My Other Self

I don't have a fancy setup. I have a Sony BDP-S580 Blu-ray player and an RCA 46" LCD TV (not sure of the model).

I've had them both for a few years now, but one thing that has always bothered me is how blacks are displayed and what happens whenever I try to watch an actual disc on the player.

The blacks tend to change brightness depending on the lighting in the rest of the picture. If it's a daytime scene for example, the blacks (this includes any "bars" to account for a wide image or 4:3 content) end up turning in to an almost grey-ish hue. They honestly tend to change with the image itself, it's very rare that black is actually "true black."

Another issue is whenever I put a disc in. For some reason, the player acts like it disconnects from the TV for a brief moment whenever the disc starts, and again whenever I hit stop.

The black color issue occurs with both disc and any video watched through USB or Amazon Instant and Netflix.

And no, I've never calibrated anything. I just find it very odd that any black bars would essentially change colors. It's very distracting. I'm not interested (nor do I have the funds) to invest in another display or player right now, but is there anything I can do on my end to alleviate this issue?

It's difficult to capture the issue with the colors, but I took brief videos on what occurs when I start and stop a disc.

https://vimeo.com/user29599210/video...rmat:thumbnail

I'd appreciate any insight.

Josh-da-man

You might have a dynamic contrast setting on your television that is turned on. Go into your menu and see if there's something like that turned on.

It might also be because you haven't calibrated your television and it's still in the factory "torch" mode, so the contrast and/or brightness is so high that it's washing out the blacks.

My Other Self

Thanks! That seemed to fix the issue with the blacks. I'm not sure why I didn't take the time to research the problem before, but I'm ecstatic that I won't have to deal with that anymore.

Spiky

The "disconnect" issue is pretty normal, I think. It sounds like you are describing the HDMI sync process when it changes from one resolution to another. It is kinda silly that it looks so ugly with most setups. It is possible you could lessen or eliminate it by changing the output of your player, but only "possible". And many discs have different resolutions (movie vs menu vs extras, etc), anyway, so you can't change when it happens switching through various screens.

You should really try calibration. Discs are pretty cheap, or you can find apps or websites for a computer or smartphone that can do it.

My Other Self

Well that's certainly discouraging. I'd say that's probably the most annoying feature since upgrading to Blu-ray.

Are there any players that don't do that, then?

Spiky

Everyone hates HDMI. It's a problem for all HDMI devices. Some are faster at handshaking than others. Maybe yours is slower. Generally, more recent models should be faster.

Dan

As Spiky mentioned, your player should have an output resolution setting. If you set it to 1080p (and not auto), then it might be less common. Also, there might be a "24 Hz" or "film mode" option. You can play with that to see if it helps you out.

My Other Self

Thanks for your help, guys. I turned off that setting (it was on auto), and it's worked on a few discs that I've tried. I'm glad it helped.

hanshotfirst1138

What do those do?