Samsung F4500 plasma bargain for 480p sources

[Xan]

It's mainly the A button from Zelda Skyward Sword. I played that game over a couple of days for 2-3 hours at once, just regular gameplay with menus and everything of course and with other games inbetween as well.

Edit: ran the colored static for just 20 minutes, now I really have to strain my eyes to see the IR. I think that pattern is pretty effective compared to the built-in one.

[Josh128]

Some pics of the Terraria game my son plays, usually at least a couple hours a day for the last month or so. Some TERRIBLE looking HUDs on this game, especially in the top left and right corner-- they dont go away. He played this for weeks before I started making him run some TV content after each play session and between breaks because even though the set is very resiliant-- I'd rather be safe than sorry. Those HUDs do not EVER go away. Im sure it can be disabled in the game, and I asked him to, but when he said it would interfere with gameplay I just started making him run the video content after each session.

This is the newest plasma I have, the 4500 BFXZA set. I didnt check the MRT, but I would estimate its got about 600 hours on it-- 95% of that is games, probably of that 95%, 35% of that is Terraria, 30% is Minecraft PC, the remaining 30% is Xbox 360 and GC games. 5% is OTA HDTV.



http://imgur.com/a/QpXvE

[Josh128]

It's mainly the A button from Zelda Skyward Sword. I played that game over a couple of days for 2-3 hours at once, just regular gameplay with menus and everything of course and with other games inbetween as well.

Edit: ran the colored static for just 20 minutes, now I really have to strain my eyes to see the IR. I think that pattern is pretty effective compared to the built-in one.

Glad to hear it. It'll go away, and once you get a couple hundred hundred hours on the set it should be quite a bit less prone. From here to at least 250 hours MRT, keep the CL from 12-14 for game content with static buttons.

On the BFXZA set in my post above, my 9 year old son recently got all the way past the Ice Palace in Twilight Princess on GC, which has similar static buttons to SS, with absolutely no issue at all with IR-- he wasnt even running video at that point (bout 2 months ago), but he was running it in stretched 16:9.

I NEVER use 16:9 mode for my 4:3 retro games on my oldest F4500, but I alternate from black pillar bars to gray from week to week, etc.

[Josh128]

Just confirmed that aside from the ghosting issues in 2D games caused by "Digital Clean View", the "MPEG Noise Filter" option, which is located right next to "Digital Clean View" in the Picture Options sub-Menu, when set to anything other than "OFF" causes random full screen blurring on certain side scrolling content-- I noticed this playing Zelda II for NES in 4:3 mode last night. Mine was on "Auto".

It is super-pronounced on the scrolling wooden fence in the action scenes immediately after you pass the River Devil. Its ugly! Also noticed it occurs when theres a lot of pink sand on the screen in the overworld (the dots trigger it, I guess), and on the red & black brick backgrounds in the Golden Palace.

The other day I took my set out of Game Mode to test, and I thought I had turned off both options, but I had only turned off "DCV"-- after a bit of panic thinking my NESRGB board or NES itself may have been failing, I searched through all the menus and found I forgot to turn off the MPEG Noise Filter.

Its a really strange effect, and it turns ON and OFF at random times, but always during scrolling backgrounds. Its just a full screen blur.

I always leave it on for watching both SD and HD video, and iI have not had any issues-- but it doesnt play nice at all with 240p side scrollers for sure. I strongly recommend checking to ensure they are either OFF or unavailable for all game content. I dont think they are available in Game Mode, but Im not sure.

[Josh128]

It's mainly the A button from Zelda Skyward Sword. I played that game over a couple of days for 2-3 hours at once, just regular gameplay with menus and everything of course and with other games inbetween as well.

Edit: ran the colored static for just 20 minutes, now I really have to strain my eyes to see the IR. I think that pattern is pretty effective compared to the built-in one.

Xan, hows it looking now?

[Xan]

Just checked it, really can't make it out anymore. Recently I've only been playing SSBB an hour a day on the set so nothing extreme but it does seem to help in reducing the old IR.

[lev11]

I only came on this forum looking to improve the output of my gamecube, and ended up with a new TV. Thanks Josh for persevering through the robust peer review here. This TV looks awesome, and just under £200 ebay uk open box I think it's a massive bargain. Cheers again Josh.

As there is only one component input would it be ok to use 5 x mono phono splitters, such as this from CPC Farnell, to allow two devices to be used (one at a time) without swapping cables?

Just wondering about additional connections in the chain, would that degrade the signal?
Also any risk to the TV of overloading the input if two devices were on together?
Or even some kind of back-feed into either source device?

[RocketBelt]

I've used one of these component switches and it worked well. It is switched three ways.

http://www.thegametrain.com/products/Vi ... -way).html

[22point8]

I only came on this forum looking to improve the output of my gamecube, and ended up with a new TV. Thanks Josh for persevering through the robust peer review here. This TV looks awesome, and just under £200 ebay uk open box I think it's a massive bargain. Cheers again Josh.

As there is only one component input would it be ok to use 5 x mono phono splitters, such as this from CPC Farnell, to allow two devices to be used (one at a time) without swapping cables?

Just wondering about additional connections in the chain, would that degrade the signal?
Also any risk to the TV of overloading the input if two devices were on together?
Or even some kind of back-feed into either source device?

Shame you missed this http://cpc.farnell.com/keene-electronic ... dp/AV10828 it was £20 about a month back.

[Josh128]

I only came on this forum looking to improve the output of my gamecube, and ended up with a new TV. Thanks Josh for persevering through the robust peer review here. This TV looks awesome, and just under £200 ebay uk open box I think it's a massive bargain. Cheers again Josh.

As there is only one component input would it be ok to use 5 x mono phono splitters, such as this from CPC Farnell, to allow two devices to be used (one at a time) without swapping cables?

Just wondering about additional connections in the chain, would that degrade the signal?
Also any risk to the TV of overloading the input if two devices were on together?
Or even some kind of back-feed into either source device?

Cheers! These sets really do output an exceptional picture, unmatched in my eyes for EDTV and 720p content. For the price they are just a steal, really. I believe its the absolute best flat panel out there for GC, hope it serves you well. Be sure to keep the cell light under 15 for the first couple hundred ours of use during gaming to break in/age the panel. Once youre past the 250 hour mark, youre good to go with whatever brightness level you choose.

The Y splitters you mentioned will work, but they will drop your video signal by 3 dB when you use them, you'll have to adjust your picture settings to compensate. They may also introduce some noise in the signal. I dont think they would harm the other connected devices. If you only have 2 systems and are on a tight budget, you might get by with them, but I recommend investing in a good switch.

Good component switches are expensive, but they will provide an unattenuated, unblemished signal to your set. My first recommendation is the Audio Authority 1154a or 1154b ( I have the 1154a). It switches automatically or manually and sends a perfect, noise free signal to the set. They are expensive, but sometimes you can get a deal on a used one on Ebay. Very high quality.

My second recommendation would be one of the Shinybow component matrix switches, they are quite a bit cheaper new, and seem to have a pretty good reputation.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control ... &A=details

Ive never seen or used the one for 11.99 mentioned in the post above. It may indeed work just fine, but my experience with other cheap switches in the past has not been good, especially on larger HD sets such as this one that will show noise and crosstalk more readily than the HD CRTs of old. For the price though, it may be worth a try.

[22point8]

Hey I guess you could get a decent vga+stereo switcher and use component to vga cables. Btw Josh, got that Castlevania Lords of Shadow game today for £4, won't play it just yet though, currently playing Bayonetta (shame the PS3 version is 30 or less fps, can really see the screen tearing).

Edit: Here is something to try...

from cpc
http://cpc.farnell.com/_/sb474/data-swi ... dp/CS14243
and http://cpc.farnell.com/1/1/51934-audio- ... -1012.html

or from amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/HQ-Sources-Outp ... merReviews
and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Port-Standerd-F ... vga+switch
and http://www.amazon.co.uk/15-pin-svga-vga ... 37601EN434
and http://www.amazon.co.uk/1-8M-VGA-LEAD-C ... +vga+cable

So you would go component from console>female component to vga cable>vga switcher>male component to vga cable>TV
and obviously stereo from the console>audio switch>TV, the amazon switch does composite and svideo too.

[Xan]

@Josh: So you think that the F4500 looks better than the 1080p plasma for 720p sources? I really can't comment on that, though I'm thinking the 1080p set should be superior for that, at least with a good external scaler.

[andykara2003]

Damn I'm wavering on this again! Is this the one I want?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Samsung-43-PE ... 51c83ff77d

[Xan]

That's the one I have.

[andykara2003]

Cheers Xan - is that definitely the same exact panel as the F4500 Josh is on about?

[Xan]

It looks like it, though he states that his set has 100% perfect uniformity, that's not the case on mine when being honest (not anything that bothers me either though). Anyway a sample size of 2 is too small to make any conclusions about it.

[Josh128]

@Josh: So you think that the F4500 looks better than the 1080p plasma for 720p sources? I really can't comment on that, though I'm thinking the 1080p set should be superior for that, at least with a good external scaler.

I do. Dont get me wrong-- most of the PQ attributes such as color, contrast, motion, etc are essentially IDENTICAL between the two. That said, I just prefer the more CRT-like look of the 4500. It has to slightly downsample a true 720p image, but most X360 titles are not quite true 720p anyway. In any case, I prefer downsampling or downscaling to upscaling if given the choice (and of course if its not extreme, say, 480i to 240p).

I also slightly prefer 720p OTA HD content on the F4500 but, its very close. I think the 5300 has very good upscaling, my preference to the 4500 for 720 game sources is more due to personal preferences than technical reasons.

I have some comparison photos between the two on OTA sources that I can post later-- they look identical in the photos.

When I say my sets have perfect uniformity, they may not be literally, but very, very close if not. Plasmas usually have better uniformity in general than LCDs.

[andykara2003]

Nice one Xan - going back through my messages, I had forgotten that Fudoh had mentioned that according to the AVS thread, the H4500 is apparently the same panel as the F4500 albeit with a different tuner..

[22point8]

Actually its the F4900 that has a dvb-t2 and dvb-c tuner + active 3D. The F4500 and H4500 model with just the dvb-t and dvb-c tuner.are the same All 3 have the same panels. I got the F4900 over the F4500 because I wanted Freeview HD (which needs the t2 tuner), I don't care about the 3D I don't think my eyes get tricked enough, my parents however thinks its great.

[andykara2003]

Awesome cheers - As long as the panel looks the same as the F4500 for 480p gaming that's great.

[Josh128]

It looks like it, though he states that his set has 100% perfect uniformity, that's not the case on mine when being honest (not anything that bothers me either though). Anyway a sample size of 2 is too small to make any conclusions about it.

Sample size of 3, remember I have 2, but they are both 51"ers. I'll try to take some comparison shots of both and take a closer look later. As I said, Ive not used a meter, maybe they are not perfect, but very close by my eye-- I dont see any issues at all in the blacks.

[Josh128]

. Btw Josh, got that Castlevania Lords of Shadow game today for £4, won't play it just yet though, currently playing Bayonetta (shame the PS3 version is 30 or less fps, can really see the screen tearing).

Its a very pretty game, looks awesome on this panel.

[Xan]

It looks like it, though he states that his set has 100% perfect uniformity, that's not the case on mine when being honest (not anything that bothers me either though). Anyway a sample size of 2 is too small to make any conclusions about it.

Sample size of 3, remember I have 2, but they are both 51"ers. I'll try to take some comparison shots of both and take a closer look later. As I said, Ive not used a meter, maybe they are not perfect, but very close by my eye-- I dont see any issues at all in the blacks.

Right. With mine, when putting up a 0 IRE screen in the 240p suite there is some slight brightening in the rightmost part of the screen, and a bit of clouding on edges overall, it's visible well enough (nothing that my camera is able to pick up though since light output is very little with blacks compared to an LCD obviously). The uniformity issues aren't visible at all when viewing actual content, even dark one.

[Josh128]

Ive created some perfect 1024x768 slides in MS Paint, pictures below. These are of my original AFXZA model. I used the custom color tool to create perfect black, perfect white, red, green, blue and some text on black. I used a low cell light of 12, due to the dark setting.

000 black, in full screen, essentially turns the panel off-- its (the panel) pitch black in my room, which has has blinds and shutters closed, just a hint of light peaking in. Maybe my pupils didnt have the time to diolate, but the screen looks as if its been turned OFF, even in the dark (not perfect, but dark) room.

When observing the blacks, you must be certain to switch straight from some motion video to blacks to make sure you dont see some fleeting IR from the previous screen. I was thinking about it, and if you are using the 240p suite, the still text screens you have to go through in order to put up a 0 IRE are very likely causing some of the things you are seeing. Fleeting IR occurs very quickly when showing text or grids and then a pure dark screen. When I took my test shots, I switched quickly from video to my PC, which was running a slide show of the colors. There was 0 visible clouding or silhouetting in the blacks.

These pictures just cant show the blacks as they are too deep for the camera to pick up any luminance at all. I included them anyway. The photos them selves add some moire to the image that is not there in person for the colors. The small white dot you see on the left is a hint of a reflection coming from my window, and helps convey how dark the blacks are. See below.








http://imgur.com/a/VnwtP

[Xan]

That's a good point, I will try it with my PC now.

Edit: the black screen in the AIDA64 monitor test suite causes the panel to switch off as you said. Strange that I can't achieve that behavior with the Wii and the 240p suite, maybe some hardware limitations there. The "black" screen there looks really gray actually, while the 0 IRE setting in the 100 IRE pattern looks as described in my last post.

[Josh128]

That's a good point, I will try it with my PC now.

Edit: the black screen in the AIDA64 monitor test suite causes the panel to switch off as you said. Strange that I can't achieve that behavior with the Wii and the 240p suite, maybe some hardware limitations there. The "black" screen there looks really gray actually, while the 0 IRE setting in the 100 IRE pattern looks as described in my last post.

Not sure what you seeing there with the gray black. Do you see visible dithering/sparkles in the "gray" black? If so, you might need to lower your brightness a touch. This is the Wii through component, correct? Try running the same 240p suite on the Dolphin emulator, which should perform the same test via HDMI. Im thinking it might have something to do with your brightness settings. With the PC connected, you can choose from HDMI Black Level NORMAL (0-255 4:4:4) or HDMI Black Level LOW (16-255 4:2:2)-- (I may have that backwards, forgive me if I do)-- check both of them with the 0 IRE and see what you get.

What brightness are you running on your component input? Im running 43 and I get pure blacks with no dithering on my component inputs.

You do realize that in a complete dark room, even a pure black screen on a plasma will still glow slightly, correct? Even the legendary Kuros do, it has to do with the need of keeping a minimum voltage on the panel for fast phosphor excitation. This panel, however, seems to shut voltage completely off on a 000 black full screen.

Im about to try a test to compare a 0,0,0 black screen with one with a single red pixel in the middle to see how the panel reacts-- it appears 0 black sompletely shuts off the voltage to the panel-- one "ON" pixel should require the minimum voltage be applied to the blacks.

[Xan]

No, it's really a solid gray like I said. It's the "White & RGB screens" pattern, maybe I wasn't clear enough here (I really shouldn't be so lazy with my wording ). Have you tried that? The difference between the actual picture area and the borders at the left and right should be obvious.

I run 41 brightness on the component input currently, that's with calibrating against 1 with full RGB setting on the PLUGE. If I recall correctly I noticed some dithering on parts that should be pitch black in Skyward Sword, so I recalibrated it. Calibrating black levels with the AVS DVD actually gives 44 I think, so there's a discrepancy here, wanted to post about that earlier actually.

Edit: I'm talking about the "letterboxing" that happens when you autotarget in Zelda. There's no reason for that to be anything but pitch black, though with brightness 43 and up there is dithering visible.

Though maybe I'm off here and those bars are supposed to be above minimum black; the black part at the top when pressing the home button has no dithering at 44. Wouldn't make much sense to me though...

[Josh128]

I tried the single red dot test-- it does indeed turn the panel on and you go from a zero voltage state to a minimum luminance state that will glow in a pitch black room. I took a couple shots, one is zoomed in to try to capture the minimum luminance around the dot, the camera still cant do it.



http://i.imgur.com/VgTlU97.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ad8zYY4.jpg

Edit: Try using : Dynamic Contrast> Low, and Black Tone> Darker at a brightness setting of 43. Im also using a Gamma of 0.

Im using the above on my component settings and get the pure blacks, just double checked. You have to be careful when searching for the zero dithering blacks not to set the brightness so low that you will crush blacks. This is more an issue with movie/film content though.

[Kadano]

In response to the OP: Are you honestly happy with 32+ ms lag? I come from the competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee scene and the general consensus here is that anything slower than 16 ms is not to be used for tournaments or serious play because it interferes with players’ reaction times too much.

I always use CRTs because of their speed (670 nanoseconds as established by prad.de’s input lag article) and some of the 31khz++ PC monitors I bought for 7-15€ have amazing picture quality. Especially my Sony GDM-F520 and Philips 109MP. My Panasonic DiamondTron 2070SB is fine too, but its red is less intense. Very minor problem for gaming, though.

My source is a PAL Gamecube with 480p D-Terminal cables modified for RGBHV / VGA output, by the way.

[andykara2003]

It depends what you're using the display for. If you're using it for adventure/platform games like Zelda or Mario Galaxy then it's not too much of an issue for many people. If you're playing competetive games like Smash or games that require precision timing, it goes without saying that you'd need a CRT or a very low lag setup. This is common knowledge around here - people using this forum tend to be very well informed about these things.