Quote Originally Posted by 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?)
Now I remember why I like this guy.