Thursday, May 30, 2013

where can you buy a HDTV Calibration Disc?

Q. I have been looking in retail stores such as Walmart, Target, Radioshack and have had no luck. Anyone out there know of any places? I am trying not to order online.

A. Look for the Disney WOW disk. It's actually a pretty good calibration disk and should be at any store that sells Disney disks.


How can I get the best possible picture quality on my LED HDTV?
Q. I've recently purchased a 50" Sony Bravia 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV and while the picture quality of quite good straight out of the box, I'm sure it could be better. I haven't really altered the settings at all so does anyone know if there are particular settings to get the best possible picture? I do have it hooked up with a HDMI cable.

A. You cannot use anybody elses numbers because the adjustments are there to compensate for YOUR source devices, your cable and your particular television.

Go get a Pixar BluRay or DVD. In the disk setup menu you will find test patterns and instructions on setting your basic Brightness, Contrast and Color. This is important because televisions are set to nearly 100% brightness and contrast at the factory to be 'eye-catching' if the unit is used for a floor demo. Properly setting these values - will NOT look as good at first. But fine details will become noticeable, wide areas of solid colors will be more solid and not swirl with other colors, etc.

This is a basic calibration you are doing. You can always order the new Disney WOW disk, the Speiers and Munsel or good old Digital Video Essentials. These disks have more test patterns, are more involved but give you lots of great tutorials.

Start with a Pixar disk. This may be all you need.

Also - go into the TV and turn OFF various optional processing like 'motion flow' and other things. While these things do make motion smoother and make some details pop out - it can create un-natural effects like the 'soap-opera' effect. (Once you see this - you will know what I am talking about.)

Oh - and congratulations on the purchase.


How can calibration DVDs help your HDTV if they're standard definition?
Q. I don't understand how these DVDs will help your picture quality if they're standard DVD and you're calibration for an HD picture. And please don't go on about how they have them on Blu-Ray. For a long time they were only on standard DVD and some of those are still being recommended.

A. Do you know why you calibrate?

When you have some image - the electrical signal gets modified by a bunch of things before you see it:

* The quality of the source material
* The output electronics of your source device (Disk player, game system, cable or sat box)
* The type and somewhat the quality of the cables going to your TV
* The input electronics of your TV
* The Brightness, Contrast, Color settings on your TV

When you 'calibrate' - you want to start by shoving a pure-white, pure-red, pure-green color through all that mess so can compensate for everything by adjusting your TV brightness, color and contrast settings.

A standard def DVD is totally capable of giving you white, red, green fields to make basic adjustments. It can also produce grey-bar test patterns and other test patterns to adjust contrast, brightness, etc. Being 480 or 1080 does not matter for these adjustments. Flowing through all YOUR gear and cables is the important part.

You probably do NOT want to use a DVD for the more advanced adjustments like convergence or adjusting the fine-focus on your HDTV. But these settings are usually hidden away in a service menu so that only someone with some training, and the HD version of the test patterns, would use them.

Even putting in a Pixar DVD into your BluRay player, going to the disk setup menu and using the test patterns to do the basic adjustments is much better than leaving a HDTV set to the factory "torch mode".

The BluRay version of Digital Video Essential or the Spears and Munsell disk is better. These run $18-$30 on Amazon and give you more test patterns and tweeks, a green filter to look through, etc. So if you have not bought one of these but want to master the settings in your HDTV, these should be on your shelf. But using a DVD version can still get you to 90-95% of where you want to be.

Hope this helps.





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