2 questions on Hitachi HD RPTVs..

1) I have a CRT Panasonic TV and I have been living with the 'Red push' for a few years now. Now is the time to get an HDTV.. leaning towards Hitachi. However Hitachi also seems to have a larger-than-life-red for the red areas of the picture. Is there any way to correct this using the remote with the help of a calibration disc or something? I tried to do that with a 'video essentials' disc on my current TV. All I could do was reduce the color overall.. not red alone.
2) What does the ISF calibration actually do? Any links? Does the manual 117(?) point calibration of new Hitachis will enable me to do an "ISF-like" calibration myself? What are the going rates for an ISF calibration these days..?
Please advice. Thank you in advance.

If the TV displays red-push already, the only way to get rid of it would be to go through the TV's service menu (which is not something you can do with just a calibration disc and remote).

I'm assuming that the 117 point "calibration" that you are refering too is actually the 117 point "convergence". If so, this simply allows the user to ensure that the geometry of the set is accurate...it has nothing to do with colour or greyscale.

A good ISF tech will start from the very basic elements of your TV and work their way through every conceivable 'tweak' that you could imagine. They start by disabling any useless features that hurt the image (e.g. Scan Velocity Modulation) and then work on ensuring that geometry and overscan are correct. After this, they work their way to adjusting light output and colour. A great deal of time is spent ensuring proper grey scale (without this, you can't get accurate colours) and then each of the guns is calibrated individually to ensure that you are getting perfect colour output. In my case, the end result was phenomenal. My 47" Panny widescreen set had poor geometry, red-push and did very poorly with shades of green (they all appeared close to the same). Immediately following the calibration, the red-push was gone, all the colours were brighter and more lifelike and the greens brought a tear to my eye!

A good place to start researching ISF techs is at the Keohi HDTV site.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jxnew

I just wish they'd just give the stand with it! 46 inch tv+stand makes the price equal that of 51 inch model.

---

So buy the 51" model! I've seen the set and was fairly impressed by the picture out of the box however, I was not impressed by the price. I'm assuming you got a decent deal?

I was just skimming thru the manual of Hitachi 46F500. Yes, its 117 point convergence, not calibration. It allows manual correction of red and blue guns to match green. Like you said, there doesnt seem to be any color correction except for a Color Temperature setting where if you 'Set this to High for less intence colors with more blue, Set to medium for hotter colors with more red or to standard for standard colors'. You cancel scan velocity modulation thru advanced settings menu. Also provided is black level expansion for clearer shadows or whatever.
I saw this set and the best thing I found was the 4:3 expanded mode. Regular CNN was stretched to 16:9, but the picture appeared normal. They do cut a bit from top and bottom, but it wasnt bothersome. There was no annoying stretch on the headlines text on the bottom of the screen. I just wish they'd just give the stand with it! 46 inch tv+stand makes the price equal that of 51 inch model.

Hitachi S series and above has 6 color tuning thru remote. Thats nice. So now its between Mitsubishi and Hitachi. Both now have manual convergence and individual color settings..