Panasonic TC-39AS530U severe ghosting?

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Koloth
Posts: 2
Joined: 17 Apr 2014, 23:01

Panasonic TC-39AS530U severe ghosting?

Post by Koloth » 18 Apr 2014, 00:12

I recently purchased one of the new 39" Panasonic displays in no small part due to the advertised native 120Hz refresh rate and the attention (that their ad department at least) they gave to reducing ghosting via backlight blinking. The TV is connected to an HTPC which I use for TV and some gaming and I have noticed that there is extremely severe ghosting in both activities. When I checked, the computer had defaulted to only a 30Hz refresh rate, which I then increased to 60Hz hoping it would solve the issue (it did not). I further attempted to increase it to the claimed native 120Hz using your directions, but any refresh rate over 60Hz was not accepted by Windows (black screen). Eventually, I remembered that I hooked up my TV with a DVI to HDMI converter, so that is a no go until I upgrade the graphics card.

I have disabled all interpolation and other on-device post processing I could find since I'm essentially using it as a monitor (although just to be thorough I reset them to defaults and the ghosting is still evident). Here is a video taken using the slow-motion mode on my iPhone where the ghosting problem can be seen at about 38 or 39 seconds in fairly accurately. My primary use is through my HTPC, but for completeness I have checked over the air TV and it has the same issue. Putting this same recording on a flash drive and playing it through the TV exhibits the same issue. Gaming also shows the ghosting quite strongly so it is not restricted to just action TV, but anything with significant motion.

I've played around with the various tests on testufo.com and I can report the following things. I was initially experiencing fairly serious PWM artifacts (which increasing brightness fixed) however it did not eliminate the observed problem when watching actual video. The chase test with all default settings looks as described with a separation of 82 pixels. There is noticeable yellowing on the moving inversion patterns test with the moving checkerboard, and flashing on the inversion uniformity test.

Does anyone else own this TV and have any of these issues, or more hopefully solutions to these problems! Does it sound like I got a dud (in terms of ghosting) or is that the way this TV is? I couldn't find an explicit "game mode" in the TV settings.

On the bright side, I really like the TV color, brightness, picture quality, etc. However the ghosting really bothers me!

[Edited to add additional info.]

Koloth
Posts: 2
Joined: 17 Apr 2014, 23:01

Re: Panasonic TC-39AS530U severe ghosting?

Post by Koloth » 19 Apr 2014, 22:54

Just to leave a trail for anyone else considering purchasing one of the Panasonic AS530 series I thought I'd post an update on how things turned out for me. The problem persisted throughout all of my modification of settings and input methods. Eventually, I copied a test clip that I knew showed the issue (the segment of Agents of SHIELD that I showed above) to a flash drive and brought it to Best Buy. I tested the clip on their 55" AS530 display model and it showed the same severe ghosting---the problem seems to affect the whole line. I returned mine and purchased a Sony KDL-40W600B (the 40" they sold which showed the least ghosting in our testing). Alas not a high refresh rate set, but it does support motionflow (although since the TV does not have a high refresh rate its use is limited).

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