500X2 crushing black and clipping white

[Basil Plumley]

Having just attended the THX video technicians level I & II in London, I decided to finally calibrate my projector - a Mitsibushi HC5000.  When I had finally got it to an acceptable standard, I sat down to watch a film via my 500X2 (Man On A Ledge) - and the picture was  - unwatchable.  I tried other sources and everything seemd fine - I ran my signal generator through the input on my AVR that my 500X2 is using and that too was fine.  However, the picture itself was unwatchable - dark scenes were totally destroyed with no detail at all and all shadow had dissapeared.  White was also non existant and the picture was devoid of all punch and dynamism.  Of course, I tried some reference material on the X2 that I knew inside out and that to was destroyed.  So I downloaded the MP4 version of AVS709 and placed it on an SD card and played back the black and white level setting patterns from it and it confirmed what I thought - black was crushed to being non visible and white wasn't visible much above 70% stimulus...the only way I could get them right was to adjust the video settings on the Mede8er itself - and it only needed 3 clicks up on the black level and 2 down on the white.  Again, this raised alarm bells - each notch on the video adjust gives the same amount of adjustment of three notches on my projector - so it's not very forgiving.  Those of you that are interested in re-producing what the director intended via your Mede8ers may want to download the AVS709 pattern from the AVS forum and adjust your black levels in particular to get what you desire.

[jer1956]

I don't use the box settings for exactly that reason.  The white level at 25 is almost 100%..so if you raise it by more than 2 all that can happen is more  and more grey level turn to  white.   It's ok for reducing contrast.

I set up my TV using my primary source...my Sat box. It has no video controls...it has to be done via the TV. Once the TV is setup that way I find all other sources (which might have their own  video controls) work correctly at the default settings.

[Basil Plumley]

I don't use the box settings for exactly that reason.  The white level at 25 is almost 100%..so if you raise it by more than 2 all that can happen is more  and more grey level turn to  white.   It's ok for reducing contrast.

I set up my TV using my primary source...my Sat box. It has no video controls...it has to be done via the TV. Once the TV is setup that way I find all other sources (which might have their own  video controls) work correctly at the default settings.

To get correct black and white levels, I had to raise brightness by 3 clicks (which almost raised it too high) and lower the contrast by 4 clicks.  This was when viewing on a display calibrated to THX levels.  The old theory on white levels not going above 235 has gone out the window now.  You raise white levels until just before they clip the white with no visible colour shift and no eye fatigue...on a projector this should not read over 16ft lb at 100% stimulus - but on my Mitsibushi, I'm lucky if I get 6 foot lamberts but the picture is still very watchable.
The point of this post is this - if you have calibrated your display using one of the test discs or any other known method, the mede8er settings out of the box are not the same as the calibrated display and need to be alterted.  Both my 400 and 500X2's crushed black to no existent - but I didn't know because my display had never been set correctly before...I thought it had, but I was wrong.