Issues calibrating Kv-27fv310

[Brad251]

I was always of the impression that they were near identical tubes and close to identical boards aside from the FV310 having the High voltage regulator (which I would argue is not necessarily a plus as geometrical warping based on light is a unique attribute of the CRT's, so if going for the nostalgia it may be preferable to not have this feature).

I do prefer blooming in a CRT and I do notice it being absent on the FV310 but it's not a huge deal. For the most part, I still feel a sense of nostalgia playing retro games on this TV. SNES games look especially great. I was pretty amazed how good Super Mario World looked the first time I played it on the FV310. Super Metroid is another game that looks great. NES games also look great and I like that the scan lines are a little more visible because this is a 27 inch TV. The most impressive looking retro games I have played on the TV are CPS2 games. 3D games also look really great on the FV310. I was playing original Xbox games like Outrun 2, SSX 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and they so much better on the FV310 through component than on my LCD through component in 480p.

I am also really impressed with how good DVD movies look on this TV. I have actually never seen DVDs look so good on a CRT.

I probably won't get another CRT TV. I think I can be happy with the FV310. Not just that, but the whole process of getting a CRT and moving it into my house is a pain in the ass. It is hard to find someone to help me move the CRTs into my house.

[Taiyaki]

You're sitting right at the top, you'll never need another CRT in my opinion. Hope it lasts a long time (or forever).


Yeah I would never go above 27 inch. It's close to unmanageable at that size already, if you need to move it to work on / clean / whatever, you need to have assistance (unless you're built like a body builder). ;p


This is why personally my preferred sizes are 20 and 24 inch sets. The FV300 comes in those sizes but not the FV310 (which begins at 27). Still any of those sizes are bigger than the standard pvm/bvm's which come in 20 and actually have 19 inch viewable (which when curve is taken into account is closer to 18).


I don't know if you've dabbled around with PVM/BVM's, but I have, and honestly for my tastes, I would never switch back to those from a FV3xx consumer set.

[creamygarlicdip]

i have a wii and tried 2 different sets of component cables on an hdtv and crt, the wii component output was really bad either way. It was a shame. I doubt its your tv, its the wii.

[Ikaruga11]

i have a wii and tried 2 different sets of component cables on an hdtv and crt, the wii component output was really bad either way. It was a shame. I doubt its your tv, its the wii.

Family Wiis and even some of the final Wiis with GameCube ports have improved component output.

[bobrocks95]

Family Wiis and even some of the final Wiis with GameCube ports have improved component output.

There was a lot of talk about that on here... Was it ever definitively proven though? I wonder if anybody hooked a family Wii up to an oscilloscope? Artemio hooked I believe a regular Wii up to one, so the comparison could then be made very objectively.

[FinalBaton]

Tayiaki, it looks like you have a different board revision than Brad (and me) in your 310. I wonder of it's a later revision, and if the picture id different.

[FinalBaton]

Brad : may I ask what are pro mode/standard mode?
I don't remember seeing that setting

[Ikaruga11]

Pro Mode oftens give you the most accurate colors, brightness, contrast, etc.

You know,

Vivid/Dynamic (horrible)
Standard (okay)
Movie (kinda bad, only for movies i suppose)
Pro (best option)

[Taiyaki]

Tayiaki, it looks like you have a different board revision than Brad (and me) in your 310. I wonder of it's a later revision, and if the picture id different.

I don't have a 310 (although I have seen one in action). I have 3x FV300's as my main sets.


I don't even see a pro mode... on any of my Trinitron's actually. If it's closer to movie or warm settings then imo it's probably not ideal for gaming. I initially tried to calibrate my set to the color temperatures and tones that I have on a properly calibrated Sony lcd tv I use for blu rays. However after some extensive testing on games using these calibrations that are somewhat ideal for films, I found the color representation in 2D games was just too different from what I remembered as a kid. I stick to standard and tweak it from there personally.

[Brad251]

i have a wii and tried 2 different sets of component cables on an hdtv and crt, the wii component output was really bad either way. It was a shame. I doubt its your tv, its the wii.

I will have to do some more testing of games on different consoles but I don't think this is the case in my situation. I play the original Xbox on the FV310 and reds still look subdued and I am using the official Xbox high definition AV pack and high quality component cables hooked up to it. With my Wii component cables (Fosmon from Amazon.com) the picture is pretty good on my Samsung LCD in 480p. Reds are not subdued on my LCD. The overall image quality with my Wii component cables on my FV310 is very good; it is just that reds are subdued. Also, I have an early model Wii.

[Ikaruga11]

How would you compare the picture quality of the 310 to a 300? Does the High Voltage Regulator decrease brightness or white balance? Does it make the image sharper?

[Brad251]

Brad : may I ask what are pro mode/standard mode?
I don't remember seeing that setting

To add to what GeneralLight said, if you look at the service manual for the FV310, can be download here http://elektrotanya.com/sony_chassis_ba ... nload.html, there is a service menu section titled "Palette" and I think the differences between the different picture modes on the FV300/FV310 can be found here. This is the section in the service menu where you adjust settings for the different picture modes like "user picture setting", "user brightness setting", which color temperature is used for that mode (VTRI), the gamma level for each mode (VGMA), etc. The FV300 does not have a Pro mode. I will show the differences between Standard and Pro mode below in relation to the Palette service menu section. You can also view the Pallete section in the service manual at this link http://www.manualslib.com/manual/683090 ... =20#manual. The manualslib link takes you directly to the "Palette" chart. This is from the FV300 manual and is missing the settings for Pro mode but you can still understand what I am talking about by looking at the chart in the service manual. Also, in the user menu, Pro mode has a description that says "Professional Monitor like appearance".

Key differences between Standard and Pro mode (all other settings are the same):

Standard Mode
VPIC (User picture setting) = 50
VBRT (User brightness) = 29
VSHP (User sharpness) = 33
VVM (I think is virtual modulization) = 1
VGMA (gamma) = 1
VYDC (DC transmission ratio) = 2 (92%)
VVEN (vertical enhancement) = 3
VHKO (Horizontal Peaking 0:on, 1:off) = 0
VDBK (user dynablack setting) = 1
VAPG (sets vertical resolution for 3-d comb filter) = 3

Pro Mode
VPIC = 31
VBRT = 31
VSHP = 31
VVM = 0
VGMA = 0
VYDC = 1 (100%)
VVEN = 0
VHKO = 1
VDBK = 0
VAPG = 0

You can see from the settings above that Pro mode has a lower gamma setting and a higher (VYDC) DC transmissions ratio. I am not exactly sure what VYDC does and how it affects the picture and am hoping someone can explain it. You can also see that Pro mode has different VVEN and VHKO settings and am also not exactly sure how these settings affect the picture. I didn't notice any differences when adjusting VVEN and VHKO while using Artemio's 240p suite.

After turning virtual modulization and dynablack off and changing the Standard mode service menu settings to the same settings as Pro mode, both modes look identical to me. I think you can adjust the user and service menu settings for any mode to look just like Pro mode as long as you use Pro mode's settings. This means that you could actually create a pro mode on the FV300 with the FV310 Pro mode settings. Even before I changed the service menu settings for Standard mode, as long as I turned of virtual modulization and dynablack, it still looked pretty much the same as pro mode when I adjusted brightness, contrast, color and sharpness with Artemio's 240p suite.

[Brad251]

I actually forgot to mention that I did experiment with lowering and raising VYDC (DC Transmission ratio) and basically it seems to brighten the picture when you decrease the value (this increases DC transmission ratio) and darkens the picture when you increase the value (this decreases the transmission ratio. My guess and I could be wrong, is that maybe this setting is changing the amount of voltage being delivered to the set? I still don't understand why this setting would be needed and what this setting is actually doing.

[Taiyaki]

Thanks Brad for that great insight on the pro mode.

Are you sure you can't get a near perfect calibration leaving the red push on? It seems to me that if the reds appear dull or somewhat off and if it's something that gets your attention you might want to try to work around the color spectrum with AXNT on. What matters isn't reaching 100% studio color accuracy, if you can get 95% you should be having a phenomenal picture, and I believe this is most definitely attainable on these later FV series sets.

[Brad251]

Thanks Brad for that great insight on the pro mode.

Are you sure you can't get a near perfect calibration leaving the red push on? It seems to me that if the reds appear dull or somewhat off and if it's something that gets your attention you might want to try to work around the color spectrum with AXNT on. What matters isn't reaching 100% studio color accuracy, if you can get 95% you should be having a phenomenal picture, and I believe this is most definitely attainable on these later FV series sets.

I measured the the accuracy of the primary and secondary colors of the FV310 with my colorimeter and according to the CIE color chart (used for judging color accuracy with different color spaces), based on the Rec. 601 color space for SD content, there is no difference in color accuracy between having AXNT on and AXNT off. My colors are accurate according to the CIE color chart. However, the CIE color chart does not plot color luminance and color luminance (intensity) is part of color accuracy. There is a separate graph in my calibration software that shows color luminance and it shows that with AXNT on, Red has 64% more luminance compared to reference. So, AXNT is using the same color space but is intensifying reds, yellows and magenta (mostly reds).

The only thing I could do to reduce the luminance of red with AXNT on is reduce RDRV and RCUT but changing those values screws up the grayscale. I can adjust them by a few notches but any more than that and you mess up the grayscale and the picture looks off. In order for me to reduce the intensity of red with AXNT on, I have to turn down RDRV too far and it affects the rest of the picture too much so I don't think that will be an option. What sort of works is turning AXNT off and increasing RDRV and RCUT by a few notches and this might be the compromise I make.

What I really need are separate color controls for red, green and blue that are not drive and cut controls but those don't exist in the service menu. Most higher end HDTVs today have a CMS (color management system) that have these controls but they generally did not exist on crts.

[Taiyaki]

I see you went all in in testing these parameters. If you want my honest opinion I would say what matters most is what looks good to your eyes. If the less intense reds don't bother you then it sounds like your set is perfect.


I just remembered having touched the "color" setting in the basic tv menu down a few notches on mostly all my sets. A combination of that and turning down red highs and lows by a significant amount (around 30~60 points give or take, for each setting) and on some sets turning up the blue a bit (maybe I also pulled green back a few points on a set), gave me a really satisfying picture, when eyeballing next to an accurately calibrated LCD running the same game on an emu the differences were very light and barely noticeable unless scrutinizing really closely.


Be sure to have contrast set high (on crt's this is the brightness setting) as these later FV sets came out of the box with sub standard levels (worth mentioning that on the FV300 an increase of sub brightness is a must to achieve a good picture, I believe FinalBaton has echoed this opinion in another thread) and this can affect the gray scale as well. In fact when increasing the brightness, some shades of black in out of the box color settings take on a very barely noticeable but present red hue in a pitch black room, so reducing the reds actually improved that as well.


Another thing worth mentioning about the brightness is that for PS2 era games (Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox and Wii as well) brightness generally needs to be pushed up (on consumer Trinitron sets in my experience about 6~10 points) to get fuller shadow details and avoid any black crush. Why that gen seemed to have a different standard I have no idea, I just noticed this to be true on all my crt's including when I had BVM's. So on my Trinitron sets when I switch back to pre DC consoles I dial back the brightness setting around 7 or 8 points to get a nicer picture for those systems.

[Brad251]

I see you went all in in testing these parameters. If you want my honest opinion I would say what matters most is what looks good to your eyes. If the less intense reds don't bother you then it sounds like your set is perfect.


I just remembered having touched the "color" setting in the basic tv menu down a few notches on mostly all my sets. A combination of that and turning down red highs and lows by a significant amount (around 30~60 points give or take, for each setting) and on some sets turning up the blue a bit (maybe I also pulled green back a few points on a set), gave me a really satisfying picture, when eyeballing next to an accurately calibrated LCD running the same game on an emu the differences were very light and barely noticeable unless scrutinizing really closely.


Be sure to have contrast set high (on crt's this is the brightness setting) as these later FV sets came out of the box with sub standard levels (worth mentioning that on the FV300 an increase of sub brightness is a must to achieve a good picture, I believe FinalBaton has echoed this opinion in another thread) and this can affect the gray scale as well. In fact when increasing the brightness, some shades of black in out of the box color settings take on a very barely noticeable but present red hue in a pitch black room, so reducing the reds actually improved that as well.


Another thing worth mentioning about the brightness is that for PS2 era games (Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox and Wii as well) brightness generally needs to be pushed up (on consumer Trinitron sets in my experience about 6~10 points) to get fuller shadow details and avoid any black crush. Why that gen seemed to have a different standard I have no idea, I just noticed this to be true on all my crt's including when I had BVM's. So on my Trinitron sets when I switch back to pre DC consoles I dial back the brightness setting around 7 or 8 points to get a nicer picture for those systems.

I have a few a questions.

When you turned down the color control, did you do that after calibrating the TV color with color bars and a blue filter or did you just turn down the color from its factory setting?

On the FV310, the contrast setting in the user menu is called "Picture" and in the service menu it is controlled with the service menu item SCON. When you are referring to turning up the brightness, are you referring specifically to the sub-brightness level (SBRT)? I did one experiment where I increased the SBRT from the default of 14 to 19 and I think the picture may have looked a little better but I noticed when I did this it raised my gamma a little in the low end or dark part of the picture. Higher gamma means deeper blacks but less shadow detail. This makes sense I suppose because brightness primarily affects black level. I can keep experimenting with different SBRT levels and see what works.

Another thing I should mention is that I was doing my measurements based on the Rec. 601 color space for SD movie and tv content but video games do not use the Rec. 601 color space. Modern games use the sRGB color space but I am not sure what color space retro games use. I would imagine it is some sort of RGB color space but then this gets more confusing because I am using analog component cables where component is typically associated with the YUV color space. I don't think color temperature is affected by the color space you are using so this wouldn't affect grayscale, but the type of color space does affect assessment of color accuracy. For example, on the CIE color chart, the sRGB color space and Rec.601 color space have difference reference points for each color so if the reds on my TV are perfectly accurate according to the Rec. 601 color space (they are), they will not line up and be accurate with the reference red in the sRGB color space (they don't) because the red from each color space is in a different position on the CIE color chart. If retro games are using a color space similar to sRGB then this means that the reds on my FV310 are not completely accurate for any video game because based on my measurements, the reds on my FV310 are somewhat off from the reference red point for the sRGB color space.

[Taiyaki]

Actually I tweaked the color setting right out of the box, pulling it back a few notches (not much, just a few points like 2~5), because the standard colors were over saturated in my opinion. I then calibrated the picture from there, and on some sets I pushed color back towards the center one or two points when needed.


I've never calibrated using the CIE color charts but being ocd I would probably want to avoid that as I can imagine it's near impossible to get all colors lined up perfectly and you will always be making tradeoffs when making adjustments. As good as the these sets are (and this is true of the XBR units as well), in my experience consumer sets in the day were just not able to reach professional levels like a PVM and BVM could. That being said if you were to compare these sets to an FS line set or non Sony sets you would see a very different picture between the two. The FV line's colors are spectacular for a consumer line. Now you might think oh gosh then PVM/BVM's really are the ultimate crt's, but if you were to put one next to a consumer Trinitron set (and maybe you have already done this), then you'll find the BVM will look much more like a gorgeous LCD with emulated scanlines than a CRT. Personally that's not my preference, so I'd take the tradeoffs of the consumer set over a pro set.



Yes this often leads to confusion imo. I believe the FV310's "picture" setting is like the FV300 (and all Trinitron sets that came out prior as well) which means it affects brightness, where as the "brightness" setting will actually affect the contrast.


I'm not sure the history of why this was done but the result of the settings are like:


On CRT's vs on LCD/Plasma/LED's
Brightness - Contrast
Picture / Contrast - Brightness


On the later FV sets (and I've confirmed this by reading this in some reviews as well) the FV300 (possibly 310 too) came out of the box with a sub standard "brightness" setting. In the service menu the sub brightness (yes that's the SBRT) starts at 32 I believe (and goes up to 60, although depending on your board the default and the ceiling may be different), I've had to push it up to 40~44 on all sets (and moved the regular menu setting up a bit) to get what should have been proper standard brightness.


I've always heard too high brightness can shorten the life of the crt but I believe they mean Picture/Contrast in crt's as that increases the intensity of the phosphors across the entire picture. The Brightness here which is the contrast should only even out the darker areas to make them more visible so I don't really see how that would have a negative impact so long as the picture/contrast(aka brightness) isn't too high really.

[Ikaruga11]

How do scanlines look on 240p content?

[FinalBaton]

How do scanlines look on 240p content?

depends of the model's size.

For me, on my huge ass 36" FV300, from a viewing distance of 6-8 feet, the blanked lines are about as wide as the scanlines.
On the scanlines themselves, I can see the individual phosphors a bit, but they're still fairly close together and form a somewhat solid line (although not close to a full, laser-beam like scanline on a good PVM or a BVM).

Here are some pics from my set. left click on those pics, it zooms in at just the right size :

http://i.imgur.com/Bq53Y1u.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CveiUFK.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/5opaGvR.jpg


Smaller sets will have even fuller scanlines than that, and the blanked lines on those will be thinner in proportion to the scanlines