Calibrating a Television

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

The Home Theater fairy, the lesser known cousin of the tooth fairy, visited me last week and blessed me with a new television. I ended up getting a great deal on a Samsung LN52A850 set and with spousal approval went and pulled the trigger. I had been thinking about getting a new television for some time as my 46" Samsung just felt a little small in the space we had and the new 52" set provides more of the larger picture we are used to from the theaters.

With a new set however comes the inevitable calibrating of the set in order to get the picture just right. In the past I have to admit I have been guilty of calibrating by simply using a movie and the Mark 1 eyeball which seems to be losing its efficiency with age. When browing the thread on calibrating the A850 at avsforum there was a post linking to a free calibration DVD put together by some of the avsforum members.

I've only had a chance to have a quick look at it but what I have seen so far is pretty impressive for a free effort. The disc contains various patterns that are displayed through a Blu-ray player or other HD source that allow you to perform a basic calibration without equipment. The disc is burned from an .iso and is navigable using a simple menu, it took me all of five minutes to burn the disc and start playing with it using my PS3. While the burning process is simple, what really makes the process easy is the sixteen page PDF document that accompanies the disc and guides you through the process of calibrating your set.

The disc allows you to calibrate the grayscale, colors, contrast, brightness, sharpness and other parameters of the television without having to use any tools. While the final results are not going to be as good as an ISF calibration they should be more then sufficient for the average joe. One thing I found useful on the Samsung set, which I assume would be available on all recent Samsung sets, is the availability of a blue mode. This blue mode allows you to adjust the colors on the set without requiring a blue filter by only displaying the color blue. In this mode different colors which have a blue component are still visibile and colors can be tuned by using the test pattern tweaking the settings until the blue appears identical.

The AVS HD 709 disc is a highly recommended tool and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

AVS HD 709 - Blu-ray, HD DVD, & MP4 Calibration

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:27 PM | Categories: Home Theater | Permalink