PT-AE900U Setup Menu and Calibration

The PICTURE Menu is where I spent most of my time - and for good reason. It allows access to contrast, brightness, color, tint, sharpness, color temperature and iris settings as well as access to an ADVANCED Menu and memory load/save options. Engaging the MENU button on the remote or projector brings up the rather large menu, but it can be moved to one of seven quadrants of the screen (including the center). Engaging any of the picture controls hides the menu and allows you to view the screen with only a smaller bar graph representation of the control at the bottom of the screen. This makes using calibration discs such as AVIA Guide to Home Theater or Digital Video Essentials possible. Put your running shoes on, though, as the mini menu only stays up for about 3.5 seconds unless you make an adjustment (then you get a 3.5 second extension). This applies to when you directly access a menu function from the remote control as well. I found this only mildly annoying as simply hitting ENTER or moving the directional pad brought the mini control back to the front, hiding the larger menu (not so with the direct access control, obviously).

At the bottom of the PICTURE Menu is an option to engage the ADVANCED Menu which provides controls for Gamma, Black and White Levels for the red/green/blue colors. This is also where you can gain access to the Cinema Color Management function (C.C.M.) - a system whereby users can select which colors they want to blow out of whack by specifically tweaking their Color, Tint, and Brightness settings. If the Panasonic hadn't already provided access to red green and blue Gamma, Black, and White levels I suppose the C.C.M. system could potentially be utilized to compensate for color decoder issues. I found it to be a fun tool that could be used to give Monday Night Football and televised golf games exceptional greens. Take a look at an over-exaggerated use of this function:

You engage C.C. M . which freezes the screen and allows you to move a cursor around to grab the color to which you want to apply correction.

Once selected the color controls for Color, Tint, and Bright[ness] appear, allowing you to modify the color and see the update after pressing the ENTER key.

Calibration - Get Those Black Levels Right!

We wanted to ensure that the Panasonic PT-AE900U was fully capable of reproducing a decent range of luminance information from deep blacks to bright whites. The goal, of course, is to maximize the contrast ratio while not crushing blacks or whites and losing resolution. Speaking of contrast, I was able to get 670:1 ANSI rating using my standard configuration for front projection systems. This is extremely good for a front projection system and shows how far Panasonic has come with this latest LCD panel.

The Datacolor ColorFacts software provides a CIE Chart which shows the colors for the PT-AE900U's HDTV color reference, as well as the gamut of colors that it is capable of creating. I was able to get better color reproduction, but only at the expense of black levels and sacrificing overall accuracy. The real ticket was attaining compromise of best color, along with a solid grayscale uniformity and deep black and white levels.

Here are some of the before and after measurements as shown by the Datacolor ColorFacts Professional 5.5 software:

I was pleasantly surprised by the Panasonic and found it to be very easy to calibrate using the user controls. The only negative we found was a tendency for red to creep into the higher luminance windows. As the gain increases, the amount of visible red grows disproportionately. The provided gamma controls are where you may spend some time in dialing that in a little bit to attain an even more tweaked performance.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Panasonic PT-AE900U Benchmark Score: 71 (room for improvement, but darn good from what we've tested to date)

Comments on HQV Testing

I'd have to say I was impressed with the Panasonic's overall video processing performance for a front projection system. In fact, it outclassed the progressive scan output from a Sony ES DVP-CX777ES in our first round of testing; leading us to select feeding it interlaced 480i output from the Sony rather than allowing the 400-disc changer to handle the task of deinterlacing (the back end of the review was done using a Denon DVD-3910). The noise reduction feature of the Panasonic, in real world use, seemed to do very little. I could see some noise reduction, mostly around the very edges of objects, but never enough to qualify as passing the HQV noise tests. Jaggie reduction was acceptable, but not quite as smooth as Faroudja or HQV chipsets. There was a bit of wobbling around the center and at extreme angles. This also translated to the more real-world flag test. Detail was excellent and the Panasonic handled more cadences than the FLI 2310. 2:3 pull-down, needless to say, was perfect, with a faster lock-on time in the Film Detail test than most DVD players I have tested to date (the DVD-5910 excepted.)