madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[SamuriHL]

I doubt we even see a worthwhile change to video formats in 10 years. 4K HDR is good enough to provide basically a theater quality presentation of a film.

We can barely get that going mainstream. 4K is still considered a niche format, even on streaming services. The numbers I saw yesterday are painfully low in terms of 4k adoption. So either they'll skip 4k for the next biggest thing (8k, 16k who the hell knows) or we're going to be stuck here while the infrastructure and content catch up to the fact that almost every TV sold now is 4K, even in the sub-200 USD market. And even if they do go 8K, your 30x0 series will handle that up to 8K60 so really, I agree with your assessment. I can't do the same (with windows 10) because I use it for other things but I think your assessment is spot on. I mean, is Envy going to get upgraded with every new piece of hardware that comes out in the next 10 years? I doubt they'll even adopt the 40x0 cards any time soon. For this use case, yea, get it working and leave it alone.

[huhn]

how do you sell hardware with parts you can't get 3080 will be gone in a year maybe even in the next couple of months.

4k is also very niche in it's use case not everyone can justify or enjoy a siting distance to benefit from it 1080 will do just fine.
of cause they will not stops trying to sell 8k devices but good luck with that.

[SamuriHL]

I'm sure they have some kind of supplier contract for those cards. But given the power and heat requirements for the 40x0 series cards, I can't see Envy adopting that without a major case redesign. I suspect that's not happening any time soon if ever.

Well, the consumer may not care but good luck buying a non-4K TV at this point. You actually have to work at it. The law of consumer saturation means that eventually they may care even if they don't right now. I agree with the GLWT aspect of trying to push 8K. One thing that could get me off the couch to upgrade to a higher res is if they did glasses free 3D 16k (8k per eyeball lol) but that's not coming any time soon. I'm happy with my LG G2 OLED for now. I'll replace that when we can get more of the BT.2020 spectrum and higher NIT output (yes I know, not everyone wants that...I don't care what everyone else wants, I want less tone mapping my life to make things like madvr less necessary over time). Until then, I'm happy with my C8 in the bedroom and G2 in the living room giving me a very theater like experience.

[SirMaster]

how do you sell hardware with parts you can't get 3080 will be gone in a year maybe even in the next couple of months.



I can buy a 8800 GTX from 2006, 16 years ago...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/293175285096

Why wouldn't I be able to buy a 3080 several years from now it I needed another one for some reason, or at least some 3060-3090 GPU which would be plenty for madVR 4K HDR for the foreseeable future.

[huhn]

and you put that in a device the price of a car?
my comment is about the envy.

[mzso]

System restore is not drastic or blind, and sure.. waste your time. If it's not possible then you should enable it, this is the entire reason it exists.



Not sure if related but if I switch subs multiple times in a row I had MPC-BE freeze and was easily duplicated, I'm using Masaiki's xy.

It sure as hell is drastic, It restores a crapload of things in hopes one particular thing is fixed. And completely blind because you can't identify what was the cause of the problem. So why wouldn't it happen again?

Besides, as the issue was pointed out it's clear that system restore wouldn't have done anything but waste my time.

[SirMaster]

and you put that in a device the price of a car?
my comment is about the envy.

No, all I was saying is that I could see myself using Beta 113 for another 10 years.

Shouldn't be hard to have a working setup as I can keep using Windows 10 offline with an older GPU that uses older drivers that don't have any bugs with Beta 113.

[Siso]

No, all I was saying is that I could see myself using Beta 113 for another 10 years.

Shouldn't be hard to have a working setup as I can keep using Windows 10 offline with an older GPU that uses older drivers that don't have any bugs with Beta 113.

Why not beta 112?

[SirMaster]

Why not beta 112?

Why would I use 112? 113 is the last version that doesn't expire.

I have been using it since it released like 2 years ago and it has been working really well.

[ryrynz]

It sure as hell is drastic.

Cool story, you do know you can undo it if it doesn't fix the issue right? Update us in a few months when you find out what caused it or with details of your new build, since you're obviously interested in wasting not only your own time but also others'. Seems quite clearly a personal system issue with little evidence to it being a problem specifically with madVR, nobody else is experiencing this issue but complain away.

[mrbinky]

Why would I use 112? 113 is the last version that doesn't expire.

I have been using it since it released like 2 years ago and it has been working really well.

Is it still possible to get it? At least that might be better than using version 17.

[mrbinky]

Is it still possible to get it? At least that might be better than using version 17.

I found it.

[mrbinky]

I found it.

And...madVR effectively stopped working after I installed it. Frame rate dropped to zero. No idea why or how to fix it.

So, I put back version 17, and all is well, again.

And this is why I don't mess with any madVR beta versions. Never had good luck with them.

There will never be another non-beta version again. This makes me very sad. I'm really going to miss madVR when it finally stops working with my hardware and/or software.

[ryrynz]

And...madVR effectively stopped working after I installed it. Frame rate dropped to zero. No idea why or how to fix it.




Could be your config. Try it without your profile after backing up. If it works load your settings back in manually.

[Siso]

Why would I use 112? 113 is the last version that doesn't expire.

I have been using it since it released like 2 years ago and it has been working really well.

SM is broken in 113.

[Celio1080p]

Hey there everyone, it's me again.
The guy who could not play 4/60 well
on my 3070.
Anyway, i found the problem.
It was because in the Nvidia Control Panel
I set 60 fps as a limit in global profile.
Anyway, to fix it, all i had to do was to create
a profile for my player
MPC-BE x64
And set no fps limit.
Thank you everyone, sorry my english.

[SirMaster]

SM is broken in 113.

Never used it and I don't see why I ever would.

It causes ghosting artifacts during motion.

I've always used plain 23.975Hz

[mzso]

Cool story, you do know you can undo it if it doesn't fix the issue right? Update us in a few months when you find out what caused it or with details of your new build, since you're obviously interested in wasting not only your own time but also others'. Seems quite clearly a personal system issue with little evidence to it being a problem specifically with madVR, nobody else is experiencing this issue but complain away.

I'd like to point out Mr. Write-only that someone already identified the madVR issue...

[Siso]

Never used it and I don't see why I ever would.

It causes ghosting artifacts during motion.

I've always used plain 23.975Hz

You won't get these ghosting artifacts if you are on 120hz.

[SirMaster]

You won't get these ghosting artifacts if you are on 120hz.

Why would you use smooth motion for a 120Hz display?

120Hz is exactly 5x24Hz 4x30Hz, and 2x60hz

"Smooth Motion is designed to display content where the source framerate does not match up to any of the refresh rates that your display supports. For example, that would be 25/50fps content on a 60Hz-only display, or 24p content on a 60Hz-only display."

So unless you are trying to play 25fps or 50fps content, but even then the 120Hz display should support 50Hz or 100Hz mode as well.

Only time I see a use case for smooth motion option is when using a display that does not support a refresh rate that is a multiple of the content frame rate.

[flossy_cake]

The recent madVR crashing issue which we encountered, suggests otherwise.

Yes that appears to be a bug introduced by madshi's update nag screen, which only occurs in the beta version of madvr?

Disappointing if true, since there should never be any nag screens in madvr (I've never had one in final stable public version). I almost put a nag screen in an app once but came to my senses and realised how morally wrong that would have been.


No reason to switch away from Windows 10 on my HTPC, just keep it firewalled off the Internet after 2025 or so.

So this means that Windows 10 STILL can't be reliably configured to disable updates? I'm still living in the stone age here (Windows 7) so I don't know what the current situation is with Windows 10. Isn't there like some Enterprise build or something that can be configured to disable updates?

Why would you use smooth motion for a 120Hz display?
120Hz is exactly 5x24Hz 4x30Hz, and 2x60hz

It's because they couldn't successfully tune their 120hz mode to be very close to 120/1.001, so they end up with a dropped/repeated frame every n minutes, so instead of that they would rather have blended frames if they aren't noticeable to them.

[ryrynz]

So this means that Windows 10 STILL can't be reliably configured to disable updates?

Updates can be disabled perfectly fine.

[SirMaster]

So this means that Windows 10 STILL can't be reliably configured to disable updates?

It doesn't mean that. It means that Windows 10 eventually stops receiving security updates and would not be advisable to connect it to the Internet after that point.

[mrbinky]

Could be your config. Try it without your profile after backing up. If it works load your settings back in manually.

Thanks, that would probably fix it.

I'm just wondering if it's worth doing, given that I've used version 17 since it was released and it seems to work. I'm not familiar enough with any of the beta releases to know if I'm missing out on any useful functionality.

Regardless what the product is, I've always ignored beta releases and waited until stable releases before installing an upgrade. I've done the same with madVR and so far never had any reason to regret that policy. But knowing that Madshi will never again release another stable version of his software does change things a bit.

[SamuriHL]

If you use HDR tone mapping in madvr, then yes, you are missing out by skipping the betas. Otherwise, no, not really other than a couple misc bugs that have been fixed.

[thighhighs]

Regardless what the product is, I've always ignored beta releases and waited until stable releases before installing an upgrade. I've done the same with madVR and so far never had any reason to regret that policy. But knowing that Madshi will never again release another stable version of his software does change things a bit.
Just to clarify.
madshi said don't hack the madVR. Do not sell HTPC based on madVR. Otherwise, madVR will end for everyone :devil: Also, he's busy.
But this does not mean that there will never be updates. madVR: I Want to Believe :D

[flossy_cake]

If you use HDR tone mapping in madvr, then yes, you are missing out by skipping the betas.

Missing out on what, exactly? Can you show me in a screenshot how I am "missing out". I've got mine set to tone map HDR to SDR using BT.2390 - is this not ideal? What is ideal tone mapping from HDR to SDR? Or are you talking about HDR to HDR tone mapping? What is your target curve and why? Why should I desire that curve? What is the "correct" way of displaying HDR on a display that cannot physically match the peak brightness demanded by the source file? Again, you say I am "missing out" as if there is some good thing that I cannot attain. I want to know what this is.

[Alexkral]

Missing out on what, exactly? Can you show me in a screenshot how I am "missing out". I've got mine set to tone map HDR to SDR using BT.2390 - is this not ideal? What is ideal tone mapping from HDR to SDR? Or are you talking about HDR to HDR tone mapping? What is your target curve and why? Why should I desire that curve? What is the "correct" way of displaying HDR on a display that cannot physically match the peak brightness demanded by the source file? Again, you say I am "missing out" as if there is some good thing that I cannot attain. I want to know what this is.

Exactly, I would like to know that too. I think this is comparable to what madshi was saying about NGU sharp levels, that you only notice the difference in some specific frames with a lot of edges.

I think that BT.2390 tone mapping, even static, is perfectly valid in most situations, and in fact it's what I've been using for a long time.

[huhn]

tone mapping is not properly defined. is very open for interpretation and that's the issue there is no correct way.

[SamuriHL]

Exactly. Tone mapping is like the wild west. To explain how the beta builds have improved from the last stable build isn't really possible, however. Many many options have been added/ changed over the years that it's been worked on, all to make tone mapping better and provide an image that's closer to what you'd theoretically get on a 10000 nit display. Right now they're working on which luminance method is better. If you really want to know what improvements there are over whatever you're using now, you've got two options. Go try it for yourself, starting with settings you can find from people in the avs thread and tweaking them. Or read the several hundred posts over the last several years to see how it's evolved. No one can definitively tell you how it'll be better for your specific equipment and viewing environment. Nor are they going to be able to give you some magic settings that just work. The beta builds require effort but the result is a much more dynamic tone mapping solution that gets us closer to the end goal of emulating a theoretical perfect display on consumer equipment that is far from ideal.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

[mrbinky]

Exactly, I would like to know that too. I think this is comparable to what madshi was saying about NGU sharp levels, that you only notice the difference in some specific frames with a lot of edges.

I think that BT.2390 tone mapping, even static, is perfectly valid in most situations, and in fact it's what I've been using for a long time.
I've always had HDR mapping set to "let madVR decide what's best." I always assumed that whatever Madshi programmed madVR to do was better than what someone with no understanding of HDR tone mapping (me) could manage.

Is that not a fair assumption? What does the software actually do when you tell it to "decide what's best?"

[SamuriHL]

I want you all to think about the premise of what you're asking for just a minute.

Hundreds of posts and 165 beta builds dedicated to improving dynamic hdr tone mapping, a 15k dollar video processing box released with the fruits of that work to make it easy to use, and you believe that static tone mapping or "letting madvr decide" in an old build is going to somehow look the same?

There is a large amount of picture quality to be gained by taking the time to learn how to configure and use the beta builds. But it takes effort and work. If you want easy to use, buy an envy. That's an opinionated view of all the settings that have been added to madvr over the years. Do you think he can charge over 10 grand for an envy to provide the image quality of static tone mapping? You can get the same image quality using the beta builds, but the tradeoff for getting something for free is the learning curve and accepting that the beta builds expire.

What i use for settings on a 900 nit oled is most likely not going to help someone with a 50 nit projector. That's why there's a learning curve. But in the avs thread you can likely find a base set of settings that are close to what you have for equipment that you can use as a starting point. It takes time and effort.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

[Alexkral]

Well, I own a STAX SR 009. Of course it's amazing, and without a doubt the best headphone I've ever heard. But the price difference to let's say a Sennheiser HD800 is hardly justifiable. And if, for example, you value the soundstage more than other features, you better stay with the Senns.

So here it is similar, the betas are using multiple settings and processing to get the most detail and luminance in the highlights. But you can get the same luminance simply by using the static BT.2390 with the original roll-off. And the difference in detail isn't usually very noticeable unless you're comparing screenshots.

In any case, I admit that I'm probably oversimplifying the matter, and that the differences can be more noticeable depending on the use case.

[SirMaster]

IMO tone-mapping on even beta 113 is significantly improved over the last non-beta release from 2018 or whenever it was.

I mean the non-beta release doesn't even have dynamic tone-mapping.

There's no reason anyone using madVR can't use at least beta 113 or 112b if you want to use smooth motion option.


Just drop the beta files on top and that's it. I have never seen any issue with 113 over the last non-beta.

[SamuriHL]

Yea that's a fair point, SirMaster. While obviously there's been a ton of improvement since 113, that at least gets you in the game with dynamic tone mapping which was really a very large improvement. Certainly noticeable without having to compare screenshots when looking at static tone mapping. But it all depends on what your goal is. If what you get now is "good enough" I'd question why you're even bothering with madvr at all at this point. Other solutions that are being updated to fix things like issues with Windows and driver updates would be far easier to manage. It's why I have two configurations in JRiver MC myself, one for "just work" and one for "I want the best quality I can get". One is madvr, one is not. I can switch between them in 30 seconds so it's not really an issue. At 900 nits, tone mapping for the majority of content (that's mastered to 1000 nits) is minimal at best. I only see improvements with 4000+ nit content when using madvr. But those with far less nits to play with, I can tell you, dynamic tone mapping in madvr matters, and it's not invisible. But there's really no need to take my, or anyone else's, word for it. Go try it.

[flossy_cake]

I suppose most people would agree that soft clipping is preferable to hard clipping?

And a method which minimises delta error in the soft clipping region is better than one which doesn't?

For still photos I can see this could be objectively superior, if it minimises delta error compared to the reference display.

But for video where the histogram is constantly changing, you could have a scene where a bright object appears on screen for a few seconds and the tone mapping for the lower section would have to change to accommodate this until the bright object leaves the scene. This could result in "brightness pops" or "dynamic gamma" type effect which could be subjectively undesirable. Perhaps this could be worked around by using a hysteresis characteristic to very gradually latch to the new scene tone mapping to avoid these noticeable fluctuations.

I guess I need to read up on how BT.2390's tone mapping works. If it just uses something like rolling off the RGB channels then that will produce some big hue and saturation deltas compared to other methods.

[SamuriHL]

And that's what people who've looked at this topic a lot have found exactly, hue and saturation problems. Madvr handles the "brightness pop" issue by reading ahead a few frames (I'm VASTLY oversimplifying some very technical things that madshi built into his dynamic tone mapping) to handle those kinds of transitions and there are options to tweak the sensitivity (I guess that's a bad word for it) to those changes. But static tone mapping definitely has hue and saturation challenges that they're working on right now in madvr's tone mapping. Having custom curve ability in madvr has solved some of that. They used a custom curve editor built into madvr to work through finding the "best" curves of which there's a lot of selection in there now. Eventually they plan on narrowing that down to a couple of the best ones. So all of these issues are what they've been working on for the past several years and why madvr brings a ton of quality to the table over other solutions.

[SirMaster]

But for video where the histogram is constantly changing, you could have a scene where a bright object appears on screen for a few seconds and the tone mapping for the lower section would have to change to accommodate this until the bright object leaves the scene. This could result in "brightness pops" or "dynamic gamma" type effect which could be subjectively undesirable. Perhaps this could be worked around by using a hysteresis characteristic to very gradually latch to the new scene tone mapping to avoid these noticeable fluctuations.

I guess I need to read up on how BT.2390's tone mapping works. If it just uses something like rolling off the RGB channels then that will produce some big hue and saturation deltas compared to other methods.

This is all literally what madshi has been fine tuning and tweaking for years with the madVR betas and 165 builds of them.

It's getting very, very good at this point. Yes things are constantly adjusting dynamically to compensate, but in ways that are not seemingly distracting or with noticeable artifacts.

[SirMaster]

At 900 nits, tone mapping for the majority of content (that's mastered to 1000 nits) is minimal at best. I only see improvements with 4000+ nit content when using madvr. But those with far less nits to play with, I can tell you, dynamic tone mapping in madvr matters, and it's not invisible. But there's really no need to take my, or anyone else's, word for it. Go try it.

Yeah, 900 nits is a whole different story than my 75 nits heh.

The difference between madVR "stable release" and beta 113 is quite large, and the difference between 113 and 165 is certainly noticeable, but it's more of a refinement at this point.

But anyone who is using tone mapping on projectors should at least be using beta 112b/113.

[flossy_cake]

But static tone mapping definitely has hue and saturation challenges that they're working on right now in madvr's tone mapping. Having custom curve ability in madvr has solved some of that. They used a custom curve editor built into madvr to work through finding the "best" curves of which there's a lot of selection in there now.

From what I learned a few years ago, the luminance of a colour can be isolated from its hue and saturation, so the curve could be applied only to the luminance component, thus avoiding significant hue and saturation shifts. But I read that the L component in HSL, B component in HSB, and Y component in YUV aren't accurate measures of luminance. But I seem to recall the L in Lab is accurate so that could be used. But then I read elsewhere that the a and b components aren't accurate measures of hue and saturation, so I'm not sure how curving the L channel would play along with leaving the a and b components unaltered. Here (https://colorizer.org/) we can fiddle around with sliders and see how different models interpret the meaning of luminance.

[mrbinky]

Thanks to everyone on this thread. I am starting to vaguely understand why HDR tone mapping is useful. Honestly, I had no idea, before.

I mostly watch compressed content that needs to be upscaled, and that's why I originally sought out and installed madVR, all those years ago.

Today, I still make do with my old 1080P Panasonic Plasma TV (P60VT60.) I assume the NITS are pretty low, especially given its age. It was a good TV when I bought it, but rubbish compared to what's available today.

Its getting to it's replacement age. So, from what I've reading here, if I get a good, modern TV capable of HDR and high peak NITS, then I'll be fine if my software is less capable in tone mapping, as long as the software does a good job upscaling. Is that a fair statement?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last released version of madVR does an excellent job of upscaling, right?

What should my target peak NITS be? I guess 1,000 is the minimum, but should I really aim higher?

[ashlar42]

Just to clarify.
madshi said don't hack the madVR. Do not sell HTPC based on madVR. Otherwise, madVR will end for everyone :devil: Also, he's busy.
But this does not mean that there will never be updates. madVR: I Want to Believe :D

I agree with you. People complain about JRiver price and then complain about a nag message that appears once every few months. We're using for free software that has costed madshi I can't imagine how many hundreds of hours of work.

I choose to hope that there will be a paid for HTPC supported version once Envy has hit its major targets. If not, it will have been a hell of a free ride.

[ashlar42]

What i use for settings on a 900 nit oled
Have new settings to share for fellow beta users who don't complain about nag screens and expiration dates? :D

:thanks:

[SamuriHL]

Yeah, 900 nits is a whole different story than my 75 nits heh.

The difference between madVR "stable release" and beta 113 is quite large, and the difference between 113 and 165 is certainly noticeable, but it's more of a refinement at this point.

But anyone who is using tone mapping on projectors should at least be using beta 112b/113.

Yea I completely agree with that. Those refinements are very nice but that's where the differences start to become diminishing returns, no question.

From what I learned a few years ago, the luminance of a colour can be isolated from its hue and saturation, so the curve could be applied only to the luminance component, thus avoiding significant hue and saturation shifts. But I read that the L component in HSL, B component in HSB, and Y component in YUV aren't accurate measures of luminance. But I seem to recall the L in Lab is accurate so that could be used. But then I read elsewhere that the a and b components aren't accurate measures of hue and saturation, so I'm not sure how curving the L channel would play along with leaving the a and b components unaltered. Here (https://colorizer.org/) we can fiddle around with sliders and see how different models interpret the meaning of luminance.

This gets into far more than I understand about the entire process, but, trust me when I say the people doing the majority of testing and certainly madshi are quite well aware of all that and are implementing things in madvr to handle it. That's why there's about a bazillion and a half options right now. Madshi wants to remove a bunch of them, but until the testers agree on "simple things" like which luminance method to use and what the parameters should be, well, we have a million and a half ways to configure madvr making it rather challenging. But, the end result picture is worth a thousand words for sure. In the AVS thread, Javs has been posting some comparisons between different methods recently that might shed some light (hehe) on the differences in later builds.


Its getting to it's replacement age. So, from what I've reading here, if I get a good, modern TV capable of HDR and high peak NITS, then I'll be fine if my software is less capable in tone mapping, as long as the software does a good job upscaling. Is that a fair statement?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last released version of madVR does an excellent job of upscaling, right?

What should my target peak NITS be? I guess 1,000 is the minimum, but should I really aim higher?

For the MAJORITY of content out there (at least so far), 1000 nits is ideal. Because then tone mapping will be limited if not completely eliminated for most content. However, when you get to 4000 nit or higher content, then tone mapping becomes important regardless of what display you have (at least with today's displays). Then you'll want madvr to tone map to 1000 nits (or whatever your peak nits for your display actually is...mine's ~880 nits). That will be your best picture quality.

Have new settings to share for fellow beta users who don't complain about nag screens and expiration dates? :D

:thanks:

Not recent stuff, no. It's been a while since I've tweaked anything in madvr. And I'd hold off for a few days anyway as I know a new madvr beta build is coming with luminance algo changes so the settings are going to change again soon. I'm sure people will post their preferred settings once that happens.

[mrbinky]

For the MAJORITY of content out there (at least so far), 1000 nits is ideal. Because then tone mapping will be limited if not completely eliminated for most content. However, when you get to 4000 nit or higher content, then tone mapping becomes important regardless of what display you have (at least with today's displays). Then you'll want madvr to tone map to 1000 nits (or whatever your peak nits for your display actually is...mine's ~880 nits). That will be your best picture quality.

I guess when I originally got my TV, it was pretty much able to handle the majority of content I watched at that time.

In another 10 years, I'll probably be able to buy a 4000 peak NIT display. Or, maybe that won't be a concern. My TV can do 3d and I even had some glasses for it. No idea where they are, now.

[Sunspark]

Today, I still make do with my old 1080P Panasonic Plasma TV (P60VT60.) I assume the NITS are pretty low, especially given its age. It was a good TV when I bought it, but rubbish compared to what's available today.


Is it really rubbish? Plasma was always very good at fast motion and black levels.

[ryrynz]

Is it really rubbish? Plasma was always very good at fast motion and black levels.Had one. Solid TV for blu-ray and DVD quality content.

[huhn]

a plasma is loosing CR by aging so yeah they can turn utterly crappy.
and black levels by black clipping is also not the way to go...
real CR was only in the 2k-10k range(when new) because they take a long time to truly turn the pixel of. a modern VA panel has similar or more ANSI CR.
then there is rainbowing and the persistence wasn't all that good too.
plasma had brightness issue too some couldn't do bt 709 (also when new).

judging by todays standard not when they where relevant. and pretty much the negatives only.

[SamuriHL]

I guess when I originally got my TV, it was pretty much able to handle the majority of content I watched at that time.



In another 10 years, I'll probably be able to buy a 4000 peak NIT display. Or, maybe that won't be a concern. My TV can do 3d and I even had some glasses for it. No idea where they are, now.My panny plasma is in a spare room and I have all 6 sets of my 3d glasses still. I moved to 4k oled back in 2018 and have zero regrets. Technology unfortunately doesn't stand still.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using Tapatalk

[flossy_cake]

a plasma is loosing CR by aging so yeah they can turn utterly crappy.

Yeah my Samsung suffered from that, but it could be restored to near factory condition by tweaking the potentiometers Vs Vsc Yrr on the back panel. It was mostly the white field uniformity that bothered me - the black level stayed put at around 0.05.

I seem to vaguely recall the VT60 Panasonic was capped at something like 100nits in Cinema mode, but had much lower ABL in that mode as well. I was never a big Panasonic plasma fan despite having bought many of them over the years. It was more like a "lesser of 2 evils" situation. I only have the Samsung plasma cause I gave up on trying to attain perfect picture quality and just bought the lowest bottom of the range model for the cheapest price - cheap and cheerful. Then bought a Panasonic OLED and didn't like that either and sold it. I think it's Panasonic's video processing that I'm allergic to, but my track record shows I keep going back for more.