After about an hour of working with the video test patterns, I made pretty good progress. Here’s how things changed, my old settings first:

Contrast - 89 to 92
Brightness - 54 to 58
Sharpness - 39 to 11
Color - 54 to 60

You can see that my sharpness setting number dropped by more than a third. According to the disc’s HD Video Calibration section, this control is actually a holdover from the early days of color TV. In most cases, this control doesn’t need to be active for HD signals. Sure enough, using the Overscan test pattern, I was able to see I had mine set way too high.

My display performed miserably in the Overscan test (screen area). When looking at that pattern I can see I’m losing the bottom five percent of the picture, the left three percent, the top two percent and the right two percent. I also learned that my picture is rotated ever so slightly clockwise. Unfortunately I can’t fix any of the Overscan issues without getting into the TV’s service menu. I did buy an extended warranty with my TV, so hopefully I can get some of these issues resolved with a technician, and maybe convince him to show me the service menu while he’s at it.

Once I finished with the calibration, I went to the disc’s demo material, which is broken up into both 720p and 1080p material filmed at both 24 and 60 frames per second. My set’s limits showed themselves again when trying to process the 24FPS material using a 3:2 pulldown. Make sure to watch the 1080p material with Joe Kane’s narration even if you have a 720p set, as he does a great job of explaining what to look for in the demo material.

An unexpected benefit of my efforts was how much better my Comcast HD signal looked when I used these same settings on that connection.

Audio Tests
Calibrating the audio proved to be slightly less time consuming, and having someone help you would make it even quicker. The majority of the tests on the disc are video tests, but it includes everything you need to properly calibrate your audio. Be sure to have a sound pressure level meter with you when performing these tests.

Using the Band Limited Pink Noise Multi-Channel Levels and Balance (whew) test signal along with my SPL meter, I was able to get my receiver putting out 75dB at reference level on all my speakers. I flipped to my receiver’s built-in test tones just for comparison and found that they were about 2dB off from the disc’s tones and nowhere near as uniform, varying by as much as 2dB from tone to tone. Here are the results of my audio calibration, original settings first:

Front left - +4 to +2
Center - +2 to -1
Front right - +2 to -1
Rear right - +4 to -3
Rear left - +4 to 0
Subwoofer – Settings stayed the same

All told I spent about four hours with the disc. It was a great exercise and I’m getting renewed enjoyment out of my set now that the picture is back to looking its best. Certainly, hiring a professional to calibrate your discs to ISF standards will yield the best results, but for only the price of the disc and sound meter, you too can have your set looking its best.

Read more about home theater calibration on ElectronicHouse.com:
Calibrate Your Own Audio and Video
Get the Best Picture from Your New TV

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