PDP-5070HD Menu

Since I have a cable box and not a CableCARD I went and installed a splitter between the wall and the cable box and connected one output to the cable box and the other into the Ant A input on the back of the PDP-5070HD. Note that with a splitter you'll experience a reduction in signal strength which could affect reception of some channels. For me, G4 pretty much went out and was a pixilated mess. Once you run the cable to the TV, it’s a simple matter of navigating to the tuner section of the menu and starting the automatic channel setup. I connected my cable box through the Denon AVR-2307CI (which is hanging around in my setup until Denon sends me a shipping label to send it back) along with the OPPO OPDV971HD upconverting universal DVD player via a DVI-to-HDMI cable supplied by Impact Acoustics or Blue Jeans Cables. The Xbox 360 and Escient DVDM-300 were routed through the receiver via component. The SMS-1 was sent via composite video. Overall, I pretty much had everything but the PC input and the CableCARD in use.

The only real stumbling block I ran across was the Xbox 360. Apparently, the PDP-5070HD doesn’t like 1080i over component (it’ll accept 1080p over HDMI but downconverts it to its native resolution of 720p). It took me a while to figure that out and for once I was thankful for the HD switch on the Xbox 360’s component cable. I switched it to standard definition, changed the resolution to 720p, and flipped the switch back to HD. Problem solved.

The menu system is as intuitive as it is pretty. It has all of the standard controls but lacks some of the fine tuning that you’ll need to really dial in the picture. For that, you’ll have to either hire a professional or risk accessing the system menu yourself (Inexperienced users shouldn't. If you do, write down EVERYTHING before you make any changes, but seriously, don’t try this if you aren't sure of what you are doing.) Let’s run through everything one at a time:

• Picture

•  AV Selection (each of these is a general setting for all inputs except for User which is specific to each input)

• Standard – for a highly defined image in a normally bright room

• Dynamic – for a very sharp image with maximum contrast (torch mode)

• Movie – for movies (is a little softer than standard – only good in a dark room)

• Game – Lowers image brightness for easier viewing (seemed to be a little too sharp for me, lots of ghosting on hard lines)

• User – user defined setting

• Contrast

• Brightness

• Color

• Tint

• Sharpness

• Pro Adjust

• PureCinema – Off, Standard, Advanced – this is the PDP-5070HD’s deinterlacing program. The ADV setting works on all settings except 1080p and coverts the signal to 72Hz while the standard only works on interlaced signals

• Color Detail

• Color Temp – High, Mid, Low – High will accentuate the blues while Low will accentuate the reds. If you are having a problem with one or the other, you can adjust it here otherwise, leave it on Mid

• CTI – Off, On – Stands for Color Transient Improvement – try it out and see if it does anything for you, it didn’t for me

• NR (Noise Reduction)

• DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction) – My testing revealed differences between On and Off but no real substantive differences between High, Mid, and Low. These differences were only really noticeable on extremely noisy standard definition signals

• MPEG NR – the same as above but for DVDs.

• Reset – resets to factory settings

• Sound

• Treble

• Bass

• Balance

• Reset

• Focus (Off, On) – According to the manual this “shifts the sound-source direction (sound image) upward and produces clear sound contours” whatever that means.

• Front Surround

• Off

• SRS – A sort of virtual surround

• TruBass – Increases bass output

• TruBass+SRS - Both

• Power Control

•  Energy Save

• Standard – does not decreases picture brightness

• Save1 – slightly lowers power consumption while slightly suppressing the brightness drop level

• Save 2 – decreases the picture brightness and lowers power consumption

• Picture Off – turns the picture off (I suppose you’d do this if you were listening to music?)

• No Signal Off (Enable, Disable) – can set the display to turn off when a signal is not present for 15 minutes

• No Operation Off (Enable, Disable) – can set the display to go into standby mode if no operation is performed for three hours (probably want to disable this if you are a Lord of the Rings fan).

• Sleep Timer (Off, 30 min, 60 min, 90 min, 120 min)

• Option

• Position (reposition of the picture in the screen up, down, or side to side)

• Side mask (fixed (grey) or Auto (duplicates the side of the screen in black and white – kinda annoying)

• Monitor Out (can enable or disable the output of any/all inputs individually)

• Digital Audio Out (Dolby Digital or PCM)

• Language (English, Spanish, or French)

• Tuner Setup

• Parental Control – This is sort of neat because you can chose, within every rating scale which things to block. So within the MPAA ratings you can block R and NC-17 (for instance), while under the TV Ratings you can block TV-MA. Perhaps you’re ok with some violence but not nudity? Under the TV Parental Guidelines you can block violence (but not Fantasy Violence, Sexual Situations, Adult Language, and Sexual Dialog. They’ve got all the Canadian English ratings, the Canadian French ratings, and a setting for unavailable ratings (just in case). The manual conveniently has detailed listings of each of the ratings in case you don’t know them off the top of your head. This is by far the most comprehensive and intuitive parental system I’ve ever seen much less used. Parents can for once feel like it might be effective.

• Favorites – Assign channels for the four different favorites buttons

• Channel setup – Have the display detect channels or you can modify (add, subtract) if you want. There is also an option to check signal strength which is useless for a cable connection but will help if you are trying to position an antenna.

• Closed Captions – can choose the type and style for both the digital and analogue signals. A nice feature is that you can have the captions activate whenever the set is muted (something that I really like).

• Clock – just choose your time zone. It will automatically set the correct time for you with a cable signal.

• Home Gallery – used to control the content on a connected USB device (see below)