This past Saturday night m'lady was out with the girls for the evening, so I decided to try the butane lighter trick (
http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/experttips/guykuo/contrast.html) on my Hitachi 43" CRT RP. The only lighter in the non-smoking house couldn't quite muster up a 1" flame, so I was sort of guessing and trying some things out, going back and forth between DVE and program material to judge the effects of my settings on actual movies rather than just test patterns.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in the forums, it doesn't seem possible to get the 43UWX10B to bloom no matter the contrast and brightness settings, so up 'til now I have been setting brightness according to DVE instructions and shooting in the... um... "dark" for the contrast. I have consistently dialed it back 5 or 10 clicks at a time, lived with it for a while, and then dialed it back more - always feeling that the highlights were getting blown out.
So as I was pulling the contrast back to get somewhere in the neighborhood of the lighter's paper-illumination power, I noticed that the white-ish background of the black menu text under the on-screen indicator (as well as the indicator itself) didn't change with the rest of the screen. (Kinda makes sense that it would be inserted post-controls so you can still see what you're doing even if you completely hose your settings.)
Now I have no way of knowing what white level that bar is, but when I set 100% white to match that bar, the picture is beautiful. Watched selected bits of Attack of the Clones and about 1/2 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and both looked phenomenal - better than they ever have in the 3 years since I got this set and started messing with it (with and without Avia and DVE).
Does anyone know if this is coincidence, complete crap, or if there's any basis in reality for using that white bar as a benchmark in the absence of actual measuring equipment?
