Pioneer PDP4270XD Review

[Colin]

Please discuss the Pioneer PDP4270XD review article here.

[Andy3105]

Hi Colin

I have had some experience of this screen uniformity problem with my 436xde and I thought I would share it with you guys.

Back in April 06 I bought my 436xde and it cost me a small fortune but based on the reviews I had read from other, less well informed sites, and at first I was delighted with it.

I had previously owned a Hitachi 42PD4200 and it wasn't bad but not the best either and my Pioneer provided a major step up in picture quality until, when I was watching football, I noticed some vertical dirty marks on the screen whenever the camera panned from left to right (this was definately not there when I took delivery of the set), at first I thought it was screen burn or image retention but despite my best efforts it never went away.

To cut a very long story short, the panel was in the service centre 3 times and finally after threatening Pioneer with Trading Standards and Watchdog, they agreed to swap out the panel, despite claiming they had never heard of the problem I was experiencing and "no one has ever called about something like this"

2 weeks later the set returned and looked great until something new happened, and this is where I need some help from you guys, whenever the picture pans vertically the picture seems to develop distinct "sections" again I would say it does not look uniform and is only really visible on lightly coloured backgrounds etc.

Do you have any experience of this at all ?

Best regards,

Andy

PS : fantastic site guys, extremely informed reviews for a change !!!

[Colin]

Although I haven't seen a 436xde personally...you seem to be describing the `dirty screen' effect which becomes prominent on panning shots over uniform light/grey background. I saw this on our review model and a Pioneer 507XD at Curry's the other day. (yes I go there for a bit of a laugh) If you look down the TV when it is off from the side and top, the surface looks a little `bumpy'. this wasnt present on our Panny.

Since Pioneer never issued an official statement about this...I don't know anymore than you do. The problem is that you have seen it and so you have to ask yourself if you can live with this.

[Andy3105]

Thanks for the reply Colin,

I tried turning the contrast down to zero like you have on your 7 series settings with the picture mode set to Movie and it seemed to minimise the uniformity issues quite a bit but I found the picture was perhaps a bit too dull and whites seemed more grey than they perhaps should, I noticed this on the end credits of Casino Royale.

After running DVE I "settled" on a contrast setting of +10 and brightness at +3 but I am wondering how I set the greyscale competently and whether I should adjust the colour management settings as well, I di try this but it didn't seem to make a difference when viewing through the DVE colour filters.

I really could do without spending £250+ for ISF Calibration but I want the screen to be as good as it possibly can, do you have any suggestions or tips for using DVE test patterns like the greyscale ramps etc ?

[Colin]

Thanks for reminding me. I would not use the 0 contrast setting for the Pioneer, as mentioned on the review. Looking back at it, we sacrificed too much brightness to achieve the ideal gamma response. I will have this corrected.

The uniformity issue looks physical to me and cannot be corrected with settings, although its effect can be reduced. The fact that it is minimised is that you are getting very little light from the screen in the first place!

If you don't have a colorimeter, then you cannot do this `accurately'. You need to eyeball to ballpark values.

1) Use the manual colour temperature to adjust greyscale. Split the greyscale down the middle, RGB high will affect grey in the upper end, and RGB low will do that for the lower end. If you find this difficult, either set the temperature to the warm preset or try to compare the grey colours between manual and warm preset.

2) DVE colour filters are used for adjusting intensity (colour decoding) on colour bars and NOT greyscale. This is very complicated as you must understand that DVE currently has a SD 601 encoded color bar, so it will only apply to SD calibration. You must also ensure that you output in 576i/p to prevent wrong decoding at the TV end. HD calibration will require a HD 709 colour bar, of course.

Use Colour, Tint controls for colour filter test on colour bar.

Use Colour Management with CIE chart and colorimeter. These values, if changed, can affect the colour filter test and greyscale, so you need to come back and forth.

If this is too much, try my settings over default values in the Pioneer and see which you prefer.

[marquis]

My pdp4270 have the dirty screen effect. I live in canada. Pioneer said they never here about that. I found zero north american forum reporting this. On french and UK forum many peoples report it on pioneer plasma. I asked the store to change my tv. They send technician about every week. One said it's normal. I'm sure it is not. If they cange the tv it will be the third since march 07. The first had pixel problems. I thought pioneer was hight quality...

[supersneak]

This problem is the subject of a protracted thread on another forum. Pioneer have been investigating this for at least 6 months, but recently sent a letter to all complainers, indicating that this was not a fault, but normal for this screen. Pioneer, high quality?
I think not. 

[steven.jhons88]

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