Musings on HDTV calibration

[Chris Nahr]

So now I've played around with the Digital Video Essentials disk and found a few odd things while attempting to calibrate my LCD HDTV.

First, colors. DVE includes transparent films in red, green, and blue so you can adjust colors with a test image. Supposedly, out of a bunch of colored blocks some go black and the other red/green/blue when you look through the matching film. Now I can calibrate blue and red perfectly, but green always shows distinct blocks, both in the dark and in the bright row. Why is that so, and is that a problem? The colors look good to me in movies so I guess not.

Next, gray scales. DVE has a nice gray scale test image, and I can adjust the display so I see all the individual blocks from black to white. That's nice, but I noticed that actual movies look rather washed-out at this setting, and I may have to add some contrast and activate "black level expansion" (i.e. shift darker pixels towards black) in order to get a satisfying picture. Out of curiousity, is this because the LCD's brightness response is too linear or not linear enough compared to what the DVD expects? Or because there aren't enough individual brightness steps? Or what?

[wisefool]

It's been a long time since I've messed with colors. I'm assuming they want you to calibrate to a certain color temperature. Are you doing this in a dark room by the way, or do you have some flourescent lightning above? Is the set set to 6500k temperature (that's for US NTSC tv) Also, those plastic strips will degrade so if you've had them over say a year they may no longer be valid.

Color perception is so subjective you will not find anyone who will walk in and jazz about colors being way off. Unless you're going to always watch in pitch dark. The color of the wall the TV is on affects your perception of color. Test this out. Two identical red squares, one is on black background, one on white.

Look up some reviews on that particular LCD. It's quite possible the LCD just can't do that. LCD's have superior geometry and inferior color replication.

More newbie bits - there's no "cinematic" setting for the TV? Mine has a cinematic that's perfectly calibrated. Wasted money on Avia + DVE.

HEY! Aren't you the guy who was asking about the Panasonic plasma?

[Chris Nahr]

Yes. Didn't you read the rest of that thread where I told y'all about the Sharp LCD I eventually bought? :p

You're probably right that the color issue is just how it is. I don't really care about color temperature as such, I was just trying to match up those colors in the DVE test image.

The predefined settings on the Sharp were pretty much all garbage. Both the calibrated settings that I got from a CNet review and those that I found on my own were different from any of the presets... sigh.

I did find out something about the black level thing. It's apparently due to a poor image source. Older movies always have those flickering green-gray edges where they're supposed to be black, but newer movies are perfectly black where they ought to be. So I suppose it's another case where an HDTV brings out the defects in poor image material.

[Desslock]

I did find out something about the black level thing. It's apparently due to a poor image source. Older movies always have those flickering green-gray edges where they're supposed to be black, but newer movies are perfectly black where they ought to.

Yes, HD sources should look perfect - it's other sources that have issues.

[Chris Nahr]

Well, actually all my sources are non-HD (upscaled standard DVDs). But newer movies have perfect black levels whereas, for example, 2001 occasionally shows messy gray corners in frames that should be black space. It's probably due to better trick technology or digital picture editing or whatnot.