll tell you more about how this behaves.
Meanwhile I suggest starting from gama 2.4 instead of 2.2 and contrast around 74. Then ramp up oled light as you like.
With these setting my brightness is at 55.
Sharpness 17/17 .
Hope that helps

Those settings look good, BTW did you do a full calibration?

 

[AndreiNR]

I did and then I've sold it. It was the worst TV I've ever had IMHO.
If I'll find them I'll post here even though it is useless as calibration is individual to a set.

 

[Leonheart]

I did and then I've sold it. It was the worst TV I've ever had IMHO.
If I'll find them I'll post here even though it is useless as calibration is individual to a set.

Ok ty. what TV did you get instead? I like the picture and I think its the most affordable, in my country

 

[Leonheart]

Basic Guide to Color Calibration using a CMS (updated and enhanced) - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

Please read the above as it is very well written.
You should do a basic adjustment if you don't have a meter.

Tonight I'll do a full calibration on this and I'll tell you more about how this behaves.
Meanwhile I suggest starting from gama 2.4 instead of 2.2 and contrast around 74. Then ramp up oled light as you like.
With these setting my brightness is at 55.
Sharpness 17/17 .
Hope that helps

Thanks for these. I will do basic adjustment