Sony XBR960N Pro Mode Or Not

[youth]

Thanks to this forum I got interested in an XBR960N & got one last week along with a Panasonic S77 upconverting DVD player(use Faroudja chip & has HDMI). If anyone is in the Chicago metro area it was only $1490 in store at ABT Electronics. Anyway it's a great TV. Only issues are some minor geometry problems, some interlacing artifacts, & getting use to the Trinitron wires. I was wondering though for those of you that have the set whether you use the Pro Mode or one of the others? Right now I have it set by eye on Standard because Pro Mode seems too dark for animation, but that is the setting highly recommended by avsforum ppl. I suppose what works for live action movies would be different then animation?

[Ty]

I thought it was called "monitor mode" myself, but they may have changed it to say pro mode. Definitely yes, use it, if you care at all about accurate color decoding and greyscale reproduction. The XBR's color reproduction in that mode is good enough that you wouldn't need an ISF calibration done even if you wanted one, so that's a big plus.

By Trinitron wires do you mean the tube's damping wires? I've never seen those visible outside of CRT computer monitors personally.

[youth]

Yea, it's Pro mode now. There is a submenu for color axis with options of default or monitor. I think I'll try pro mode again but adjust the settings because personally the default seems to make anime less vibrant to my eyes.

Yep those damping wires. Kinda strange on the XBR because it has 3 & the middle one is not equally spaced. I wouldn't want them for a computer monitor but not so bad on a TV if you sit far away enough Still with anime you have alot of static light backgrounds that make it noticiable sometimes.

One other thing I was wondering is whether it's better to output 720p or 1080i from the DVD player. The TV would convert the 720p to 1080i still but I've read that Faroudja based players will do more of that video processing(deinterlacing?) they're famous for with 720p then 1080i.

[JeffDM]

I would bet that pro mode is more accurate, despite initially appearing to be less vibrant. A lot of people are more used to "hot" displays because they are common, in part because displays are set to look best under harsh flourescent store lighting. Another part is because TVs almost never get even a cursory tweaking to set them up for their lighting environment.

Phosphors in CRTs, plasmas and even in LCD backlights are generally much better at emitting blue than they are at emitting red, so to brighten an image, they'll just really nail the blue rather than trying to keep them somewhat equal in brightness.

[mulveling]

[ QUOTE ]
youth said:
Yea, it's Pro mode now. There is a submenu for color axis with options of default or monitor. I think I'll try pro mode again but adjust the settings because personally the default seems to make anime less vibrant to my eyes.

Yep those damping wires. Kinda strange on the XBR because it has 3 & the middle one is not equally spaced. I wouldn't want them for a computer monitor but not so bad on a TV if you sit far away enough Still with anime you have alot of static light backgrounds that make it noticiable sometimes.

One other thing I was wondering is whether it's better to output 720p or 1080i from the DVD player. The TV would convert the 720p to 1080i still but I've read that Faroudja based players will do more of that video processing(deinterlacing?) they're famous for with 720p then 1080i.

[/ QUOTE ]
Definitely set the color axis to "monitor" to get rid of the red push. I don't set the video mode to "pro" on mine; I've settled on "movie" mode, color balance "normal", and changed around a few of the default settings from that (bumped up white level a bit and pushed down black level a tad). Probably not as accurate as pro mode but it's what's most pleasing to my eyes and I couldn't care less otherwise.

As for what signal to feed from the DVD player, try sending 480p. The TV can do 480p natively, so there's no artifacts from upscaling/downscaling conversions (720p would be a double conversion). I found 480p to give the most crisp image after trying 720p and 1080i from my Denon 2910. The only weakness of 480p is the faint scan "gaps" between horizontal scanlines. These gaps are invisible in 960i/1080i (and 720p which is converted to 1080i by the TV). From my seating distance of 8-9 feet I don't notice the gaps and the image appears completely smooth. However, the trinitron lines don't bother me either so you may be more sensitive to them. Anyways, it's worth a shot.

[Ty]

You want to set the color axis to "monitor" then. That's what I was thinking of. No red push in that mode, woot!

[youth]

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Xcalibur said:
You want to set the color axis to "monitor" then. That's what I was thinking of. No red push in that mode, woot!

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That was one of the first things I did & VM off. AVSforums also seem to recommend setting the colour temp to warm but to me neutral looks best for all video sources.

As for the DVD output I haven't done any critical comparisions yet but at my viewing distance of about 5 feet I would notice the lower resolution of 480p. The upscaled looks good though save for some interlacing artifacts(that window blind effect in moving scenes?).

[mulveling]

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youth said:
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Xcalibur said:
You want to set the color axis to "monitor" then. That's what I was thinking of. No red push in that mode, woot!

[/ QUOTE ]

That was one of the first things I did & VM off. AVSforums also seem to recommend setting the colour temp to warm but to me neutral looks best for all video sources.

As for the DVD output I haven't done any critical comparisions yet but at my viewing distance of about 5 feet I would notice the lower resolution of 480p. The upscaled looks good though save for some interlacing artifacts(that window blind effect in moving scenes?).

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Ah, that explains it. At 5 feet I can see the 480p scan gaps as well as the Trinitron wires. The wires still wouldn't bother me, but the scan gaps would - I'd be upscaling too.

[Ty]

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youth said:
[ QUOTE ]
Xcalibur said:
You want to set the color axis to "monitor" then. That's what I was thinking of. No red push in that mode, woot!

[/ QUOTE ]

That was one of the first things I did & VM off. AVSforums also seem to recommend setting the colour temp to warm but to me neutral looks best for all video sources.

As for the DVD output I haven't done any critical comparisions yet but at my viewing distance of about 5 feet I would notice the lower resolution of 480p. The upscaled looks good though save for some interlacing artifacts(that window blind effect in moving scenes?).

[/ QUOTE ]

Without a point of reference it can seem that way. 99.9% of the time even with the warm color temp selected the greyscale still measures higher than the 6,500K standard (leaning towards blue). Trust me, the warm temp setting is the most correct one. You just have to trust that really until your eyes adjust to the new look. As long as there's no red push it'll look right once you're used to it. Red push without the blue greyscale to tame it looks quite nasty.