My ISF calibrated 506XDE

Piers came yesterday and ISF calibrated my 506XDE.

He was at my house for 5 hours - having travelled for 2.5 hours to get here - and worked non stop the whole time.

During this time he calibrated input one and two, sky looks better but sky is sky. DVD looks outstanding (Denon A1 through component). The screen is getting close to my Panasonic PW4 so thats saying something.

Overall i am very happy with it and would recomend anyone to get it done and those that think it is a waste of money need to see the difference, i was ready for sending mine back before it was done.

The only down side is that my HDMI sockets haven't been calibrated so Piers is coming back as we ran out of time (and i don't have any HDMI stuff yet - waiting for sky and blue ray or HD DVD). As soon as they are out i will definitely have him back to do the sockets.

I would like to say a huge thanks to Piers for an excellent job done, highly recommend your work Piers. I hope you add to this thread to cover the more technical side. Thanks again.

Terry

 

how much did it cost?

 

£300 which included 5 hours travelling (round trip) - worth every penny, nothing more to be said

Terry

 

I'll be considering it when mine is run in.

Cheers.

 

Well worth getting it done, you really can see the difference and its a small price to pay considering the cost of the screen. You definetly can't do it yourself and come any where near the real thing - i tried!!

Terry

 

Please post your settings )

 

I would but i can't because the settings are not shown. I have two new modes on the screen, ISF day and ISF night, thats it. All of the contrast settings etc are greyed out so you can't see what they are set to.

Terry

 

Should you be disclosing Piers charge? and settings? You've paid for a professional service and shouldn't, IMO, be broadcasting it.

 

Piers wont mind, if thats the price wether we find out from Terry or piers whats the difference?

As for the settings, cant see any point in showing them unless you have £5k worth of calibration gear to use them

£300 is not bad considering, travelling, outlay for equipment and the training and skill to do it.

Good for you Terry, enjoy

 

How is it compared to the standard setting?

 

on a scale of one to ten standard setting is one and ISF setting is ten. Thats the difference.

Terry

 

What has he done? Only adjusted the greyscale to 6500K ?

I am getting my screen ISF calibrated on 1 november, can't wait when reading this topic

 

anyone know if the pv500s can be calibrated yet?.....last I heard the the hidden menus could not be accessed.

 

Piers gave me a price a week ago for calibration of my 436XDE and although the price was justifiable the traveling costs, a 3rd of the total price, made me hold back.

Is there anybody in the Devon area that may be interested in an ISF calibration by Piers? If so we may be able to reduce the traveling costs significantly (If that's ok with you Piers?)

Maybe I should open another thread in the main menu.

 

Any contact details for Piers?

My 506XDE will be getting the treatment as soon as it has done a few more hours. I've been fiddling with it and it looks a damn sight better than it did out of the box (I nearly sent it back) but I am keen to get it set up properly.

BTW - are you left with your original tweakings intact so that you can A/B them with the new settings?

 

Terry.

Thanks for the kind words and for being brave enough to be the guinea pig with my new AutoCal Pro software for the Pioneer 436 / 506. The reason that I was with you for 6 hours was that we were jointly finding out what it can do, and what it can't! When it worked it was brilliant (and I too was pleased with the calibrated panel - HUGELY better than pre-calibration). The software crashed a number of times which meant starting the calibration all over again, and after 4 such failures my patience was running a bit thin : ) We also saw at least one successful calibration which then appeared to fail to store to memory in the panel. Sencore (the makers of AutoCal Pro) have received suitable feedback and are on the case.

The ISF day and ISF night picture settings don't appear on the plasma's user menu at all until the AutoCal has done its job. Having set up ISF day and ISF night for the input that the DVD was using I then started work on the input that Sky+ was using. To my horror, after doing the ISF day setting for it, I found an ISF night menu for this input. Seems input 1 and 2 share the same "picture" memory - so, yet again, I had just over-written the previous half hour's work on the DVD input. Bizarrely, when we switched to input 4 and 5 there was no sign of an ISF day or night setting, so it seems input 4 and 5 have separate memories to 1 and 2, but I need to confirm this.

M6 south was a total nightmare yesterday afternoon - result, just over 4 hours drive home.

Blade10,

The ISF day and night settings aren't done via the remote, not even if you can get into the service menu. The software communicates with the media box via the RS232 port and though the changes that are being made do appear as numbers on the screen there is no way of translating them into values that could be used with a remote.

Peterm69,

I don't have any problem with my charge having been made public - I gave a bit of a discount as this was my first 506. As you will see 6.5 hours driving, 6 hours calibrating (which will be very substantially less next time I'm not exactly profiteering!

More than happy if you can get Devon folk together. Rules of the forum prevent me from doing so, as a retailer, but my reading of the rules suggests that there is no problem with you doing it.

Bluecupra,

As Gordon surmised - I did rather more than just set 6500!

Lionheart,

I may have good news about calibrating the PV500 - it can be done at the moment but is hugely time consuming. There may be a way around this but I am waiting for some hardware and until it arrives and I test with it nothing is certain. The bad news is that it still doesn't enable adjustment of overscan (apparently).

Terry,

Finally - this has been one long post - thanks again for the chance to have a go on your 506. May be seeing you shortly to do the HDMI input from what I heard when I got home from Swindon tonight!

 

So does that mean that 1:1 pixel mapping a PV500 & iScan HD+ is still not possible if the H&V adjustment is off? If so is the only answer to switch to a PHD8 plasma or Lumagen scaler?

 

Hi all

Interested about the day / night settings. Are they limited to 436/506 or can they be applied to the 435 as well?

 

Guys,

I live in Croydon, Surrey. Can you please point me the right direction to get my new Pioneer 43" XDE calibrated?

Thanks for your help.

Nick

 

Gordon has just moved to Surrey, so he is your man:

www.convergent-av.co.uk

 

Hats off to Piers - thank for the speedy reply.

I sent an email to Gordon earlier but was unsure of where he was based. The convergent-ac site shows a Scottish address but he signature shows Surrey.

Thanks for clearing that up and hopefully Gordon will be in touch.

P.S. i have been pulling my hair out until i found these forums. Thanks to all.

 

Is there anyone in the Northwest of England I can use.