Home Video Asylum

TVs, VCRs, DVD players, Home Theater systems and more.

Re: Calibration.

You may already have a DVD. A number of THX mastered DVDs include a "THX Optimiser" in the DVD extras. That includes the test patterns for setting brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness. You need a blue filter for the colour tests and they can be obtained cheaply from THX. A website address is provided. I think any of the Star Wars or Alien series of DVDs has the Optimiser in the extras, and some other titles do also

I own a copy of Digital Video Essentials and it worked fine with my previous TV which had a CRT. I recently purchased an LCD set and while it works OK with it, I actually find it easier to set the brightness and contrast using the tests for them in the THX optimiser. Digital Video Essentials includes the blue filter required for the colour setup. Navigating the menus in Digital Video Essentials is a real pain.

There are at least 2 other options out there, neither of which I've tried. There's AVIA which is a commercial product. There's also a 'shareware' product called GetGray intended purely for digital displays. You have to download the files and burn your own disc. It obviously doesn't come with the necessary blue filter but their website has instructions on how to get one including from THX.

I'd check if you already have a copy of the THX Optimiser on one of your DVDs and go with that first. It does a reasonable job. The others all have a lot more tests but you need test equipment to use most of those other tests.

Calibrating the basic 4 settings is easy and the results look good. How much better they look than your set's default settings will depend on how good a job your manufacturer did in choosing those defaults. Some are definitely better than others so you may or may not notice a big difference.

David Aiken


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