TV calibration

[runswithscisors]

My TV is about two months old now, and I want to calibrate it. I was talking with a shop owner at a COC meeting, and he told me quiet frankly that I would be better off buying a calibration set up off the internet, as I would be money ahead the second time I used it.

I have looked around, and found the Datacolor Spyder4, but then read this about it.

For authentication, my B&H Order # is 374514890, dated 2-2-12.
I have been using the Datacolor software & Spyder for at least 12 years to calibrate & profile my computer monitors for Photoshop work.

The good news is the Spyder4 colorimeter works just fine.

The bad news is the TV calibration software is inadequate for anything other than a black & white TV.

The software does allow adjustment of the black point, white point, color tone, and "tint."

However, input of the TV's model number into the software makes no difference.

The software does NOT allow adjustment of the:
1. "backlight" (i.e., true brightness);
2. red, green, and blue colors;
3. 10 point white-balance red, green, & blue values (30 values in total); or
4. Color space red, green, & blue values for Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan, & Magenta (18 values in total).

If this software is intended for a moderately sophisticated home theater TV, why are there no standard RGB color tones generated and measured as is done for computer monitors?

You can make one big improvement in your TV by changing the Color Tone to Warm 2 or your TV's warmest color.
You can do an internet search to find Post Calibration Settings for your specific TV model - for free.
For my LED TV, there are 76 values that can be adjusted.
I did a Google search, found these settings, plugged them in, and the picture looks great.
If your TV doesn't look great with these settings, just reset the values back to what they were.
As a test, I displayed a few on my images on my now adjusted TV and compared each image to the same image displayed on my calibrated & profiled computer monitor.
The images look impressive on my 46" LED TV and almost as good as on my computer monitor.

I feel like an idiot for having purchased the Datacolor Spyder4 TV Spyder & software.
I am dumbfounded and astonished that a company selling what I thought was good software for computer monitor calibration could market such an utterly worthless product.

So I started looking at CalMan, and don't really know where to go, or what sensor/package I would need.

Please help help steer me in the right direction.

 

[FirstReflection]

The i1 Display Pro III is by far the most common choice for DIY display calibration. For just under $400, you can get the i1 Display Pro III meter and the home user CalMAN software, or you can pony up an extra $40 to get the retail version of the Display Pro III, which comes with some software of its own that you may or may not find useful in addition to CalMAN.

The latest version of CalMAN is easier to use than the older versions and has a wizard to help walk you through the calibration process. But you are still at the mercy of a number of potential limitations:

1) Doing your own calibration means you are only using the user controls in your display. These may or may not be sufficient for performing a full color, greyscale, gamma, white level and black level calibration.

A professional calibrator, on the other hand, has access to the service menu and the calibration menu of any display. If you're determined, you might be able to find the access codes to these "hidden" menus online. But be warned! These are NOT easy-to-understand menus. They are not labelled. They don't come with instructions or anything designed for a user. And unlike the user menu, you can permanently screw up your display pretty bad if you don't know what you're doing! I would NOT advise any user to monkey around in service or calibration menus. But if your display lacks comprehensive user controls, you might be able to measure, but you won't be able to adjust, which makes buying a meter and software kinda useless!

2) While the i1 Display Pro III is rather amazingly good for its price, it still is not a professional level meter. Its tolerances and precision are still far below a professional grade spectrophotometer, so you wouldn't ever want to use it for a critical display - like a professional editing monitor or something like that.


3) The CalMAN software is extremely powerful, but even with the wizard, you still basically need to know what you are doing if you want to use it to its full potential.

4) Again, while the i1 Display Pro III is extremely impressive, there are issues with certain display types that can "throw off" the meter and cause it to give inaccurate readings. Unfortunately, LCDs are the primary culprits, and also the most common display type in homes. The only way to really accurately get readings off of many LCD displays is to take readings with a spectrophotometer and then create an offset calibration file for a colorimeter like the Display Pro III.

Honestly, my advice to anyone who is interested in video calibration is to hire a professional at least once. Talk to them on the phone beforehand and do not hire a calibrator until you find one who is willing to spend time talking with you and basically educating you about calibration. Some calibrators are "all business" and just want their clients to get out of the way so that they can perform as many calibrations in a day as possible. Other calibrators are very friendly and will happily talk all day with you if you like. So it's a matter of finding one of the friendly, patient ones

What you want is the experience of watching a professional calibration process. And you want to witness a truly accurate and professionally calibrated image before you go trying to calibrate displays yourself. Ideally, you'll be able to ask questions and receive answers throughout the process from your calibrator. Again, some of them love to talk and teach, others will want you out of the room!

Once you've seen the calibration process and you have a fully calibrated display, that's when it's a good time to purchase a meter and some software so that you can take your own measurements, play around with the software, and become familiar with how to take readings, how to interpret them in the software, and what your targets ought to be.

And, naturally, there are even better meters than the i1 Display Pro III. SpectraCal's C6 is a modified Display Pro, but at a substantially higher cost.

Another great option is ChromaPure . In my opinion, ChromaPure does a better job of walking you through the calibration process from beginning to end. Basically, ChromaPure was made by a professional calibrator and it takes you through HIS process. Professionals and semi-professionals tend to prefer CalMAN because they can tailor it more to their own process and order of doing things, but, like I said, you basically need to already know what you are doing with CalMAN. ChromaPure gives you a little more hand-holding and a bit more of a guided path.

ChromaPure also offers a modified i1 Display Pro III meter for a slightly lower price than the SpectraCal C6 option. ChromaPure's version provides offsets for common displays that the retail Display Pro III meter might have troubles with. It's a pretty good value in that respect.

My personal opinion is that the best value all around is in first hiring a friendly professional calibrator who is willing to talk with you throughout the process and basically provide an education as part of the service - and after that service, buy yourself the $400 CalMAN DIY package with the i1 Display Pro III meter. You can use your professionally calibrated display as a reference, and then use the meter and CalMAN software to calibrate other displays or your friends' and family's displays, etc.

If you're a bit more serious, you can pay extra for the modified SpectraCal C6 meter.

If you're determined to do it on your own and never hire a professional though, you might want to consider the ChromaPure package with the modified Display 3 PRO meter for $600. It's a more accurate meter with the modifications and the ChromaPure software does a better job of walking you through the process.

Hope that helps!

 

[darien87]

1) Doing your own calibration means you are only using the user controls in your display. These may or may not be sufficient for performing a full color, greyscale, gamma, white level and black level calibration.

A professional calibrator, on the other hand, has access to the service menu and the calibration menu of any display. If you're determined, you might be able to find the access codes to these "hidden" menus online. But be warned! These are NOT easy-to-understand menus. They are not labelled.!

Lots of good info but this isn't necessarily true. It seems like more and more of the newer TV's have all the calibration tools out in the open. I know my Samsung PN64D8000 is like this. There are TONS of settings I could monkey with on my TV but I don't because I have no idea what they do. In fact my calibrator didn't mess with them either because he said his software didn't have the capability.

 

[FirstReflection]

Lots of good info but this isn't necessarily true. It seems like more and more of the newer TV's have all the calibration tools out in the open. I know my Samsung PN64D8000 is like this. There are TONS of settings I could monkey with on my TV but I don't because I have no idea what they do. In fact my calibrator didn't mess with them either because he said his software didn't have the capability.

Samsung, and especially LG have both been very good in terms of providing a very comprehensive set of user-accessible controls - that is true. Sony tends to provide quite a lot of control options, but they label them strangely and seem to give a lot of relative controls, where adjusting one option will affect another. Panasonic has been really poor in terms of giving users control over settings. Only the top VT series supplies comprehensive controls. Sharp tends to fall somewhere in between, giving fairly comprehensive user control options, but not quite as complete as Samsung or especially LG.

The thing is, ALL of them are providing only a limited amount of user-accessible adjustability. In certain circumstances, you might crank one of the user adjustment options as high or as low as it can go, and still not be hitting the target measurement. User-accessible controls purposely have a limited range so that you cannot damage the display!

Service and calibration menus typically allow for larger changes to be made, but this can be dangerous. You can literally permanently damage a display in some cases, which is why users are not given access!

You are right that some "professional" calibrators out there do not have access or their software is inadequate. Sadly, much like any contractor, there's no law against any doofus picking up a light meter and calling himself a professional calibrator! I used to be a big proponent of always going with an ISF certified calibrator, but there have been a few "cracks" in their certification system. Mainly, people just need to take and pass a course in order to get ISF certified. They don't actually need to perform a certain number of calibrations and have their results verified by other certified calibrators. For that reason, I'm now a bigger fan of hiring only THX certified calibrators. The THX calibrator certification is more in-depth. They receive more hands-on training with actual displays and equipment and software, and they have to perform at least 10 unique calibrations and have those calibrations verified by other THX certified calibrators before they can all themself a THX certified professional calibrator.

The calibrators who are doing things right - whether they are ISF or THX certified - are using very expensive, industry reference meters and proper software - very often CalMAN Professional - so that they can perform a complete and comprehensive calibration. They know exactly what EVERY control does, and they typically perform the calibration within the service and calibration menus. One of the advantages is that they will calibrate the display so that your user-accessible options will all read "zero" - as in default positions - for a perfectly calibrated display!

If you hire a calibrator and he shows up with a consumer-level meter, non-professional software, and he does the adjustments in the user menu, that is a sure sign that he/she is NOT a fully certified calibrator. You'll get that kind of crap from an "installer" or from a Best Buy Geek Squad "calibration". Don't waste your money on that nonsense - you could do the same thing yourself! When you hire a professional, I'd recommend going with a fully THX certified calibrator. If you do not have a THX certified calibrator who services your area, look for an ISF certified calibrator through the official ISF Website .

And, like I said, talk to them on the phone before you hire them. You can ask what meter(s) they are using and look it/them up, you can ask what software they are using and look that up. And you want to hire someone who will talk to you, answer your questions, and let you watch while they go through the process

 

[runswithscisors]

4) Again, while the i1 Display Pro III is extremely impressive, there are issues with certain display types that can "throw off" the meter and cause it to give inaccurate readings. Unfortunately, LCDs are the primary culprits, and also the most common display type in homes. The only way to really accurately get readings off of many LCD displays is to take readings with a spectrophotometer and then create an offset calibration file for a colorimeter like the Display Pro III.

So, if I hire a pro to calibrate the TV, then immediately take reference readings with a consumer level meter, I could create a file and save it to re-calibrate later on?

All this is really over my head.