Are you getting the most out of your TV or display

[DrunkenZombiee]

This will be updated with links to useful guides and other websites that I found useful. Also inexpensive options for meters and other tuning equipment will be posted.

I know many of you have home theatre set-ups with nice large Plasmas/LED's or even projectors, but I don't know if many of you are aware of the nasty settings that the Manufacturers put on the TV's by default to make the TV's pop (stand out). This means normally horribly over saturated colours, with the greyscale well off! This is no good for watching movies on, but cant be good for competitive gaming (it looks horrible though).

So what can be done?

Option1:
Well, you can get the TV professionally adjusted for around £300. This is a hefty price to pay for a cheap or mid-range TV as it can cost ore than the TV sometimes. Also as the tuning is per input each device you use will need to be present at the time of the tuning, any new device will require to be retuned, not ideal! Also you need to burn in the TV for 30 days or so before you can get it metered and over its lifetime the TV will need to be retuned (particularly plasmas).

Option2:
Cheap DIY job and get it in the right ballpark.
Do it yourself and save a load of money! A simple by eye tuning can be done with a Disney WOW disk and some tint glasses. This will get the levels within acceptible ranged but much of this is guess work as its by eye and not at all accurate. Unless you see option 3 you don't really know what you are missing.

Option3:
Invest a little time and money and get things perfect with the ability to tune all of your monitors/TV's/projectors as you add new sources.

What you will need:
A Meter (you can get a cheap one or even make one yourself for a little as £30)
A laptop
Some blank media and an ISO with greyscale patterns on (will provide link here soon)
Colour metering software, a free option is HCFR (which I used).
A decent guide.
A lot of patience!!!!!!!

Now I won't lie to you, YOU NEED TO READ A GUIDE FIRST AND UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING! If not you will just end up spending days in tuning and getting inaccurate results. This can be confusing, but once you learn how to read the graphs and the difference between the high end and low end RGB settings you will be well on your way! I was pretty lucky to have learnt much of the terminology at UNI, but its not at all hard once you can relate your TV's settings to the guide and then the software.

NOTE for all of those PLASMA users who have THX certified setting on their TV's..... I also have a THX certified setting on my TV and have done in the past, but having an Uber monitor upstairs with a wider colour gamut I was shocked by the poor colour representation of the TV. When I tested the representation was well off! I lost about 15% of colours which could be represented and some of the high and low end were very out of kilter. In particular the yellow (Cyan) was hugely off.

Have a go! You will be shocked by the improvement!

If you need any help or advice give me a shout.

DZ.

[Penfold]

My question is basic

I have a42inch plasma and a blurry player. How the hell do I get it to play without having the letterbox effect to and bottom. I kinda presumed it should fill out the whole screen but if I change the display it distorts the picture.

[smilodon]

I don't think that there is a definitive wide screen dimension. Different film and television productions use different sizes. So not every show will fit every screen size.....  I think?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

[DrunkenZombiee]

I don't think that there is a definitive wide screen dimension. Different film and television productions use different sizes. So not every show will fit every screen size.....  I think?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

Not true there are standard formats which should be adhered to. On the Back of a a DVD or BD it should say the aspect ratio. If its a dodgy DL or encoded movie then the rez can be anything but it should still have a standard aspect ratio.

If the Movie is 16:9 (1.77:1) the DVD and BluRAY standard as well as 1080P then ensure your TV is set to "16:9" or "FIT". Most movies however are made for the Silver screen which uses a native 2.39:1 which is quite a way off 1.77:1 so you will get a letterbox on these movies. 1.85:1 is also popular in the US but most releases should be in 2.39 as this is now the standard.

You can set your TV to "ZOOM" "WIDE ZOOM" or one of the smart settings to get round this and display the picture in 16:9, however you will loose some of the picture or it will get stretched.

I think Sharp or Panasonic used to make a TV which had the same 2.39:1 ratio which I think has long discontinued as it was not popular as most people watch sources in 16:9 such as stadard TV.

Hope this helps.

DZ

[smilodon]

Yep there are standards, just more than one of them. If the ratio of the film isn't the same as the ratio of your tv then you're going to get some form of black bar.  If the screen scales then by definition you will get cropping or distortion. I think Star Wars films were filmed in something like 20:8?  I'm on the mobile so can't find the link but Wikipedia has a great article about film formats

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[T-Bag]

I think Star Wars films were filmed in something like 20:8?

Wouldn't that be 5:2?

As for colour balancing itself.

I'm not that interested in buying a light meter etc etc. If there were a pre-printed chart which could be used to match a static image to then that's about the level of interest I'd be willing to invest into calibrating my TV. I just crudely adjusted it when I bought it so things "look nice" and not as saturated and warm. I'm not sure there's a huge gain in terms of movie watching experience to gain from watching a Blu-ray on a "looks nice" set to a perfectly balanced set. Certainly not £300 worth of difference to me. I can see the merit in doing that for a monitor used for professional photography.

[smilodon]

I'm on a mobile and cannot think properly!  It's a very odd aspect ratio. No more from me till I get home and can read posts correctly .

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

[T-Bag]

I'm on a mobile and cannot think properly!  It's a very odd aspect ratio. No more from me till I get home and can read posts correctly .

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

The internet says Star Wars was Cinema scope 2.4:1 (or 12:5) so not far of 2.5:1 (20:

[DrunkenZombiee]

T-bag what you are looking for is step 2 in the guide. You simply need a Disney THX movie on DVD etc or you can use your lappy and photoshop with some reference cards.

The trouble is that you are then focusing on a particular point in terms of greyscale when tuning and not across the board. To get it right you really need a Meter and some software which shows you a graphical representation.

I was lucky enough to already have my Meter already as I bought it for Photography (I buy a lot of canvases and expensive large prints for family and friends so it paid for itself already) so I used this for tuning my TV. You cant unfortunately just hook it up to the built in software unfortunately as its specific to each input (and they really do vary a lot). Also to get the best results you do need to change the RGB high and low on the device itself.

If you find someone already with the monitor everything you need is free on the net. =)

DZ

[smilodon]

Here's the link I was looking for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

and

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/aspectratios/widescreenorama.html

Back to the original subject. Colour management is an important part of photography too. Monitor calibration is crucial in order to correctly edit and view photographs. Just ask Penfold about how wondrous my images are

 For TV viewing I'm actually less critical. I agree the settings out of the box are usually dreadful. I guess the manufacturer wants customers to think 'Wow what a vivid and punchy picture my new TV gives. I spent my money well there.' However my TV says it analyses ambient light levels and the subject matter to reproduce correct colours without me needing to adjust anything. That's the claim. How well it does it's job I don't know. The trouble is I have nothing to make a side by side comparison to.

[RizZy]

I bookmarked this a while ago with the intention of trying it out on my tv, but due to me being very lazy I havn't got round to it, might be worth a look -

http://lifehacker.com/5858625/how-to-calibrate-your-hdtv-and-boost-your-video-quality-in-30-minutes-or-less

[DrunkenZombiee]

I bookmarked this a while ago with the intention of trying it out on my tv, but due to me being very lazy I havn't got round to it, might be worth a look -

http://lifehacker.com/5858625/how-to-calibrate-your-hdtv-and-boost-your-video-quality-in-30-minutes-or-less

Yep this is option 2 in the guide =). Will still make a huge difference if you have out of the box settings but you dont know how much of the gamut you are missing unfortunately or if all colours are off then this is an issue. That when a Meter comes in handy.