Video Calibration - how important is it?

[number17]

I have a RPTV (Toshiba 57HX83) and recently a friend of mine recommended me to get the AVIA or DVE kit to calibrate and fine tune my TV. I wonder how big of a difference does it make though ...

I have used the "THX Optimizer" on some DVD's (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) to tune the setting on my TV before and I didn't really find a night and day difference afterwards ... one reason may be my Toshiba default setting is already pretty close to what the THX Optimizer would yield.

For those of you who have tried the AVIA or DVE on your TV - especially those also using RPTV - did you find a significant difference afterwards? The AVIA kit isn't exactly cheap (and no, I don't have anybody who I can borrow from) and I wonder if it's worth the $$.


thanks,

[Kevin P]

It's worth it if you want to get the most out of your set. The most picture quality, and the longest life.

The THX Optimizer is similar and will do for basic calibration duties, but Avia offers a lot more patterns and tools, such as color filters to adjust your color and tint settings, and check/adjust the color decoder. If you get into more advanced tweaking, Avia or DVE is a must. For a basic calibration, the THX Optimizer will do.

Regardless of what you do, make sure to turn the contrast down, since at the factory setting it's cranked all the way up which will shorten the life of your CRTs and increase the risk of burn in. With most sets a contrast setting of 30-35% is optimal, but a calibration disc such as Avia will help you set it correctly for your set. Also, turn down sharpness since it just adds artifacts to the picture.

The biggest improvement I usually see after doing a basic Avia calibration is the colors, they are generally more accurate, especially with the skin tones. It's difficult to set color and tint correctly without a test pattern.

[number17]

Thanks for the reply.

The TV doesn't offer THAT many settings (Contrast, color, tint, brightness and sharpness ... and that's pretty much it) and the THX Optimizer already adjusts all of those. That's why I wasn't sure if Avia or calibration kits like that offers a lot more over and beyond what THX Optimizer offers ... but I guess they offer finer tuning ...

As for the contrast, the Toshiba actually has an ALS feature, which adjust the contrast according to the ambient lighting of the room (the TV has a sensor in the front). The ALS feature actually works pretty well and helps a lot because the ambient lighting changes a lot from daytime to night time.

With the ALS feature turned on, it changes the contrast to 30-50% throughout the day. However with the ALS feature turned on I cannot manually change the contrast of the picture... so unless I turn ALS off, that's 1 less variable I can tune with these calibration kits.

I do turn all the other 'enhancement features' (like SVM, flesh tone, DNR... etc etc) off when I watch movies or HD content TV ... those features do help for analog TV with noisy signal.

[aud19]

If you want you could put that money towards a full ISF calibration which should yield much more noticeable improvements on PQ and just borrow you're friends disc after that for periodic "maintenance"

Jason

[Andrew Pratt]

Actually your TV offers a ton of setup options if you're willing to go into the service menu. Avia is a fantastic tool that I couldn't live without but like any tool it relies on a skilled user to get the most out of it which is where the ISF tech's come into the equation if you have the funds to pay for them. Still I think even a novice should be able to calibrate their TV's with Avia well enough to justify the costs. You might also be able to rent it though netflix?

[number17]

Does the AVIA kit gets you into the service menus? If not you know where I can get that (from the web?)

Then again, if I'm not 100% sure of what I'm doing, I probably should go there ....