TV Calibration Thread

[FanIn80]

I know there's a ton of info on the web, but a lot of it is outdated or confusing (or both), so I figured a new thread here might be a good idea. If anyone else is like me, then calibration is probably something you've thought about but never really got around to figuring out...

I'm going to try to figure out how to calibrate my new TV, and post some reference material here as I find it. Hopefully if anyone has some good infos, they'll post it here too!

[prarieboy]

Some of the Pixar DVD's have a calibration utility in the options menu.

[mykalberta]

Have you searched avsforum ?

The LG 60PK550 TV I have has its own thread 170 pages.

[Buzzard]

I had this fella come out and do some magic.

You know you're getting the most out of your video/audio after he's been by. A little pricy but what the hell. If you're dropping some $$$ on home theater, it's nice to know you've got it maxing out to it's fullest potential.

Michael Chen

[MickMcGeough]

I used to use Avia. It worked wonders, but you'll never be able to calibrate your TV to level that a professional will. As I understand it the most important part (in general) of calibration is greyscale calibration, which is almost impossible to get right without some rather expensive monitoring equipment.

Also be aware than almost any calibration is going to leave your TV darker than most people are accustomed to. 99% of TVs are configured to "pop" and grab your attention, at the expense of some of the finer details and color accuracy. Once your eyes adjust to a calibrated set, everything else looks terrible.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Have you searched avsforum ?

The LG 60PK550 TV I have has its own thread 170 pages.

Yeah, I've looked at that but looking at my own 60PK550, I find I am quite happy with it as it and that I don't need to calibrate it. In fact, I don't really believe in calibration experts/professionals or costly calibration services personally. I only believe in getting your TV to look the way that you want it, in the room where you put it and it's really not that difficult.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Yeah, I've looked at that but looking at my own 60PK550, I find I am quite happy with it as it and that I don't need to calibrate it. In fact, I don't really believe in calibration experts/professionals or costly calibration services personally. I only believe in getting your TV to look the way that you want it, in the room where you put it and it's really not that difficult.

This reminds me of a friend whose father was colour blind and set up the family TV to the way he liked it. It was a very strange picture to everyone else (not saying this is your case, just giving an extreme example).

Michael Chen contributes on Digital Home Canada and the AVS forum and seems to have a good reputation in Canada and south of the border, if you can afford his services and he's from Calgary too. Anyways I've been pretty lazy in calibrating my TVs as I just make sure they are in 1:1 aspect ratio and trying out other posted calibrations I find on the net and then making minor adjustments.

Here's a post from Michael about aspect ratios

Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Posts: 1,036


Greetings

For the people with 1080p displays ... one wants the following settings on the following TVs.

Sony ... Full Pixel
Panasonic ... HD Size 2
Samsung ... Screen Fit
LG ... Just Scan
Pioneer ... Dot by Dot
Sharp ... Dot by Dot

For BD material this is the best setting to take advantage of the 2 millions+ pixels that BD has to offer.

Any other setting and you are effectively getting 1 million pixels of image detail ... or something slightly better than 720p.

All sets come out of the box delivering this 720p quality even if they are 1080p sets. This setting has to be manually invoked to restore the resolution/detail.

regards
__________________
Michael @ TLVExperience
ISF/THX Video Systems Instructor

By doing this you will find the odd program (mostly a SD picture on an HD channel) with a line of interference at the top of the picture but it is worth it for the increase in HD picture quality. I thought my new Sony was very very good but when I changed the setting to Full Pixel, it became awesome.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

This reminds me of a friend whose father was colour blind and set up the family TV to the way he liked it. It was a very strange picture to everyone else (not saying this is your case, just giving an extreme example).

Michael Chen contributes on Digital Home Canada and the AVS forum and seems to have a good reputation in Canada and south of the border, if you can afford his services and he's from Calgary too. Anyways I've been pretty lazy in calibrating my TVs as I just make sure they are in 1:1 aspect ratio and trying out other posted calibrations I find on the net and then making minor adjustments.

Here's a post from Michael about aspect ratios

By doing this you will find the odd program (mostly a SD picture on an HD channel) with a line of interference at the top of the picture but it is worth it for the increase in HD picture quality. I thought my new Sony was very very good but when I changed the setting to Full Pixel, it became awesome.

I just don't think calibration is the rocket science everyone thinks it is an any guy with a laptop with HDMI out can just download the software and do calibration himself easily. My friend didn't even know his Panasonic was cutting off 5% of all his picture until I plugged my laptop in.

The only thing professionals can offer is if they have the codes to access the service menu or are able to flash the firmware. You can usually find these yourself if you google enough anyway.

I just don't think it's worth the money.

[Draug]

Originally Posted by prarieboy

Some of the Pixar DVD's have a calibration utility in the options menu.

In the past, I've always used Avia, but it is not in HD.

Recently, I used the calibration utility in 'Up' for the sharpness and contrast adjustments. I used Avia for the color adjustments.

[Draug]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

I used to use Avia. It worked wonders, but you'll never be able to calibrate your TV to level that a professional will. As I understand it the most important part (in general) of calibration is greyscale calibration, which is almost impossible to get right without some rather expensive monitoring equipment.

Also be aware than almost any calibration is going to leave your TV darker than most people are accustomed to. 99% of TVs are configured to "pop" and grab your attention, at the expense of some of the finer details and color accuracy. Once your eyes adjust to a calibrated set, everything else looks terrible.

With some patience, and a Bluray calibration tool, and Avia, you can do pretty well without the expert. If you can ever find some color bars for the PVR, record them, and use them for color calibration from that device.

Totally agree with you on the darkness.... glad you pointed that out.

[ericschand]

I used the AVS HD 709

With some fiddling around, you can use the above without the requirement of burning to a Bluray disc. You'll have to google it, I'm not going to get into it here, but it's pretty simple. Read the PDF, it tells you what you need, what you will do and so on. There is one with patterns only, select and use the pattern from your laptop or computer hooked up to your TV if you do not have a Bluray player.

If you have a newer (couple years old) Samsung TV, it has built-in blue, red and green filters. Read your instruction manual on how to activate them.

I went through the setups and liked what I saw.

After this, I bought the Disney WOW Bluray and put it in. I used it to calibrate, and found that the AVS HD 709 had done its job.

I suggest going with the AVS HD 709 and seeing where you end up. I felt the $35 was a waste considering AVS gave it to me for free.

And, yes, everything does seem darker.

Good luck.

ers

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Yeah, I've looked at that but looking at my own 60PK550, I find I am quite happy with it as it and that I don't need to calibrate it. In fact, I don't really believe in calibration experts/professionals or costly calibration services personally. I only believe in getting your TV to look the way that you want it, in the room where you put it and it's really not that difficult.

Page 70ish of that thread has a "expert" from Florida posted his calibration settings - IMO they are amazing.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Page 70ish of that thread has a "expert" from Florida posted his calibration settings - IMO they are amazing.

I always look for calibration settings from reviews from such people as CNET or FlatpanelsHD and like you found the AVS forum also has some experts giving their advice. I believe their advice will put me in the ballpark for decent settings. The rider is that every TV, despite it being the same model, is slightly different and has a different environment.

Here's my TVs review with it's settings.

http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php...&id=1281011605

and here's five tips for calibrating your TV.

http://www.flatpanelshd.com/focus.ph...&id=1291368716

[Prototype]

A few months ago, I searched the Model Numbers of both my HDTVs and their ideal calibrations. It was like getting 2 new TVs.

Also, I remember back in the day, FOX DVDs used to come with calibration settings (X-Men comes to mind as having it). Sony Blurays have a hidden calibration function as well.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/foru...ration-screens

[FanIn80]

Awesome. This is the TV I bought on the weekend: http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ.../10166071.aspx. I got it from London Drugs for 1199 with two pairs of Samsung 3D glasses.

I found some settings someone posted on AVS Forums and holy cow does it ever make a huge difference.

I read somewhere that you should break a TV in for a while before getting it professionally calibrated, so I'm going to give it a few months and then call up a pro (not FS or BB).

Edit: Here are the settings I went with...

PN51D550
Picture Mode: Movie
Cell Light: 17
Contrast: 81
Brightness: 64
Sharpness: 0
Color: 52
Tint: G49/R51
Advanced Settings:
Black Tone: Off
Dynamic Contrast: Off
Gamma: +1
RGB Only Mode: Off
Color Space: Auto
White Balance: RO-25, GO-23, BO-24, RG-18, GG-24, BG-25
Flesh Tone: 0
EE: Off
Motion Lighting: Off
Picture Options:
Color Tone: Warm 2
DNR: Off
MPEG Noise Filter: Off

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Awesome. This is the TV I bought on the weekend: http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ.../10166071.aspx. I got it from London Drugs for 1199 with two pairs of Samsung 3D glasses.

I found some settings someone posted on AVS Forums and holy cow does it ever make a huge difference.

I read somewhere that you should break a TV in for a while before getting it professionally calibrated, so I'm going to give it a few months and then call up a pro (not FS or BB).

Edit: Here are the settings I went with...

If you keep looking you'll likely find someone who's tweaked the color space with the proper equipment too. Can also make a huge difference.

[mykalberta]

Please post a review of the 3d TV after some use with it. I thought about buying one but too often with tech stuff I am at the knifes edge, sometimes it works out and sometimes I get cut.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

If you keep looking you'll likely find someone who's tweaked the color space with the proper equipment too. Can also make a huge difference.

Awesome, thanks for the tip! The model I have is pretty new, I think it just came out a month or so ago, so there's not much out there yet. I'll keep an eye out though.

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Please post a review of the 3d TV after some use with it. I thought about buying one but too often with tech stuff I am at the knifes edge, sometimes it works out and sometimes I get cut.

So far I'm loving it! I thought the 3D part would be pretty gimmicky, but it's actually pretty cool. Even the 2D -> 3D upscaling is nice. Watching hockey and basketball games in upscaled 3D really makes a huge difference. I even downloaded a few IMAX 3D documentaries (oceans, dinosaurs, space, etc) and they're crazy to watch.

Honestly, I was more interested in getting a thin-profile (almost as thin as an LED!), 1080p plasma in the 50" and $1300 range. The 3D stuff was just icing on the cake, but I'm really glad I got it now.

I've heard rumours of NFL games this season being broadcast in 3D. If that's true (and if there's even a season to begin with), it's going to be insanely awesome.

One thing I'm not sure about though, is when I watch actual 3D content (not upscaled 2D), I notice a lot of ghosting when seeing an image on a black background. I'm not really sure what's up with that. Changing the 3D perspective in the TV settings seems to lessen the amount of ghosting, but it's still obvious enough to notice it right away when the background of a scene is black.

Edit: I don't know if ghosting is the right word for what I'm seeing. Maybe it's more of a halo effect? Basically, when I see a 3D object on a black background, I can see what looks like another layer of the same object behind it...

[THE SCUD]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Page 70ish of that thread has a "expert" from Florida posted his calibration settings - IMO they are amazing.

Any chance you have a link? I have the 50PK550 as well.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Page 70ish of that thread has a "expert" from Florida posted his calibration settings - IMO they are amazing.

Which post are you talking about? I can't find calibration settings, only info on how to get into the service menu.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...235720&page=70

I need to buy a Harmony Remote to enter the service menu?