well dag, i am by no means an expert or ISF guy, but i have had good luck calibrating my samsung LN46A550 so let me see if i can help any.
#1. i think the normal contrast range for LCD's is 30-40ftl's. at least that's what i have read in other forums, and some ISF guys that wrote in seem to confirm this. i might add that as an aside (and i think the guide mentions this, but i may have read it somewhere else) that a fair amount of people DON'T LIKE a calibrated picture, at least at first because it looks 'too dark'. this is a result of manufacturers turning up the brightness and color saturation to blowtorch intensities to catch your eye so you want to buy their tv's. unfortunately, most of us have grown used to these (incorrect) setups. i recommend calibrating your picture and watching it for a week before making any changes so you can get used to the darker, more 'film like' settings.
#2. brightness - you didn't indicate any problems here, it went ok i guess?
#3. greyscale - RGB gains is for the high end, use it to adjust the 80% screen. then use RGB offsets for the low end, 30% screen. after adjusting both to get the bars as close to 100% as possible, i then run a greyscale measurement. i then look at the RGB graph, because for me it is easier to read. concentrate on getting the Delta E measurements (bottom purple line) under 3 for all readings except the 10% and 100% (the lightmeter doesn't read these correctly - i have an eye one. i'm not sure how accurate a spyder is. it might not also pick up the 20% correctly). i also look at the separate RGB colors on the top part of the graph and adjust accordingly. for instance, if the red is a little low in the 20-40% areas, and the blue is a little high, i will go back to my 30% screen and bump the red RGB offset up one, and the blue down one. i will then repeat the greyscale measurements, and keep repeating this until it's dialed in. i try to never mess with the RGB gains if i don't have to, using mostly the RGB offsets because the gains make huge changes across the greyscale, and the offsets make smaller adjustments that are easier to dial in.
#4. colors - you want to use the HDTV REC709 numbers, not the SDTV numbers. dial in your color and tint controls. then you can dial in your primary/secondary's. here is where the guide fails us a little bit (it doesn't give Y values for the colors) and i refer to this excellent thread that really helped me:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=852536
although even this gave me problems for a while. first as stated in post #829, the samsung has an excellent CMS built into it, but it works a little strange. first go to custom color space and pick the primary/secondary color you want to adjust. you will then see the RGB sliders. if you have picked a primary color, you adjust the slider for that color to adjust Y (if you picked red as a color, you slide the red slider and watch Y in the HCFR window). to adjust Y for secondary colors, you adjust the 2 sliders equally up or down to adjust Y that make up the secondary color (for cyan, slide G and B equally, for yellow R and G, magenta R and B). dial in your Y values first when dialing in a color, then x and y.to move x and y, use a combo of all three sliders while watching the software to see which moves x and y and in what direction. remember to make sure you're not screwing up the Y value while adjusting x and y, but it's really more intuitive and easy then it sounds. when you have the color dialed in, then move to the next color. follow the order of the chart below for first dialing in primary then secondary colors. red is already done (you fixed it with the 'color' control adjustment). here is the color chart for HDTV:
Rec. 709 (High Definition)
----x-------y--------Y
R---0.6400--0.3300---0.2126 (the Y valures are percent multipliers)
G---0.3000--0.6000---0.7152
B---0.1500--0.0600---0.0722
Y---0.4193--0.5053---0.9278
C---0.2246--0.3287---0.7874
M---0.3209--0.1542---0.2848
W---0.3127--0.329----1.0
you do not need to do white. so to explain the above:
as i said red is done, so start with green. the x and y values are listed (x=0.3000, y= 0.6000) so adjust for these, but first dial in Y for green. so the first thing is to use the Y number you had for 100% white. lets say it is 112.3. so multiply that by the Y number listed for green above (112.3 x 0.7152 = 80.316 - this is your Y number for green). do the same for all colors in order. how close should you get? according to the guy who wrote the above thread "Using xyY as a metric, then +-0.004 xy and +-5% Y would be a reasonable set of tolerances." good luck getting to .004! but i have to say i dialed in my samsung pretty damn close, and i can't believe how good it looks. but i must again warn you, it doesn't look much like a tv - it has a warmer and yes darker more film like look. once you get used to it, i don't think you'll go back. hope all this helps cuz my fingers hurt from all this typing.
