Advanced white balance adjust
This tip might not be of use to most people, because white balance problems are one of the more infrequent complaints from LCD users. There are some people out there though who are heavily into getting the most realistic picture possible and can smell the slightest overemphasised red, green or blue a mile off.
Although I think of myself as a bit of an AV perfectionist, I have to admit I don't normally notice subtle colour problems. But, for the rest of you, here's some info you might appreciate.
Yes, this tip lets you in on the secret that you can actually alter the "Colour Tone" that's selectable in the Picture menu. Is "Cool" too "Cool" for you? Or perhaps "Warm" isn't "warm" enough. Simply enter the service mode (instructions on page one) and enter the new Menu option that's been added. Choose "Service Menu" and from there, choose "White Balance Adj". Select the "COLOR_TONE" you want to edit.
STOP: There is no way to reset these values to their defaults. In fact, I think they are different for every panel. So, WRITE DOWN all six values before you change anything and store them in a warm, safe, dry place!
You'll see that there are six options: two for red, two for green, two for blue. Experts from the AV Forums have explained to me what these options are for. Firstly, Gordon from Convergent AV, who amongst other things distribute Lumagen scalers in the UK:
"Just to add to the bit about the RGB cuts and gains.
These are for adjusting the white balance, not colour. If you do want to play with them...
and it's best not to...then do it while looking at white window patterns NOT colour
bars and filters."
AndrewFee from the AV Forums has some background info on what these do:
"RGB_DRIVE will affect the brighter areas of the picture, like contrast,
and RGB_BKG will
affect the darker areas, like a brightness control for each.
These settings are for greyscale calibration, not adjusting the colour decoder -
if you see too much red in the image, lowering red here may help that, but will have
a much worse effect on the overall image.
I would strongly recommend leaving these
controls as they are unless you have a hardware calibration device."
