Panasonic TC-P54V10 Video Settings - Day or Night?

[David]

There seems to be a lot of discussion concerning calibration and day vs. night settings. I am not a Electronic savvy but based on many articles factory settings in most cases do not provide optimum picture quality.
1) Can the TV be calibrated to different settings Day vs. Night and does TV have a light sensor that automatically adjust based on light conditions.
2)CENET provides settings vs. using factory THX settings and based on their review they were able to get maximum performance over THX. I am ordering a 54V10 in the next few weeks and want to make its performance be the talk of the town. I believe I need to use TV THX settings till I achieve 100 – 200 hour break-in period. After break-in, I think my next step is to apply CNET settings however I do not have a constant dark room and know TV will require some adjustment. Should I consider a Calibration HD CD to adjust for light. Do you have any recomendations.

[MrBoylan]

There seems to be a lot of discussion concerning calibration and day vs. night settings. I am not a Electronic savvy but based on many articles factory settings in most cases do not provide optimum picture quality.

On most TVs, factory settings are way off optimum. On the V10, THX gets you exxcellent results, at least in a darkened home theater setting. And yes some additional tweaks can help a bit.

1) Can the TV be calibrated to different settings Day vs. Night and does TV have a light sensor that automatically adjust based on light conditions.

There are no specific ISF presets or separate day/night pre-sets. But since each preset mode can be modified, you can set "Standard" mode for Day, tweak it for best results during day-time viewing and use "Custom" mode for night. Just make sure you write down the picture settings somewhere in case you have a power outage or the TV gets unplugged as the settings may not be remembered after the TV loses power.

The V10 does have an ambient light sensor "C.A.T.S." (Contast Auto Tracking System) which is on by default, but can be disabled in the Picture settings menu. It does do a reasonable job of adjusting the image to compensate for ambient lighting, but I personally usually disable these while testing, so it does not contribute anything (good or bad) toward the calibrated image.

2)CENET provides settings vs. using factory THX settings and based on their review they were able to get maximum performance over THX. I am ordering a 54V10 in the next few weeks and want to make its performance be the talk of the town. I believe I need to use TV THX settings till I achieve 100 – 200 hour break-in period. After break-in, I think my next step is to apply CNET settings however I do not have a constant dark room and know TV will require some adjustment. Should I consider a Calibration HD CD to adjust for light. Do you have any recomendations.

The CNET settings should be good though there are sometimes minor variations from set to set that can impact performance a little. Assuming you don't want to buy pro calibration gear which costs several thousand bucks, or even SpyderTV Pro, which goes for several hundred, then yes, a calibration disc like AVIA II, DVE or the Spears and Munsil Blu-ray test disc can be useful in setting picture controls. But without the colorimeter or light measurement tool, you're never going to get the absolute top performance (highest accuracy) out of the set.

If you *really* want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the set then pay a professional ISF calibrator to come to your house to set it up and educate you on how to use your set-up menus (which can be a bit complicated, even for us prefessionals).

You can find local calibrators on ISF's web site:

Imaging Science

But don't obsess over it too much. I've had a V10 in my living room for about 2 months and people are blown away by it even when it's in Standard mode with only basic adjustments. It's an excellent television, only made excellenter by proper calibration and control over ambient lighting.

A couple of good calibration/test discs:

• Amazon.com: Spears & Munsil High-Definition Benchmark Blu-ray Disc Edition [Blu-ray]: Stacey Spears, Don Munsil: Movies & TV
• Amazon.com: Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics [Blu-ray]: Joe Kane: Movies & TV

-CB