Anyone have experience with the Panasonic TH-42BT300U monitor?

[Tony Lorentzen]

Hey guys,

I need a monitor for (p)reviewing footage in full HD in my DIT van and when I need to show stuff to the director and DP. I've been looking at the TH-42BT300U, but it's a little more than I was planning on spending. Anyone who have any experience with it?

http://panasonic.com/business/plasma/TH-42BT300U.asp

Thanks

Tony

[martinnoweck]

tony - no, i haven't looked at it yet but i will hopefully next week. Any thoughts on the sony pvm 2541 (oled)?
best wishes and kind regards,
martin

[David Collard]

Just bought one, but only in the process of hooking it up. To me the price is not expensive compared to similar monitors of the past.
I'm hoping it's the dope since the specifications are terrific.
Of course OLED will blow away all this stuff eventually, but if you're in the business of measurement where HD is concerned
what other product delivers at this price point?

[Tony Lorentzen]

Great David - looking forward to hear what you think.

[Philipe Ratton]

Can you get 10 bit with the hdmi ? And how do you calibrate it ?

[David Collard]

Can you get 10 bit with the hdmi ? And how do you calibrate it ?

Yes for 10 bit HDMI provided you're sending it HDSDI with a 10 bit HDMi compliant cable.
You can use an AJA Hi-5 HDSI to HDMi 10-bit converter.

Tony, haven't put it through its paces yet due to construction on the edit suite.
I'm confident this is going to be "the" monitor for me until OLED/4K takes over.

[David Collard]

Tony,
there's also the new Sony OLED 17" with flicker issue being resolved very soon.
It's around the same budget as the 300U but it might be a better fit for your van.
Also, you could make rental income from renting out the Sony whereas the 42" Panny
would be for your gratification only.
Cheers.

[Philipe Ratton]

Thanks a lot David.
What about hdmi from a decklink extreme 3d ? Does it send a 1O bit signal to the monitor ?
And the calibration part ?
Sorry for all the questions but I'm really interested in this.

[David Collard]

Thanks a lot David.
What about hdmi from a decklink extreme 3d ? Does it send a 1O bit signal to the monitor ?
And the calibration part ?
Sorry for all the questions but I'm really interested in this.

Purportedly the HDMI off the decklink extreme 3D card is 10 bit, but I haven't been able to verify that.
You would think it would have to be with 3D specs/bandwidth but a yellow flag because so many HDMI's are only 8 bit.
Of course you can use the HDSDI out of that card combined with the AJA Hi5 to guarantee 10 bit HDMI into the monitor.

As far as calibrating, the beauty of the 300U is it's presets. Already set up for HD broadcast specs and super close
calibration with manual manipulation too.
Good luck.

[Nathan Pena]

I just had an evaluation model for the weekend, it looks nice, blacks are great, viewing angle awesome, and color seemed accurate with some tweaking. Couple of problems I saw. First was noise especially in the blacks (normal for a plasma), you need to be about 6 feet away from this thing for it to look good, so I don't know how well it would work in a tight van. Second thing was motion artifacts, when sending 1080 24p signal to it with fast motion, seemed pretty rough, they have processing that can be turned on which gets rid of the jutter but gives it a very "video" look like all the new 240hz tvs. The last thing that I think might be the deal breaker, is that when displaying video thats very bright or white, the monitor dims. So if there's a normal scene with some bright spots in it, it looks good, whites are reading about 120 cd/m2, but if its say, someone standing in front of a white cyc, the whites dim down all the way to 48ish cd/m2, so they look grey. I believe this has to do with power management that's in all plasmas, I'm not sure, would love to get an answer myself because that's the main reason right now that I wouldn't be buying one.

Best,

Nate

[David Collard]

It sounds like you have some sort of auto dimming on. Never heard of this dimming issue.

Getting a video look is normal. You could always switch modes after using it for its intended purpose then
get a more film-like look.

Careful with your pronouncements about this monitor. People with actual HD broadcast review credentials have
named it the best plasma they ever seen for color accuracy out of the box. That's it's purpose. Not to be the best pretty picture.

[Ron Reddick]

have had mine about a month, calibration was easy, and the presets are almost spot on. I never did notice a problem with dimming with the unit.

Have mine on the wall behind my edit desk, about 4 feet, and have not noticed any motion artifacts on the unit when viewing 24P footage, for the price point I am very happy, makes a good grading monitor.

Ron

[Nathan Pena]

Yikes, didn't mean to offend anyone, just saying what I saw. And about the dimming, there is no auto dimming, all power save and extended life modes were off. In Resolve, had a high contrast image, dialed up the whites till the screen was 80% white, as you dialed the whites up you could literally see them dim. As for their frame creation mode, they have off, med, or high, would be nice to have a low setting. And to be careful with my pronouncements, had nothing bad to say about color, my main concern is with the whites, and would love to find an answer about that. Have you seen one of these monitors in person?

[Marc Wielage]

I have used the earlier 20-series Panasonic plasmas with Resolve, and never seen a level-changing problem. We had to very carefully go through every single menu setting and make sure all the automatics were off, and then carefully aligned the monitor with the Photo Research Spectroradiometer. I never, ever saw levels change on the Panasonics. I have seen it do a "stepping" thing with gray scales and certain colors, but as far as I know, that's a known issue.

I was told at the last SMPTE show that Panasonic improved the 20 series and basically came up with the 300s as a way of satisfying the higher-end broadcast/mastering/post market. I'd be surprised if these issues are this bad, but I haven't evaluated the monitor yet.

I have definitely seen brightness fluctuations with most of the LCD LED sets out there. (But not Dolby's LCD LED monitor, which is excellent.)

[teo]

I got the 50" BT300 two week ago. Still waiting for calibration probe to arrive to calibrate and get measurement of screen.
Last week I was doing film print form a project graded before plasma arrived on 10bit LCD. Plasma out of the box with some usual brightness/contrast ajustments was impresive! But this is only judged by my eye! Will post you more info what the calibration probe will measure.
I have no idea about 10 bit. BT300 has two options for signal settings, full or video SMTP signal. Can that be threated as 10bit and 8bit mode?
Will post some more when I get the probe.

[Aaron McLane]

Ours is nice. No problems so far

[Nathan Pena]

So after further evaluation I ended up getting the 42" BT300U, after calibration looks pretty darn good, looks much better than the demo unit. Just had it calibrated, its close, but I think color management software and a display lut is definitely going to be necessary to really work 100% off this monitor. Attached is the post calibration report.

[teo]

You can see wrong gamma on you calibration (aprox 2.1) you can get closer to 2.2 with choosing gamma 2.35 under the advanced tab in picture settings. I got better results like this. Than calibration LUT doesn't need to do so much of correction?

[Nathan Pena]

Teo, that's good to know, I'm going to talk to my calibration guy, see if that'll get me closer, not sure if maybe it would be too heavy. Without finer control with a lut and suppose 2.35 gamma is too heavy, would you think it would be better to error on the side of too light 2.1 or heavier 2.3?The thing I was more concerned with was the RGB tracking, as I was noticing that it was a little more desaturated in some reds and magentas that my LCD display that tracked almost perfectly with RGB and gamma.

[teo]

I have heard many times that no display have accurate 2.2 gamma. CRTs can have it even 2.4 LCDs brighter... What kind of probe are you using for calibration? My calibrations and profiling is not precise jet.

[Nathan Pena]

I had David from Avical do it here in LA. He was using a Photo Research PR655. He did my Panasonic BTLH2550 and the post calibration report for that was near perfect, so I assumed that the calibration for the plasma was as close as it gets. I asked him about the gamma issue, he informed me that the plasmas power management negatively the gamma, also the culprit of the dimming of the screen when displaying bright scenes. A known issue that is a result of them trying to meet energy star requirements, panasonic rep said they're working on it but we'll see.

[teo]

Hey Nathan,
this power managment drives me vcrazy. I just can not get any good calibrations out of it jet. Could you send me your settings?

Cheers,
Teo

[Gabriele Turchi]

yep the DIP (the power management thing ) make calibration for plasmas quite hard and not very accurate ...

Nathan , what system you use to profile and create the the LUT ? (and to load teh lUT )

I have the 58PF12th , and i am thinking to get the BT300 for the reason that hopefully is easier to calibrate ...

thanks
g

[Nathan Pena]

Hey Gabriele,

Haven't done a LUT for that monitor yet, just had it calibrated from avical, good enough for the client monitor. But I just recently took mine in to panasonic for an upgrade. They added 16 point rgb tracking which will get you really close, probably wouldn't even need to build a LUT. Worked with the PF12, with the rgb tracking on the new BT300s, there's way more controls to get a good calibration.

Nathan

[Gabriele Turchi]

thanks nathan ,
that sounds promising , i believe that avoiding the LUT , if possible is best .

Did you have to actually bring the 300 at the panasonic tech assistance ? (kind of big to carry around ..)

thanks

g