Bestbuy offering TV ISF calibration.

[hermanv]

I'm probably one of the last holdouts. I find the idea that a brand new state of the art TV needs calibration before use offensive. I've bought exotic test equipment including $35,000 oscilloscopes that came "gasp" calibrated from the factory (the cheap ones come that way too).

Setting gray scale is nice, but more and more sets now get decent gray scale accuracy ratings from reviewers. I recommend you buy a set that's close as built. Besides both plasma and LCD suffer a color accuracy that can't be calibrated out (native colors do not align with HDTV color triangle). I find this more noticeable than a mediocre grey scale.

I bought an LED DLP (again I'm probably one of the last hold outs). Better blacks, better color accuracy and reviewers gave the set an OK for factory grey scale calibration. Suddenly reds are very deep in color and exhibit a great variety of shades of red I've never seen on plasma or LCD. The LED DLP is also cheap. It just isn't slim enough to hang on a wall (but neither is any home theater equipment, so who cares?)

[Rich-n-Texas]

I'm probably one of the last holdouts. I find the idea that a brand new state of the art TV needs calibration before use offensive. I've bought exotic test equipment including $35,000 oscilloscopes that came "gasp" calibrated from the factory (the cheap ones come that way too).

Setting gray scale is nice, but more and more sets now get decent gray scale accuracy ratings from reviewers. I recommend you buy a set that's close as built. Besides both plasma and LCD suffer a color accuracy that can't be calibrated out (native colors do not align with HDTV color triangle). I find this more noticeable than a mediocre grey scale.

I bought an LED DLP (again I'm probably one of the last hold outs). Better blacks, better color accuracy and reviewers gave the set an OK for factory grey scale calibration. Suddenly reds are very deep in color and exhibit a great variety of shades of red I've never seen on plasma or LCD. The LED DLP is also cheap. It just isn't slim enough to hang on a wall (but neither is any home theater equipment, so who cares?)

Now I remember why I like this guy.

[pixelthis]

I'm probably one of the last holdouts. I find the idea that a brand new state of the art TV needs calibration before use offensive. I've bought exotic test equipment including $35,000 oscilloscopes that came "gasp" calibrated from the factory (the cheap ones come that way too).

Setting gray scale is nice, but more and more sets now get decent gray scale accuracy ratings from reviewers. I recommend you buy a set that's close as built. Besides both plasma and LCD suffer a color accuracy that can't be calibrated out (native colors do not align with HDTV color triangle). I find this more noticeable than a mediocre grey scale.

I bought an LED DLP (again I'm probably one of the last hold outs). Better blacks, better color accuracy and reviewers gave the set an OK for factory grey scale calibration. Suddenly reds are very deep in color and exhibit a great variety of shades of red I've never seen on plasma or LCD. The LED DLP is also cheap. It just isn't slim enough to hang on a wall (but neither is any home theater equipment, so who cares?)

led DLP was my first choice also, having no wife to object.
But two things scuttled it, cost, and reports of trouble from some of the first models.
Maybe when they get the tech worked out(and I hit the lottery) it might be reconsidered.
One of the greatest pics I have ever seen was on a 70" Mitshu at Circuit City, a still of a rose, absolutely amazing.
But I have no backup , my set has to work, and work every time.
LED solves a lot of the problems I had with DLP, BUT the tech has to work itself out first, and since every-friggin- body in the world wants a FLAT screen, RPTV might become extinct before that happens.

[hermanv]

led DLP was my first choice also, having no wife to object.
But two things scuttled it, cost, and reports of trouble from some of the first models.
...edit..

I can't speak to ultimate reliability, the set below is a refurbished Samsung (which I think is French for "we fixed the major bug"). Show me how to beat $849 for 56" 1080p HDTV. Or you can have 61" for about $150 more.

http://www.secondact.com/product/HLT...art-HLT5687SRB

[BradH]

I'm probably one of the last holdouts. I find the idea that a brand new state of the art TV needs calibration before use offensive. I've bought exotic test equipment including $35,000 oscilloscopes that came "gasp" calibrated from the factory (the cheap ones come that way too).

Monitors and projectors need to be calibrated a lot more often than a good o-scope. I've installed more $30K NEC projectors and $25K Sony's than I can count or remember. None of them, or any other projector or monitor I've seen, was pre-calibrated for grey scale (or anything else) although there may be some manufacturers who do it. If they did they would be charging you for something that needed to be done again a few months later. Obviously projectors and tube monitors will normally drift more than a flat panel but the flat panels need to be tweaked occasionally also.

Setting gray scale is nice, but more and more sets now get decent gray scale accuracy ratings from reviewers. I recommend you buy a set that's close as built.

Any set needs to be calibrated to hit it's potential mark. Given that, I think it's better to have a monitor that has full access to gamma and grey scale tracking than otherwise. I would be shocked to see a properly calibrated monitor that wasn't more accurate than any consumer model that came straight out of the box.

Besides both plasma and LCD suffer a color accuracy that can't be calibrated out (native colors do not align with HDTV color triangle). I find this more noticeable than a mediocre grey scale.

This really sucks too. The manufacturers are pulling the same stunt they did in the NTSC era although it's not nearly as bad. Yeah, first they picked an aspect ratio that nobody ever used, then they cheese out on the color decoders. But it's early days still. I'm curious to see Dolby's new process where the LCD's are lit with individul LED's fed by the B&W signal. It was shown earlier this year at a trade show and apparently the contrast ratio and black level are stunning.

[hermanv]

Monitors and projectors need to be calibrated a lot more often than a good o-scope. I've installed more $30K NEC projectors and $25K Sony's than I can count or remember. None of them, or any other projector or monitor I've seen, was pre-calibrated for grey scale (or anything else) although there may be some manufacturers who do it. If they did they would be charging you for something that needed to be done again a few months later. Obviously projectors and tube monitors will normally drift more than a flat panel but the flat panels need to be tweaked occasionally also.

I can see why a CRT projector might need frequent calibration, but a DLP projector should stay close to correct for a long time.

Grey scale calibration can be easily automated. The factory could do it at probably 1-2 seconds per set.

I seem to see newer sets as more stable than older designs, by using highly integrated and mostly digital processing the need for frequent calibration can probably be designed out. I also remember an old Sony studio monitor that had photo cells looking at the back face of the CRT. I think auto calibration can be done, it just requires a change in mind set on the part of the designers/manufacturers.

Don't I remember early color TVs with skin color problems (green or orange hues) then auto flesh tones were added, problem solved. Newer sets don't even seem to need the auto correction, stability has improved remarkably. Just apply the same thinking to grey scale.

[BradH]

I also remember an old Sony studio monitor that had photo cells looking at the back face of the CRT.

You mean like an internal light meter? Haven't heard that one but with studio tube monitors there's no telling. They were always the best for NTSC. For auto-calibration it seems you would always need a light meter on the face of the tube or screen. Automatically analyzing the various curves in a feedback loop could work I suppose but doing it in a factory would still be time consuming, a lot more time than they want to spend on an assembly line. Also, the faster the process went the less accurate it would be. I'm not sure how an internal light meter could work because it needs to be at the center of the display.

Don't I remember early color TVs with skin color problems (green or orange hues) then auto flesh tones were added, problem solved. Newer sets don't even seem to need the auto correction, stability has improved remarkably. Just apply the same thinking to grey scale.

That wasn't really an auto-correction, it was a permanent manufactured over-compensation. They were pushing the color temperature higher and higher because it looked brighter to consumers. That screwed up the grey scale and black & white movies looked like varying shades of blue. That's why a room looked blue when someone was watching television in the dark. You really notice when you pass by a house at night. This resulted in the green or orange skin tones you mentioned. Rather than correct the color temperature and lose the "whiter than white" mentality of bleach and dye companies, the manufactures "compensated" by designing color decorders shifted into the red so the skin tone problem would be less noticeable. This never stopped either, resulting in the infamous "Sony Red" problem. Lousy grey scale and incorrect color decoders are why NTSC has the reputation for Never Twice The Same Color compared to PAL and SEACAM. The reality is NTSC was arguably a better format than the other two but the manufacurers of consumer sets never followed the standard until the 90's with a couple of high-end models. The only other option was getting your hands on a pro monitor and those weren't cheap and certainly didn't qualify as "big screen". That's amazing when you think about it. The vast majority of viewers have never seen accurate NTSC.

You mentioned you thought color accuracy of the decoder was more noticeable than bad grey scale. Not to my eyes but fair enough. The thing is, you can't get accurate color under any circumstances if the grey scale is off. Also, one thing that's not commonly understood is accurate grey scale actually increases the number of colors the monitor is able to display. So I'm really big on monitors that allow you to adjust gamma and grey scale, it's like a godsend.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

You mean like an internal light meter? Haven't heard that one but with studio tube monitors there's no telling. They were always the best for NTSC. For auto-calibration it seems you would always need a light meter on the face of the tube or screen. Automatically analyzing the various curves in a feedback loop could work I suppose but doing it in a factory would still be time consuming, a lot more time than they want to spend on an assembly line. Also, the faster the process went the less accurate it would be. I'm not sure how an internal light meter could work because it needs to be at the center of the display.



That wasn't really an auto-correction, it was a permanent manufactured over-compensation. They were pushing the color temperature higher and higher because it looked brighter to consumers. That screwed up the grey scale and black & white movies looked like varying shades of blue. That's why a room looked blue when someone was watching television in the dark. You really notice when you pass by a house at night. This resulted in the green or orange skin tones you mentioned. Rather than correct the color temperature and lose the "whiter than white" mentality of bleach and dye companies, the manufactures "compensated" by designing color decorders shifted into the red so the skin tone problem would be less noticeable. This never stopped either, resulting in the infamous "Sony Red" problem. Lousy grey scale and incorrect color decoders are why NTSC has the reputation for Never Twice The Same Color compared to PAL and SEACAM. The reality is NTSC was arguably a better format than the other two but the manufacurers of consumer sets never followed the standard until the 90's with a couple of high-end models. The only other option was getting your hands on a pro monitor and those weren't cheap and certainly didn't qualify as "big screen". That's amazing when you think about it. The vast majority of viewers have never seen accurate NTSC.

You mentioned you thought color accuracy of the decoder was more noticeable than bad grey scale. Not to my eyes but fair enough. The thing is, you can't get accurate color under any circumstances if the grey scale is off. Also, one thing that's not commonly understood is accurate grey scale actually increases the number of colors the monitor is able to display. So I'm really big on monitors that allow you to adjust gamma and grey scale, it's like a godsend.

My name is Sir T, and I approve of this post.

[pixelthis]

[QUOTE=Sir Terrence the Terrible]My name is Sir T, and I approve of this post.

You approve???

HOW WONDERFULL

[pixelthis]

some folks ARE just a bit too full of themselves, it seems.
What makes you think anybody gives a rats ass as to what you approve of?
You must live in an auditorium because that is the only place you massive ego would fit.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

[QUOTE=pixelthis]

My name is Sir T, and I approve of this post.

You approve???

HOW WONDERFULL

Pixel, all this time on this website and your stupid old azz still cannot figure out how to do a quote correctly. Why don't you just note the mistletoe located directly above my coattails you dumb old fool.