Panasonic TX-P50G20 Run in from NEW and advanced settings

[admin_exported]

Finally after months of searching (soul & internet) I plumped for the Panasonic TX-P50G20 Plasma TV after initially going for the LG 50PK990 (which seems to have been removed from all stocks everywhere) and a bad experience with a so called Samsung retailer of the year down in Essex !

Bought this from the great guys at Sound and Vision up in Bolton and got it well below £900 Delivered... Picked a day for delivery and it turned up no fuss with excellent tracking facilities provided, alround great ordering experience and heartily recommend them.

Once the old man arrived I was able to instigate the traditional annual "TV's 4 parents outreach program" which involves Setting up the new Panasonic in the living room as new King of the house, Moving my dethroned Toshiba 46XF355 in to the office/ boys retreat/converted garage (great TV with not a single problem with clouding or pixels in over 3years) and finally throwing my old Sony 40W2000 LCD in the back of the TV's on wheels van (or dads Focus estate as its otherwise known).

Once I got back to setting up the Pana I had done some reading on things to switch off which are switched on by default and funnily found nothing worth switch on other than Side panel to help with Burn....

All of my interest is on the picture setting as sound is not important.... I lowered all the settings on Picture setup and selected NORMAL. I have not ventures in to the Professional 1 and 2 yet !!!

What I want to check being a Plasma Noob is :-

1. How best to run this TV in and some real Do's and Don'ts which I guess would be general Plasma related rather than model specific.

2. I had minor flicker when setting up but not really when looking directly at the TV just when you look say at the stand below you see it out the corner of your eye type of scenario... it really did not cause me any concern as it had been switch on all of 15 mins. Just wanted to check if anyone has seen this and if it is just personal sensitivity rather than a Panasonic 'enhanceable feature' so to speak ?

3. When I get in to the real deal of setting up the R/G/B Pro settings etc.. using my DVE basic BLU Ray how long I should leave the TV to run in before levelling up the colours etc... not going down to the depths of calibration just the basic stuff really. Can I do it now after 5-10 hrs running or best to let it settle down after 100-200 hrs ???

Looking forward to responses and also posting a full review and overall opinion of this TV to hopefully help others as soon as I have used/ had it switched on long enough.

Ash

 

[strapped for cash]

Anxieties about screen burn with plasmas are unfounded these days, but it makes sense to take it easy during the first month of use (leave contrast settings around 50%, for example, and don't display static images for several hours).

With regard to the flicker, I'd give the display time to "bed in," so to speak, and see if this settles down. If you think there might be a problem, I'd let the retailer know now. At least that way you'll have some leverage later on.

As for calibration, why not do it now? You want to enjoy your TV as much as possible, and you can always re-calibrate once the display has bedded in a month or so down the line. Then you can dial down the contrast, if neccesary, during the initial running in period.

Enjoy your new TV!

 

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear you had a good experience with S&V, I've bought from them before and had no problems. Although when I went in yesterday looking for a TV ( off the back of a bad panasonic purchase, not wanting another one) the owner spent 15 minutes on how bad LED lit TVs where and he would only advise Panny plasmas (or the top LX range of sony) for serious enthusiasts. He then went on to tell me that Samsung basically gave salesmen small cash incentives to sell their products and he was not to kind about journalists either. Funny really as I remember a while ago they fell out with Sony any they where not too nice about their products at the time. A shame really, I bought my Samsung Plasma elsewhere. It would not stop me from buying there in future though.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Ash

I have the same TV and like you was on the verge of going for the LG but was unable to see it in action anywhere so plumped for the Panasonic. Regarding settings I have turned all the resolution enchancers, intelligent frame creation, etc off. I have set the side panels to high (which I seem to remember was the recommened setting when watching any programmes in 4.3 aspect).

I have all the relevevant inputs TV, HDMI1, HDMI3, etc set to the THX settings and haven't altered the preset settings for contrast, brightness, colour sharpness and so on. The only time I change from the THX preset is to game when using the Wii. I have used these settings from day one and never experienced any issuses.

I agree with strapped for cash, that in my experience, screen burn with plasmas is a non issue these days (although I appreciate some folks on this forum may disagree). In fact I would say that even the possibility of image retention is slight with this TV, certainly when compared to my previous 6th generation Pioneer plasma.

I am considering getting the TV professionally calibrated and have been advised to let in run-in for 300-400 hours.

Hemmy

 

[Anonymous]

I have just had a run through the DVE setup disk and switched my setting to Pro 1 to start with...Tried the brightness and contrast first and must say the contrast was pretty much spot on form below black to above white and left it at a mid range setting for now.

Brightness had to go up to about 60% so it would show clip just below black

Color went up the same as well with the R/G/B filter in place and NO R/G/B gain/hue/saturation required so the setting from factory must be pretty good hence the THX modes may actually be useful settings.... I got them all pretty much spot on.

There would be some minor Cyan Yellow and Magenta settings to tweak to bring to the same levels when testing R/G/B but I have not found any way to do this on this TV like my Toshiba had available but its only really minor stuff...

Does anyone know if there is a advanced setting to tweak the other 3 colours ???