Pio 436XDE Colour Fault?

J

JJJameson

Guest
I'm new to this, please don't shout at me..

I'm noticing what I can best describe as 'flashes' of colour while using my 10-day-old 436. I use cable TV thru a Cambridge Audio RGB SCART and for DVD I use a Pio 575 set to progressive scan thru Ixos component cables, and to be honest it's starting to p*ss me off.

Is this the 'colour banding' issue people are referring to or is that something else? If it is colour banding, is it something I have to just live with, is it a general plasma gremlin? Do I just have a faulty panel?

I took my DVD player into the [hi-fi] store to try before I bought - to be fair I used a 505 instore but didn't notice this problem. Instore the 436 was being fed with HD satellite and that looked great too. I have a Sony HVR-Z1E HDV camera and am generally delighted with the 436's performance with both HD and SD, but even feeding it 1080i from the camera I notice the colour flashes/bleeding/banding/whatever, though admittedly it's to a lesser degree.

I haven't run any kind of optimiser other than the bog standard THX tests, but they gave me generally underwhelming results and didn't fix the problem anyway.

Anyone have any advice/ideas? [btw, having read a few threads on here already, telling me I should have bought a Panny 500 doesn't count as advice!!]

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated..
 
I've got the 435 and I wasn't over impressed until I switched off all the picture enhancement settings and fiddled with the brightness / contrast / colour from there. Give that a try maybe? Also it might be worth posting a picture of the problem.
 
Ibizaonice, The guy has just spent £2500 and would like advice not a unhelpful dig about buying the wrong screen! This seems to be going on a lot lately on here.
 
Have you tried turning the progressive scan off on the pio 575 ? I don't yet own a plasma but do own a pio 575 and from what I have read from other more informed members, the plasma should do the scaling better than the dvd player.
 
Hello JJJameson,


I have a 506 and I think I have the same problem. Sometimes I see slight changes in colour contrast or in certain scenes. When I replay the same scene, the colour-change insn't repeated, so it is not in the source I guess. I tried changing all the different setting but no result. Next week the screen is ISF-calibrated, so I'll just wait to see the problem persists.
 
is the problem exactly the same regardless of input? Try off air, straight through an ariel. If it is the same on all things, it is time to look at the screen itself. Not much help, buts it is the place to start.
 
I'm not sure if this is the same thing. I've had my 436XDE for about 3 weeks and notice flashes of green and yellow around bright objects if I move my eyes away from them quickly. I assumed this was colour banding and have put it down to plasma technology in general. Apart from this the picture is stunning and you don't see this fault whilst looking directly at the bright parts of the image.

Roman
 
Don't think it would be colour banding, which is exactly what it sounds like. In large areas of solid colour with very little difference in hue, it literally appears as several lines of the same colour. It's also known as solarisation. Difficult to describe the appearance, but there is no flashing involved. I've seen other threads where people describe flashing with all plasma screens because their eyes are sensitive to the refresh rate of the screen. Do any other family/friends see the same effect? If so, it is quite likely faulty processing somewhere as I have not experienced flashing on my screen. Different make to yours, but the 436 is a highly rated model and should give you pretty close to a perfect picture.
 
Thanks for all the responses guys. Does the plot thicken though I wonder? [See below!]

FaxFan: I'd post a picture if I could but it's so fast I think it would be impossible to catch. Also, RToonen, I have tried playing 'problem' scenes over to try and repeat the effect as you have and have had mixed results.

Dillz: I have tried switching the DVD player back to composite/interlaced but the general image quality takes a noticeable step down unfortunately. There are tonnes of picture tweaking options in the 575's menu I could look at, but as I say, I've noticed the problem from cable tv too..

I've been fiddling with all kinds of settings to try to improve it and I've been able to make it better but not perfect. The 436 has a number of picure pre-sets, Standard, Movie, Dynamic etc, which all offer fine tuning of basics like colour and brightness, as well as picture enhancements, colour temp, gamma and tint, so there is obviously a lot of lattitude for experimentation. I can't help shaking the feeling that it should be pretty much on the money straight out of the box though, you know?

I've mentioned the problem to a couple of friends/family but they've not watched for any period of time to make a judgement. They didn't seem to see a problem I must say.

In terms of refresh rate, the 436 has a factory setting of 75hz which I assume is standard for plasma [?] but it's switchable to 100hz. I've tried changing it but I've probably been trying to change too many things at once which makes it difficult to see the effect individual things are having. This was my first thought though, as maybe the best way I can describe it is that the screen is having trouble keeping up with the picure, almost like the little colour splotches are being left behind once someone/thing moves quickly across the picture. At the same time though, you can have a CU of two faces and one moves 2 inches and they suddenly have a quick mini-rainbow around their temple. Aargh!

One final spanner for the works - I watched a DVD of Paths of Glory the other night [b/w film] and still noticed the problem, and that really stumped me!
 
I'd say what your experiencing is one of the picture enhancements kicking in. Switch them all off, set you contrast / brightness / colour to a decent level and see what you get.
 
Not so surprising even with black and white as, at the end of the day the whites are still just a combinantion of the red, green and blue pixels. It sounds like you're percieving a similar effect to a single chip DLP screen with the colour flashes. I know some people comment about how bad the effect of the colour wheel is on these when watching high contrast images. Some people see the effect and some either don't or can live with it. I suggest sitting someone in front of the screen and see if they see the same problem. If they do, call out the repair guys. If they can't see it, you may just have to learn to live with it :(
 
JJameson

I know exactly what you mean, i have the same problem. It is not a fault with the screen,
it appears to be one of those things that you either see or don't see. When i first noticed this i spent ages trying to point it out to people who clearly were not seeing the same as me.

The 'advice' you received telling you to buy a PV500 is not going to help. first time i saw this was on a PV500 and was one of the major contributing factors to me returning it and changing it for a 435xde, which i found to be slightly less problematic in this respect. The reason for this being that it appeared you could tweak it out a bit more with the pio. I found turning pure cinema off and dropping the brightness/contrast ( which are usually set too high anyway ) went some way to allaying the problem.

I did find initially that it annoyed me so much i found it difficult to concentrate on what i was watching, i was always looking out for the rainbows and green flashes. However, over time either the screen wears in a bit and it happens less, or, more likely you just don't notice it as much as you start to get used to it, and now it really doesn't bother me much at all.

I have a 436 as well now and it too does the same, as does every plasma that i have spent any time looking at. Unfortunately, i think you will find the same results as well.

Hopefully it should cheer you up a bit to know that its not your screen that is faulty, its your eyes that are. ;)

Cheers
 
I'll be canvassing some opinions in the next couple of days on whether it's my eyes or not [cheers for that thought AB2050A!!] and I'll be trying some systematic tweaking to see what I can come up with too.

I watched a [PAL] DVD of Husbands and Wives yesterday [which has quite a warm red/brown pallette] and started changing the colour temp settings, shifting them towards blue which seemed to have a positive effect but still didn't solve the problem.

NTSC discs show it up the most often [though that's understandable I suppose]. A 'good' test scene for showing it up is the sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy is knocking over the baskets in the marketplace looking for Marian, very bright scene with lots of deep colours - that'll be one of my benchmarks for tweaking as it looked obscene the other day when I tried to watch it with the 436 on factory defaults :-(
 
Sin City is just about the worst example i can think of. won't help much with your colour tweaking though. If you move your eyes quickly from left to right you'll prboably see it with most things to some degree, even when paused.
 
AB2050A said:
Sin City is just about the worst example i can think of. won't help much with your colour tweaking though. If you move your eyes quickly from left to right you'll prboably see it with most things to some degree, even when paused.

This problem is really bad on my 436, and I have had it ISF calibrated. I'm putting it down to Plasma technology in general :rolleyes:
 
OK, so in truth I don't watch much 'live' TV [almost everything I watch is time-shifted via XviD] but after reading replies here today I have been keeping an eye on my cable feed tonight to see how bad the problem is - and it turns out it's MUCH less noticeable from cable. Which reminds me of something I didn't mention earlier but had crossed my mind..

My DVD is hooked up thru Ixos 904 component cables which have some pretty hefty connectors on them, as in, hefty enough for them to be just touching when plugged in. Anyone think that might be a factor? I was thinking of wrapping some electrical tape around the plugs so that there is no metal-to-metal contact and seeing if that makes a difference, but then realised it was easier to try a cheapo set with plastic shields cos that makes it easier to take the Ixos back to the shop if I notice a difference ;-)

I'll experiment some more and report back [if anyone's still out there that is?!]...
 

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