[pritch]

back_ache, on 16 February 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

Would it be acceptable to send a message through the serial or HDMI port to put it into standby and back on again?

pjrails, on 16 February 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

In my experience with plasma screens I usually find that you can play with the Brightness and Contrast controls and get the screen fairly black and it is still OK for viewing your source especially using VGA input.
Lots of places seem to lift all settings for powerpoint presentations so there really bright.

Combining these two ideas, rather than using the serial port to put it into standby, why not use the command to turn the brightness right down, and then turn it back up again when it's needed?

[Tom Baldwin]

Nice idea. I really need to find out which exact model of plasma we're supposed to be getting so I can check its serial interface has the ability to disable OSD as well as adjust brightness & contrast. If so, that sounds like a goer.

[Jamtastic3]

I remember one production used a gel that covered the front of the plasma screens as they had this problem. They calibrated any vital colour or tones with their computer software. Can't remember at all what the gel number was but someone on here can recommend a gel to use.
It was effective although they had to make sure the gel wasn't crumpled in any way and stretched as much as possible.

[back_ache]

pritch, on 17 February 2012 - 08:56 PM, said:

<snip/>rather than using the serial port to put it into standby, why not use the command to turn the brightness right down, and then turn it back up again when it's needed?

I've always thought it would be a cool thing to do to map the brightness and contrast functions of a display to DMX channels.

you could combine the ides so that the brightness is rededuced as much as possible and then put into standby

[Tom Baldwin]

If we go ahead with this, I'll probably write an Art-Net to RS-232 program to do this, so I can control brightness & contrast from the desk. Makes it just another part of the cue to the media server.
It'd be nice (if there's time) to make it configurable, so it isn't restricted to one model of plasma. And then add the ability to control more than just those parameters. And then... (oh the joys of feature creep!)

[back_ache]

Tom Baldwin, on 21 February 2012 - 10:35 PM, said:

isn't restricted to one model of plasma

Why not inject cec messages into the HDMI port, those should be standard across all models and manufacturers (in theory)