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TH-50PF9UK: Calibration and Bench Testing

by Tom Andry last modified February 07, 2007

CIE_afterEven though this is a 1080p display, I was surprised and the similarities in the calibration to the 720p sets I’ve tested. Once again, blue was way too high and to a lesser degree, red. I’ve often been asked to give my calibration settings but honestly, that would be a bit misleading. I’ve calibrated both the inputs (component and DVI) on multiple sources and for every source it is a bit different. Suffice it to say that you most likely need to knock blue down a significant amount (on some inputs, I bottomed it out) and red about half as much. Even then, I couldn’t get the set dialed in perfectly. I used the Sencore ColorPro 5000 to calibrate the display but used the free program HCFR Colorimeter (which Jeff Lawson recently pointed out to us on our forums) along with the Spyder II meter from the datacolor SpyderTV PRO kit to generate the below graphs. If anything it pointed out that the two colorimeters were still tracking pretty closely together.

temp_b4
As you can clearly see, the display was running fairly hot out of the box (using the Standard setting) between 7500 and 8000k.

temp_after
After calibration we were much closer to the desired 6500k.

RBG_b4
Before calibration, it is obvious that the blue is very high with red a bit over the mark.

RBG_after
Here we see much better alignment between the primary colors.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Panasonic TH-50PH9UK Benchmark Score: 68

Test

Max
Points

Component
480i

Component
Pass/Fail

Color Bar

10

10

Pass

Jaggies #1

5

5

Pass

Jaggies #2

5

3

Pass

Flag

10

5

Pass

Detail

10

5

Pass

Noise

10

0

Fail

Motion Adaptive NR

10

0

Fail

Film Detail

10

10

Pass

Cadence 2:2 Video

5

0

Fail

Cadence 2:2:2:4 DV Cam

5

0

Fail

Cadence 2:3:3:2 DV Cam

5

0

Fail

Cadence 3:2:3:2:2 Vari-speed

5

5

Pass

Cadence 5:5 Animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 6:4 Animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 8:7 animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 3:2 24fps film

5

5

Pass

Scrolling Horizontal

10

10

Pass

Scrolling Rolling

10

10

Pass

Total Points

130

68

 

*Testing using 480i via component video inputs

Comments on HQV Testing

These results of the testing was much better than with the other Panasonic displays I’ve tested. Noise is still a problem but moiré seems to be a thing of the past. These Panasonic plasmas are a “no bones about it” make. They are not meant to do the heavy duty deinterterlacing and scaling you’d expect of a consumer display – and they seem to pass all the important tests. While the included deinterlacers and scalers will do and acceptable job now, the picture will only be helped by a good source. The upside is that you aren’t paying for all those high end features so you can spring for a better upconverting DVD player.

 
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