So I hired a certified ISF technician to come to my place and optimize my TV, a Hitachi 51f500 51" RPTV.
It was expensive. The t.v. portion was $300 and the HT system $100 but it was amazingly worth it. It took 6 hours for the whole process.
The TV he used a combination of the Avia/Video Essentials DVDs, as well as a special color analyzer machine. He adjusted the "defaults" of the t.v. so that the "reference" settings = 50% at all levels (contrast, tint, color, etc).
DVDs + HDTV look incredible. They basically look "perfect". I threw in test DVD after test DVD and they looked amazing. It was especially impressive since he started with S-VIDEO and I didn't even know it! Once we switched to component/DVi it looked even better.
Finally the part I enjoyed the most was the HT system calibration. He put my room and speaker sizes into a computer program, gave it constraints on placement (as well as the surrounds since they were already mounted), and the PC spat out ideally placement locations for the mains, center and subwoofer.
Once place, he nosed the mains in, and then we configured the levels and delay of everything.
WOW. I'm blown away. We established the reference volume was -4 (which is pretty loud) and he was right: I don't need a more powerful receiver. Through placement they sound much louder and clearer even though my H/K receiver is "only" 45 wpc.
Anyway I'm loving it.
