Pioneer PDP-428XD ‘colour management’ tips please

[Anonymous]

Hi, I’m booked to calibrate a Pioneer PDP-428XD on Monday. I’ve done plenty of 5090s and 6090s but not an 8th gen Pioneer. I’ll be using ControlCal for this. Having looked through the user manual it seems the 428XD has what Pioneer call ‘Colour Management’. However, on closer inspection it seems to be a simple slider for each primary and secondary colour. With regard to red, for example, the explanation says ” R Closer to yellow’. So is this ‘Colour Management’ merely a Hue adjust function? Given the problems with the so-called CMS in the 9th Gen models is it also advisable to give this ‘Colour Management’ a miss too? Your advice is appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Do you remember the story about pioneer CMS from the class? And how much money they poured into?

REgards

[Anonymous]

Dr. Scott,

The CMS in the 8G/9G Pioneers do more harm than good. Best to avoid (u can move one or 2 notches – but it effects greyscale tracking somewhere, always). There are other problems with the 8G Pioneers as well. Colour space 1 is oversaturated whereas Colour Space 2 is right on the money for Rec709. However, there are colour decoder errors in Colour Space 2 and the linearity and luminance jumps about inside the CIE triangle. Colour Space 1 however, much better colour tracking (both linearity and luminance) inside the CIE triangle and might be a better choice. The best way to fix this is to use a video processor in front of the Pio. I use the Video EQ Pro to calibrate in Colour Space 1. Else u can get good charts in Colour Space 2 but the luminance jumps inside the CIE will be a problem. The other option would be to calibrate to 75% sat, 75% luminance, but u will still have colour errors.

[Anonymous]

Yes, Michael. I remember that well. I couldn’t remember whether it was a particular gen of Pioneers or them all. That’s clear now, thanks.

Thanks Venkatesh. Sounds like it could be an interesting calibration on Monday! No video processor available for this one so I’m not sure which colour space to go for.

[Anonymous]

Generally speaking … color space 2 for the night mode … good mode.

Color space 1 if you decide to dabble with a day mode.

The CMS on the TV is a lot of fun because it is a great way to demonstrate to a client that controls don’t always work the way you think they should. I like to bring up a grayscale step pattern and I turn color and tint up and down to show the client how those controls seem to work right.

SInce the CMS here is a more complex way of doing tint, it should not affect the grayscale at all. But of course it does … and hence it is fun to show the client this. Make him understand that this part is broken … and then tell the story about the $400 that Pioneer put into developing this control. That’s $400 for gen 8 … and $0 for gen 9.

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