I have been upgrading my home theater, really more like building a new one as I have replaced every component of my 9-year old system over the last three months. I decided when I started this project that my final “addition” would be to have my HDTV professionally calibrated by an ISF Certified technician.
I got a list of ISF technicians from the ISF website and started calling local TV shops that had ISF certified techs & testing equipment. I was not impressed with any of the local techs after speaking to them over the phone; they sounded very disinterested and were very vague about the exact services they provided. While surfing on the various Home Theater Websites I saw a bunch of people posting about a particular guy who did the calibrations on their sets that they were very happy with. He not only calibrated the set but also did many other tweaks and services as part of his calibration, some at additional charge. I contacted this guy who is located in Maine to see if he could recommend a local tech and found that he regularly travels throughout the country doing calibrations and would be in my area in March, so I set up an appointment with him.
He calibrated my 57” Sony CRT RPTV (KDP-57WS655) on Tuesday and man what a difference! My DVD’s look so close to HD I had a difficult time telling them apart! I have VOOM so I do know what HD looks like. The base calibration price ($400) includes one scan rate, 480P, but I paid and additional $150 and had the HD scan rates of 720P & 1080i also calibrated. They looked better, but the biggest change was in 480p. The blacks are simply unbelievable, I now know what “blacker than black” is! I also had him line the inside of the TV cabinet with a black felt like material that prevented any reflections from the sides of the cabinet; Sony uses a gray plastic that does have some reflection and there was silver metal parts also reflecting light from the Red / Green / Blue lamps. He also suggested removing the protective screen and that made a huge difference – no more glare! I had a big problem with glare before and this totally solved it. He spent six hours calibrating my set, not the 1 to 2 hours the local guys told me it would take.
Although this procedure was expensive, it was worth it and I cannot think of anything else you could do to your system to get this kind of an improvement regardless of the price. All of the ISF Techs I checked with charged about the same, $400 to $450 for a single scan rate; the felt lining is also a common tweak and cost me $150 with about $60 of that for materials. Having the additional HD scan rates calibrated was another $150. It does add up but when you figure the total cost of your Home Theater it’s really not that much and it will definitely make yours stand apart from the rest. I highly suggest that you consider getting this done if you really want to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your set and really see what it is capable of doing.
