Samsung F4500 plasma bargain for 480p sources

[Fudoh]

@Josh: ouch, cell light 20 + contrast 95. Isn't that a little too much light output ? Sharpness 75 is what I would have guessed from your pictures. That's a lot of artificial sharpening along with artefacts and halos. Have you tried a lower setting ?

[BuckoA51]

Contrast 95?! Have you run any test patterns on the set (e.g grey ramp) I never encountered a set where I had to put the contrast that high.

Edit - lol Fudoh beat me to it.

[Josh128]

@ Fudoh-- I used a Disney WOW disc to optimize the settings, then tweaked them to my liking. About your setup--

There is absolutely nothing wrong with cell light of 20 and contrast of 95 on this set, unless you love ABL /like having your screen dim on the fly in bright scenes, 20 is what you need to do if you will have daylight in the room.

-- 93 was perfect on my set when running a calibration disc. Why wouldnt you want to maximize contrast? The set is perfectly capable of it.

Cell Light of 4 is way, way too low, unless you are playing in complete darkness. You can set it to 20 to greatly reduce ABL. Anything under 17 has strong ABL in very light scenes. Dont worry about burn in, the set is very resistant. If you dont feel comfortable with 20 at first, use 14 or 15 until it gets a couple hundred hours of use (if you keep it-- if you dont plan to keep it, set it to 20 now).

About the sharpness: Yes, I prefer to use a higher sharpness setting for 480i/p and 240p content. For HD content I bring it down. I find the set looks much better for these resolutions at 75 or at a bare minimum 50-- any lower and I find the image becomes to soft for my taste.

[Xyga]

Are the 43" still found in Europe ? I've found the 51" euro version but it's expensive where I live.

The 43" is 299 EUR from a seller on ebay.de, the 51" is 395 EUR. National shipping included. I could imagine that the seller's willing to ship within Europe for a little extra.

Seems there are no longer any 43 at that price anywhere. Whatever.

[Fudoh]

Many calibration guides aim for a maximum light output with maximum white level. 22point8's calibration report shows that the Samsung can retain white detail with a contrast setting of 95, but combined with maximim cell light level, it's like staring into a tanning bed

I'll give it another try tomorrow in daylight. I'll try a higher light output then.

[Josh128]

Many calibration guides aim for a maximum light output with maximum white level. 22point8's calibration report shows that the Samsung can retain white detail with a contrast setting of 95, but combined with maximim cell light level, it's like staring into a tanning bed

In a well lit room its perfect though. In a dim room, yes, it is bright. For the best all around performance, and to minimize ABL, you want my settings.

[wildchild22]

If I buy one I will give you my calibrated results. I use chromopure and a calibrated meter.

Does this have the same cms as other samsung?
10 pt grey scale plus
allowing adjustment for all primaries and secondary colour?

I can say my samsung plasma has a delta error of less then .3 for eveything. So it is pretty much perfect.

[Josh128]

Contrast 95?! Have you run any test patterns on the set (e.g grey ramp) I never encountered a set where I had to put the contrast that high.

Edit - lol Fudoh beat me to it.

Do your research on these plasmas. I used an optimization disc. I tweaked sharpness to my liking.

[Fudoh]

Seems there are no longer any 43 at that price anywhere.

http://www.ebay.de/itm/391005931479

That's where I got mine.

[Fudoh]

I'm not sure I get the ABL idea. Why would ABL kick in more more often with overall reduced light output ? Why would it at all kick in when 100% white on cell light level 3 or 4 doesn't even have the same light output as a 50% white screen on cell light level 20 ?

[Josh128]

To anyone here who purchases an F4500, whether a 51" like mine or a 43"-- the picture looks good out of the box, but after about 250 hours or so of use (not sure if its any one number, probably depends on cell light setting), you will find the set looks quite a bit better than it does now. The blacks settle in, the colors have more pop to them. Quite a few buyers on the AVS forum can back me up on this-- I experienced it on all my Samsung plasmas. I dont know what 22point8 thinks, perhaps he can weigh in on this.

Ive not used a colorimeter or any other calibration gear other than the AVSHD 709 disc and a disney WOW disc, but to me, the set improved a good bit after several hundred hours of use.

[Xyga]

That's where I got mine.

Aw I wasn't looking at the right p/n of course, thanks.

[22point8]

Cell 20 minimises the affect of the Auto Brightness limiter (A full white screen still tops out at 40cdm2 though), Contrast 95 aligns the 10 point white balance controls, you can reduce that if you won't use them. If you set Black Optimiser to Auto or Bright room you can get 145cdm2, Dark room or Off gets to 120cdm2. Standard has slightly more dynamic range than Movie, but doesn't have the 10 point white balance (which I use because I have the skills and hardware to do so). Don't use Black tone, if you put up a grey ramp you can see it destroys the area between 0 and 10% grey.




PS2 Component:

System>General>Game Mode>On
System>Screen Burn Protection>Side Grey>Dark

Picture Mode: Standard (Game Mode)
Cell Light: 20
Contrast: 95
Brightness: 45
Sharpness: 20
Colour: 45
Tint (G/R): G50/R50

Picture Size: 4:3/16:9 (depending on the game)

Advanced Settings

Dynamic Contrast: Off
Black Tone: Off
Flesh Tone: 0
RGB Only Mode: Off
Colour Space: Custom

Custom (REC 601 625 line)
Red: R49 G15 B14
Green: R23 G48 B0
Blue: R0 G11 B48
Yellow: R50 G49 B0
Cyan: R20 G49 B49
Magenta: R50 G17 B49

White Balance:

R Offset: 25
G Offset: 25
B Offset: 24
R Gain: 23
G Gain: 25
B Gain: 24

Gamma: -1 (2.2)

Picture Options

Colour Tone: Warm 2
Digital Clean View: Off
MPEG Noise Filter:Off
Film Mode: Off
Black Optimiser: Off

[Josh128]

I'm not sure I get the ABL idea. Why would ABL kick in more more often with overall reduced light output ? Why would it at all kick in when 100% white on cell light level 3 or 4 doesn't even have the same light output as a 50% white screen on cell light level 20 ?

When you are that low, it may not kick in-- but that is entirely too low for a room with any decent lighting in it, especially daylight. When you go above 10, ABL can become a nuisance. When you increase the cell light, you will see the picture brighten until about 16-- from 16 to 20 you will not see any brightness increase, but each tick up reduces the ABL. Its a widely fact about these Sammy plasmas, and Ive already tested with with HD video content-- at 16 or 17, certain sporting events especially daytime events, during pans, can sometimes capture the sky or the sun, and you can see the whole image dim a tick or two. In the same scenes, when you increase the cell light, the ABL will not kick in at all.

Even at 20 you will have some ABL, but it will be at its minimum. The best way to test ABL is to fire up a PC and open a white window-- drag the window on and off the screen and you will see the ABL at its worst. For video though, 20 really minimizes it.

On my BFXZA 4500, I think Im only running 12 or 14 cell light, but there is no daylight in the room I have it in. ABL may not bother you, depending on the content.

BTW-- did you turn off the "ECO" sensor in the general menu? I highly recommend you do that, especially if you ever go above 10 on the cell light.

I edited my settings, seems I had a double pic-- I replaced it with the "picture options" photo.

[wildchild22]

Josh128 what scart to component converter do you use?

[Josh128]

I forgot to mention that the reason Im using color of 55 is personal taste. To avoid clipping per the optimization discs it needs to be in the 40s, but I much prefer the look of 55 for gaming, mid 40s looks a bit drab for my liking.

Same goes for color tone. I use Warm 1 for viewing HD video content, but I rather Standard for gaming.

@ Fudoh, another reason, besides the ones you mentioned for the "CRT Like" look of the set is due to its per pixel emissive nature, which it shares with CRT. LED lit LCDs, with their transmissive color output, just cant replicate it, even the FALD sets.

[Josh128]

Josh128 what scart to component converter do you use?

See below. Its completely analog and lag free and produces an EXCELLENT picture in my opinion. I find that NES with the NESRGB board through it looks just as good as if I have a PC running an emulator via HDMI, albeit in real 240p. It doesnt add any filtering or other processing whatsoever, just pure signal conversion. If you want to tweak the colors, you can open it up and fiddle with the pots, but it wasnt necessary on mine, looked great out the box.

Ive tried it with the Genesis Model 1 on a 36" SD TV and it looked incredible, the real scanlines were beautiful, I had never seen a Genesis look like that before--- our US Sega Genesis systems had remarkably shitty composite output, with strange dithering on horizontally scrolling objects and backgrounds-- with RGB and this converter, its absolutely pristine!

My SNES mini through it looks remarkably similar to the Wii running the SNES emulator on my 4500.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-SCART-RGB-t ... 337dfa167b

[22point8]

I'm not sure I get the ABL idea. Why would ABL kick in more more often with overall reduced light output ? Why would it at all kick in when 100% white on cell light level 3 or 4 doesn't even have the same light output as a 50% white screen on cell light level 20 ?

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/167-plasm ... sider.html

"This information comes straight from a Samsung insider. It is not something I made up. Don't argue with me, I'm just relaying what the insider told me. This information is current as of today, April 7, 2014.

The Cell Light control determines the point where automatic brightness limiting kicks-in. At the highest setting. ABL kicks in at the highest level available... typically somewhere around 60%. At the lowest Cell Light setting, ABL begins much lower, in the range of 30% white.

Since most people already don't like ABL, it is counterproductive to use any Cell Light setting below 20 (or 10 on earlier plasma models with this control).

How to tell if and when automatic brightness limiting is being applied (requires a meter to measure):
Display full-screen gray patterns. Start at 0 and go all the way to 100% white. With Cell Light set to 20, the gamma curve should look normal up to 60% or close to that, while higher %white levels will tend to "level off". Set Cell Light to a lower setting, say 5 or something like that, and run the full-screen patterns again. Now you should see that when you are somewhere close to 30%, the pattens don't get as bright. So... with Cell Light at 20, you might get 17 or 18 fL for 100% white (depends on Contrast setting) while Cell Light being set to 5 or some other low number would limit 100% white even more making midtones (40%-60%) AND highlights dimmer than you'd like them to be.

Samsung plasmas with Cell Light... the Contrast control is still the control to use to set the white level (using a small window pattern, not a full-screen pattern) and it may still cause white to clip if set too high, So you still need to use a test pattern that shows, say, 220-255 so you can find the highest Contrast setting you can use without clipping white. That is not necessarily the BEST Contrast setting, it is just the HIGHEST setting you can use without clipping white. You may find that 95 is where white begins to clip, but you might find that "80" produces 33 fL which is around where you want to be if the room is very dark.

Bottom line... if you want MORE brightness lmiting, use Cell Light settings below 20. If you want LESS brightness limiting, set Cell Light to the highest setting, leave it there, and forget it exists."

[Josh128]

Because you cant play games on a capture device! Thats the whole point, man-- show some pictures of an actual TV where 480i matches or betters 480p. In practice, all the TVs Ive used show much sharper 480p. Capture devices will ALWAYS look perfect-- they dont have to translate those images to a different resolution/screen and actually display it.

That makes no sense at all, sorry. Actually that capture was directly from my XRGB Mini so upscaling was going on. If you want to compare upscaling then capturing is much more accurate than taking photos.

Not sure how you figure it makes no sense. Does your capture device have a screen? I venture to guess it does not. We are/were discussing how 480i and 480p look on actual TVs. A still bitmap created from a signal grab and displayed on a PC is hardly the same as connecting the systems to actual sets and viewing the output in real time-- this is what this entire thread is about and indeed what my original point was -- how these systems look on an F4500, vs other TVs. An image grab from a capture is hardly indicative of what a real set will show once it de-interlaces/upscales and displays the image on the screen. If it was, then there wouldnt be such a striking difference in my test photos.

I stated that Wii and GC 480p looks better and sharper than 480i, even in stills, on every single set Ive connected them to in the last 13 years. It does. I posted pics to back it up. Your Sonic pics do look similar-- now try it with a full resolution game, such as F Zero GX. All my test photos and experience has been with full EDTV res, not 240p.

[Josh128]

Just messed around with it a bit more. PS3 in 720p looks alright, not pinsharp or anything, but respectable given the small resolution and big screen size. Wipeout HD seems to look a bit better in 720p as compared to 1080p subjectively, maybe that is just a bit too much for the scaler.

I also did a software update, not sure what that changed, but 240p is still the same and useless.

What are you using to get your RGB to the set? Does the H4500 have a SCART connector, or are you using something like the Framemeister or the analogue signal converter Im using.

Not sure why your 240p is not working? You are not trying to apply faux scanlines, right? As I mentioned early in the thread, I dont think they will scale evenly on this set-- at least I cant get them to with emulators.

As for 720p, at least Xbox 360, looks razor sharp on it--even better than 480p. I find its as good or better than any native 720p LCD Ive seen the 360 on. I dont remember if Im using 720p or 1024x768 on the Xbox-- I think it may support native anamorphic, maybe Im using that, dont remember.

In particular, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, looks particularly stunning, with its high contrast scenes. In any case, I wouldnt bother with using 1080p on the system-- in motion you may gain some detail, but probably not enough to make it worthwhile. Ill post some photos later of the 360 if possible.

[Josh128]

Sharpness 75 is what I would have guessed from your pictures. That's a lot of artificial sharpening along with artefacts and halos. Have you tried a lower setting ?

Fudoh, quick point-- the ringing around the clouds you see in the Super Mario Bros and around the numbers in the Mario 64 pics must be related to the jpeg compression of my photos, as they are not there on the actual set. Not saying there is not some artifacts on certain content, but if there is, Im not seeing it for the most part. Have you tried it for any period of time? Im sure youll see some things, but I find the additional crispness of the image at those levels outweighs any negatives, but thats just my personal taste.

[wildchild22]

Another question Does the North American version accept 50hz? (I doubt it as my samsung pn50c490 3d plasma will not)

[Josh128]

Another question Does the North American version accept 50hz? (I doubt it as my samsung pn50c490 3d plasma will not)

Honestly dont know mate, but Im guessing it does not. Its not shown as supported in the manual.

[Josh128]

Well, well-- just tried God of War on PS2 in 480i and then in 480p. No comparison, the difference is just as striking as on the Wii and Cube. 480p hands down. I will say though, that MGS 2 and 3 look very sharp and clear even in 480i mode, as does Gradius V.

[Fudoh]

Josh,

about sharpness: yes, I tried the higher settings as well, but that's not for me and it's generally not considered what most (but not all) people prefer. I very much like neutral sharpness, not blurring the image, but not adding any additional artefacts either. Comparable to what a Sony BVM or a XRGB on a calibrated LCD would deliver.

about 480i/480p: you really got the wrong idea. Nobody doubts that 480p is to be prefered above 480i. But leaving the resolution aspect aside for a moment (480 lines per frame on 480p vs. 240 lines per field on 480i), on a PS2 the QUALITY (and by that I mean anything EXCEPT the resolution) of 480i and 480p is identical (some increased noise on 480p maybe), while on the Wii 480i output has better quality than 480p. That's all I was saying and seeing the Samsung in action, it pretty much masks the decreased 480p quality, so don't worry about it.

ABL: For a moment I just tried CL20 + Contrast 95 and it's really too bright for me. If ABL is considered bad, what's the prefered method to bring down the light output ? CL20 + Contrast 35 looks similar to CL3 + Contrast 80. Would one of these be better than the other ?

[Fudoh]

will say though, that MGS 2 and 3 look very sharp and clear even in 480i mode, as does Gradius V

if you got GSM, you can run Gradius V in 480p - looks even better

[22point8]

Tomorrow I'll find a combo that gets you 80cdm2, thats about what a BVM should put out.

[wildchild22]

Oh well I have one on order for my daughter. I couldn't pass it up.

[BuckoA51]

An image grab from a capture is hardly indicative of what a real set will show once it de-interlaces/upscales and displays the image on the screen.

I disagree completely. This was a capture of an upscaled 480i/p image to 720p directly from an XRGB Mini. If that shows a slight difference between 480i and 480p then various TV sets around the world are bound to.

When you point a camera at a TV screen there's all kinds of other interference clouding the image, a direct capture is much more accurate. I could understand your point of view if I'd captured directly at 240p but I didn't. Anyway...

About 480i/480p: you really got the wrong idea. Nobody doubts that 480p is to be prefered above 480i. But leaving the resolution aspect aside for a moment (480 lines per frame on 480p vs. 240 lines per field on 480i), on a PS2 the QUALITY (and by that I mean anything EXCEPT the resolution) of 480i and 480p is identical (some increased noise on 480p maybe), while on the Wii 480i output has better quality than 480p. That's all I was saying and seeing the Samsung in action, it pretty much masks the decreased 480p quality, so don't worry about it.

What Fudoh just said.

[Josh128]

Some Lords of Shadow pics, Xbox 360 set to 720p.