Panasonic has made available a special page, dedicated to providing James Cameron’s Preferred Settings for watching Avatar in 3D on a Panasonic 3D HDTV and these settings take advantage of the “Advanced (isfccc)” mode that the television sets have. This initiative is due to the fact that the company is bundling their line of Viera 3D-capable Plasma HDTVs along with a Blu-ray 3D version of the movie Avatar, an exclusive deal that probably will delay further the availability of the movie as a standalone product. And I’m curious if these settings are recommended just for watching Avatar, or they will be good for watching movies in general… I will have to try them and compare to the default THX settings for example when I start testing my new Panasonic VT20E HDTV, although I do not have Avatar on Blu-ray 3D yet ;)
Here are the recommended settings from James Cameron for Avatar 3D (for European TVs)…
Switch “Advanced (isfccc)” to ON.
Set the “Viewing Mode” to “Professional 1″.
Set the “Contrast” to “48″.
Set the “Colour” to “33″.
Set “White Balance” to the following values:
- Move the scale of “R-Gain” 10 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Gain” 8 times to the left.
- Move the scale of “R-Cutoff” 2 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “B-Cutoff” 1 time to the right.
Set “Colour Management” to the following values:
- Move the scale of “R-Hue” 3 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Hue” 4 times to the left.
- Move the scale of “R-Saturation” 3 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “G-Saturation” 11 times to the right.
- Move the scale of “B-Saturation” 8 times to the right.
Set “Gamma” to “2.4″.
Switch “24p Smooth Film” to OFF.
Switch “3D 24p Film Display” to OFF.
Avatar is getting geared up for it’s return in the 3D cinema theaters at the end of this month with a new Special Edition featuring more than eight additional minutes of never before seen footage. So if you haven’t seen Avatar enough times already the additional footage will be definitely worth watching the movie at least one more time. And if you are wondering why we still haven’t seen any Blu-ray 3D announcement about the movie availability, this is the reason… why get into the still limited number of home 3D viewers when you can make much more doing rerun in 3D cinemas. So it seems that we are going to keep waiting for the Blu-ray 3D version of the movie for quite some more time anyway, I for sure do plan to go and watch the Special Edition of Avatar if I can, and what about you?
In a recent interview James Cameron has confirmed that Avatar will be available on Blu-ray 3D, but this will not happen before November this year, and it might not be even this year. Then again Fox Home Entertainment also is not giving much hope saying that they will not be ready for November release… So there is still quite some time and you shouldn’t prepare yourself to be watching Avatar in 3D at your home, especially considering that the 3D theaters where it is being shown are still full with people. Still the official launch date for Avatar on a DVD and Blu-ray (2D only!) is set for April 22nd, but hey, we want it in 3D too. And while you wait you can check out some Avatar fan materials…
