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[lisbethfox]

So recently I installed JRiver on a new client, obviously it starts with the default skin.. wow, was that ever painful. Horribly round, really fake glossy buttons, light bgs, awkward gradients etc. Who actually uses the other skins that come with JRiver on their machines? At 50" all that white is blinding, not to mention everything else is quite tacky and dated looking. I'm all Purity and have been from the start, it fits in flawlessly with my dark monochrome windows 7 themeing (Placebo by SolMiller with some modifications)

I have a head ache.... wow.

[lisbethfox]

[6233638]

At 50" all that white is blinding

Sounds like a display setting issue (backlight/contrast too high) rather than the skin.

[BryanC]

At 50" all that white is blinding
I have a head ache.... wow.

RGB versus YCbCr

[fitbrit]

Sounds like a display setting issue (backlight/contrast too high) rather than the skin.

+1
Most people have their TVs in shop/dynamic mode as a default.

[john_kane]

Well, I'll agree with the OP;all that white is blinding on the default on large TVs, even with toned down/calibrated settings. It also usually also makes the plasmas buzz in agony.

Even with the dark skins, the default webpages STILL have a stark white background.  I had to change those also to go along with a dark skin.

[glynor]

It also usually also makes the plasmas buzz in agony.

If your plasma is buzzing when your computer shows an all white (255,255,255) image, it is set incorrectly (or busted).  They only do that when they are showing white out of gamut (higher than 100% white).

My Panasonic does NOT do this.

[6233638]

Well, I'll agree with the OP;all that white is blinding on the default on large TVs, even with toned down/calibrated settings. It also usually also makes the plasmas buzz in agony.

Even with the dark skins, the default webpages STILL have a stark white background.  I had to change those also to go along with a dark skin.

If it is ever "blinding" then your display is certainly not properly calibrated. And if it's a plasma, it should be even less "blinding" since they dim the screen the brighter the image gets.
An all-white screen will typically be less than half the brightness of a small white window on a plasma display.
 
I really don't see this as a Media Center problem, since pretty much every other program on your computer will behave similarly, with white backgrounds everywhere.

If your plasma is buzzing when your computer shows an all white (255,255,255) image, it is set incorrectly (or busted).  They only do that when they are showing white out of gamut (higher than 100% white).

My Panasonic does NOT do this.

I've had plenty of plasmas that do this, from many brands.
If your Panasonic is a commercial panel, perhaps that is an exception because they often use more robust power supplies and less aggressive ABL. Or if it's an older model with a fan running I suppose that may mask it.
There are a number of other reasons why buzzing may or may not be an audible problem with plasmas and high APL images. (position in the room, wall mounted, where you are seated etc.)
I won't go as far as saying that all plasmas do it, but all plasmas I have ever been in contact with have.
 
Regardless, this is not indicative of a fault, or necessarily of doing something wrong - though I'd definitely recommend checking that the input/output levels are correct.

[lisbethfox]

Sounds like a display setting issue (backlight/contrast too high) rather than the skin.

Its a heavily calibrated display (I use for color grade checking) with almost no brightness all my other displays do the same regardless of computer (42", 32", 3x 24", 2x 21", mostly LGs, one sony broadcast monitor too). My eyes are sensitive, all my devices have very dark skinning / theming as much as possible to cut down on any white backgrounds. I.E I find this website's background a huge distraction on anything but small screens.;

[Ferdi]

I love that you got the Taylor Swift cover on your screenshot along with all the metal ones   (for the records, I do not listen to swift)

[lisbethfox]

I auto snatch alot of music, my library is hilarious. I used to send my old girlfriend (total metalhead) screenshots of when either my other interests, or auto snatches got lumped together.
I go from extreme metal, to musicals, to classical, to indie pop, and then back again. Not to mention alot of film scores too.
Having said that, this one was NOT an auto snatch, not that I like Swift, not that I enjoyed the album but its one of those, obligated to check out type deals.

[glynor]

I've had plenty of plasmas that do this, from many brands.
If your Panasonic is a commercial panel, perhaps that is an exception because they often use more robust power supplies and less aggressive ABL.

It is a P60VT25.

But I've had, over the years, probably 15 different plasmas used primarily as computer displays at work of various makes and models. I've certainly heard the "buzz" even on my own Panasonic.  I've never seen one that couldn't be calibrated not to do it, typically without a noticeable performance impact.

I'm sure there probably are junky models out there that buzz anytime 240,240,240 or greater is shown, and you can't find a way to tweak it so it never happens, but I'd call that squarely in the "broken" category.  On my Panasonic at home (and most of them at work except the very old ones), it only buzzes if you don't have it set right at all (or you leave dynamic contrast on like an animal).

PS. I'm not arguing that they should keep the pure-white web interface elements. Anywhere there is a 255,255,255 color in the interface, it could probably stand to be brought down to 250,250,250 or a touch lower. I like Noire, though, and I'm not usually a big fan of the "dark" UI schemes. They can be nice in some circumstances (Visual Studio late at night), but... Meh. I run Noire.

[Castius]

I have to agree. I'm very glad for purtiy.
I've been thinking about upgrading all of it's images to support the new view scaling.

[6233638]

But I've had, over the years, probably 15 different plasmas used primarily as computer displays at work of various makes and models. I've certainly heard the "buzz" even on my own Panasonic.  I've never seen one that couldn't be calibrated not to do it, typically without a noticeable performance impact.

Well that's surprising, because it's typically been the higher-end models that I have had access to, including the full range of Pioneer's "Kuro" televisions and professional monitors. And all of them have buzzed. Same goes for the Panasonic models, though I don't have too much experience with the last one or two generations.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "calibrating" to fix this. Because the only settings which had any impact were reducing the contrast or enabling power-saving modes and, at best, that only reduced it rather than eliminating it.
 
All of these were calibrated to studio reference levels.
I'm not trying to say that you're wrong, just that it has not been my experience with plasmas, and I wouldn't say that any set doing it was faulty.

[john_kane]

Have to agree with 623 again here.

My Panny VT50 will buzz on APL over a certain amount and yes, it is calibrated, and even tweaked down in some viewing profiles for nighttime viewing. It's not unacceptable, but it is audible and noticeable.  You don't normally spend any serious time on high APL content. AVS Forum devotes countless pages to it. Put up a white field and you'll hear it. Your TV model and room acoustics may vary as to how close to the set you need to be.

 Blinding of course is a subjective and emphasized term.   But it was not a pleasant viewing experience for any period of time, especially  when I popped out of theater view to do something ( before I edited the default html, and before a chose a darker skin).

What this does have to do with MC is the default use of pure white in the default webpages and UI. And I'd make the case for toning down the pure whites as default, out of the box view.

[Dr Tone]

My VT30 buzzes as well.

[Arindelle]

I'm sure all the responses are right in theory, BUT I use Purity on a calibrated monitor. And I agree with th OP. Prefer Purity Dark (try that one Lizbeth) -- its like lightroom. Neutral dark grey the BEST skins to stare at for hours and Purity is the most neutral and timeless !!!!

+1 for the OP (now to convince the devs to put all the gadgets in the Noire Skin to Purity so I don't have to reskin it )

[lisbethfox]

Purity Dark? Is it even darker? :3 (If so this makes me happy)

Like I said, if it was very casual use on a small screen, fine. However, this is just too fatiguing for long term use with large monitors.l

[Castius]

With purity i do use skin effects brighten it up a little. The default has to much contrast

[BartMan01]

In a 10 foot interface, I find light letters on dark background is fine.
On a computer screen with a computer interface (smaller text), light letters on a dark background gives me a bad headache to look at.

To each their own, but I much prefer the default skins.

[glynor]

I'm not sure what you mean by "calibrating" to fix this. Because the only settings which had any impact were reducing the contrast or enabling power-saving modes and, at best, that only reduced it rather than eliminating it.

No, you're right.  I didn't explain well, and chose poor words.  We mean the same thing, I think.

I meant "adjusted" not "calibrated" (which obviously has other connotations).  Calibrated with a colorimeter, many of them do still buzz (not as bad as the out of the box experience, but still annoyingly) when I pull up test patterns (and my almost-all-white PowerPoint slide I use to test them in case of morons). I then generally tweak them a bit more to reduce bloom and the noise (and on the nicer sets, I usually re-run the colorimeter to see how far "off" I had to go from "right" to get them to "work").  These are generally used in conference rooms and as digital signs, so having the buzz happen during a meeting because of a poorly designed PowerPoint slide is completely unacceptable (though all but two of our digital signage displays are now either Sharp or Panasonic Pro displays, and they don't buzz at all).

My VT25 does still buzz a tiny bit when I pull up that same slide, but I can only hear it when I'm within 12-18" or so of the display.  From my normal seating distance, I can't hear it at all.  And even with very, very low room noise, I can't hear anything even right up against the display when showing Standard View in Noire.

So... Sorry.    What I meant by "broken" was: If you can't get it to be not annoying in general use cases without severely compromising quality, then I'd call that "broken".  But reading back, I did a terrible job explaining myself.

[glynor]

(though all but two of our digital signage displays are now either Sharp or Panasonic Pro displays, and they don't buzz at all)

I should note: They don't buzz.  But, all of the Panasonic Pro displays have been obnoxiously troublesome in other ways, including the two TH-103VX200U monsters. All of them had a terrible firmware problem where they'd completely lock up and become unusable if you (a) used the DM input, (b) lost power, and (c) didn't have them assigned an address via DHCP. Seriously.  They were just bricked.  The only way to get them to come alive again was to connect to each one via a serial cable, telnet in, and beat them into submission (we have something like 60 of them at just one site so this was impractical every time there was a power outage).

We had to fly a Panasonic engineer out to apply a firmware patch in person to get them to behave.  And the Sharps lock up periodically (I was seeing it once every 30 days or so) when you use the RS232 control port with Crestron's control module.  Even though we were only using the On/Off and Select Input commands (and then, only to select one Input) they'd still crash.  We had to write our own control module with only those codes to get them to be stable.

TVs suck. But not as bad as projectors, so I guess there's that.

[Arindelle]

Purity Dark? Is it even darker? :3 (If so this makes me happy)

Like I said, if it was very casual use on a small screen, fine. However, this is just too fatiguing for long term use with large monitors.l

you get both from here http://cristianx.deviantart.com/art/Purity-for-JRiver-202922172

if you want to tweak it ... http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=87157.0

Request => Purity and Purity Dark become standard, out of the box  dark screens supporting all the gadgetry like NOIRE  

(change the font to Myriad Pro on the main xml page and you have more or less the LightRoom UI    )

[Hilton]

I have to agree with the darker theme.

It's the first thing I change. I use black on black in standard view and Rapier Fusion skin for Theatre View.
Much nicer on the eyes, especially on a big screen.  Looks slick, clean and professional too.