I got my DVD in the mail today and made some quick adjustments to my Toshiba set. I'm curious about a few things reagarding the disc and tuning TV's in general.

First about TV's in general, I've seen plenty of print about setting adjustments too high and causing premature wear, burn-in, poor picture quality etc. The problem is, "too high" is a bit vague. For example, disregarding picture quality, when adjusting brightness (black level) which is better for the TV, greyer or blacker? Likewise, when adjusting contrast (white level) which is better for the TV, greyer or whiter? I'm comfortable with color, tint and sharpness. I'd prefer to err on the side of safer for the TV at the sacrifice of some picture quality if needed.

After some minor tweaking with the Avia disc I've made some observations. It seems like some blacks are too black and lose all definititon. Think black velvet pants in a room with poor lighting. The pants almost take on a cartooninsh quality because they are more like an absence of color on the screen shaped like a pair of pants than an actual pair of pants. Zero definition, zero wrinkles or folds, zero shading. I also notice that some whites seem too white, not in that they loose definition and shading, but that they radiate a bit, especially when bordered by a black backdrop. I'm wondering if some of this is just that I'm paying more attention or that my perception/interpretation of the Avia instructions is too extreme, or perhaps I'm not used to seeing some of this stuff and find it out of the ordinary.

One tip to others that I found on both TV's in my house. Sharpness set to 0 and all auto enhancements turned off give way better edge definition. Apparently not true on higher quality units (plasma, LCD etc) but for run of the mill CRT's the difference was substantial.