Need help with green tint

[ElwoodJD]

I've been a lurker on High Def Digest for some time, but have decided to finally post because I've got this nagging problem. The television I am working with is a Westinghouse 32" 720p LCD, Model # SK-32H240S. I am playing HD-DVDs through an Xbox 360 add-on, connected with the official Microsoft component cables.

When watching HD-DVDs, I usually see in darker scenes that the shadowy or dark areas have an sickly green/yellow tint. Usually in the darker scenes, the skin tones on faces look slightly yellow, as if the characters had a nasty disease. I have tried literally adjusting each of my TV's settings: brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, and sharpness. None of them have had much affect. I have read that the problem may be with the grayscaler of the television, but I couldn't find any threads or articles on my particular television related to this problem so I am not sure. I have tried adjusting the red up in the RGB, as I read might be a solution, with no positive results. I ordered DVE off amazon yesterday so it should be here soon, and I hope that it'll give me some test patterns that I can use to find out the problem.

The really annoying thing is, I don't even think its the TV, because I have a PS3 which I just got because of the Warner news and as a gamer I decided to pick it up for some of the few upcoming exclusives (hopefully they will be better than this last batch) and to get some of those BDs I hadn't been able to enjoy (read: Casino Royale). It's connected with an HDMI cable, and the problem is much less pronounced. Cable and OTA television seem unaffected. I have copied the default settings my TV had for the PS3 input, into the Xbox Inputs Settings, but it was definitely not fixing the problem. I have checked to make sure that the the component cables were plugged into the correct RGB.

Any thoughts or suggestions anyone has on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[Brahma]

Ohh you know what.. check your cabling.. somtimes those component cables are loose, and being analog they will easily mess with your picture.

ITs the first thing I would check if you haven't already done so..2nd if you have done that, use the original cables and see if it happens then.

[mmmmDoNut]

Get you a copy of digital video essentials and calibrate your TV. Believe me the Westinghouses definetely need to be calibrated. I've got a 37" I game on and had a friend over who has a 42" and was amazed at how much better my picture looked compared to his.

[ElwoodJD]

Checked the cables, unplugged, replugged, tried a different Component Input on the television as well, and no luck. I did receive Digital Video Essentials today from Amazon, and am about to go give that a try...Will post results following that. Thanks for the suggestions so far!

[ElwoodJD]

Well, after running Digital Video Essentials, learning a few things I didn't know, and calibrating the TV, the picture has improved significantly. For one, I didn't realize I had the brightness and saturation up too high. I feel now that my brightness is set a bit too low, as there is a lot of lost detail in darker areas, but then again I may just be getting used to looking at the picture as it was meant to be and I had somehow conditioned myself to want a brighter picture (The lost detail in blacks seems mostly to be part of SD television/DivX movies, and not as bad on HD-DVDs.) I also went in and changed the balance of the RGB, because the three preset color temperatures on the TV were terrible. Cool was leaving a blue tint, and both neutral and warm were leaving the greenish/yellow tint that prompted my initial post.

With that said, the problem is not completely resolved. Colors, especially dark ones look much less green. Skin tones (though a bit red, since I had to turn that up and the green down to compensate for the tint) are slightly red, but not too bad. I only have two complaints with turning up the red more to compensate: 1) Whites have an orangish feel to them, not very noticeable except when I am playing NHL 08 on the 360 because the white ice is so large that the orange stands out, and 2) everything in dark/shadowy areas still has a slight green to it, and I can't seem to force my RGB settings to create a proper grayscale (the greyscale test patterns all have that greenish tint to it as well). There may very well be nothing more to do, though I plan to tweak the levels of red, green, and blue some more tonight when I get a chance. My settings for them on my TV (on a scale of 1-40) are red: 25, blue: 24, green: 13.

With this set of information, I would love to hear if anyone else has any ideas as to what I might want to take a look at now to further tweak things and maybe completely eliminate the green tint (I recognize it may not be possible with this TV, and I am quickly realizing that I may not have gotten the bargain I thought I had on this TV).

Thanks a lot to those who have already posted some help!

[mmmmDoNut]

It sounds like you made some progress and thats good. I have a feeling that what you are seeing is probably the best you are going to get out of that set.

If memory serves I read an article in S&V awhile back (2yrs ago???) that the Westinghouse sets under 32" were not that great and that they made some major improvements with sets starting at 37". I am not sure if anything has changed in that time period but just sharing what I recall.

With the prices of LCD's today, I think many of the tier 1 manufactures have become more aggressive in their pricing and should you decide to upgrade you owe it to yourself to look for one of those sets.

[Chickengas]

A green tint on anything LCD can be a sign of the LCD panel overheating. Does it get worse as the TV is on? Usually, once you get the green fog (really a bad problem with older Sony LCD projectors) it means panel replacement. Make sure your TV has enough room to breath. Just an idea....

[LiK]

yea, when you first calibrate your tv, you might think that the brightness is low but your eyes will definitely adjust over time to the new settings.