Great article for those of us who don’t live and breath this stuff.

More like this, please!

Agreed, this was incredibly helpful.  Definitely an article for those who are interested, not obsessed.

As an electrical engineer, and a fellow with a very good eye for color, I am confused by all of this “calibration stuff”.  I own a Sharp 52”,  D92 version, hooked up to many sources.  I find that I frequently have to adjust the display to give the best picture for the source and the material being shown.  So, what good is calibration? I agree it makes sense if you are trying to evaluate material - I use calibrated monitors at work when doing digital still / video work, but in the HT environment, it would seem to just show how far off some material is.

Hey Rod,

You’re indeed right that source material can differ. In a perfect world, calibration would allow you to see the film as the director wanted it to be seen because they are authoring the film to use reference color, etc.

In this case, it would allow material viewed on my HD DVD player to look proper. It was just a byproduct that it improved things on my cable viewing, that may not always be the case.

If the source is not properly authored however, the picture could still be poor depending on how much time the source author took to present his film.

There is a “sweet spot” if you can call it that to get a set calibrated to proper imaging standards, but there’s no guarantee that all source material will adhere to that. In most cases, especially on well produced discs, a properly calibrated set should enhance the viewing experience.

Hi Phil
Yep - I’ve noticed that for newer releases, especially BD, that my “normal” settings are usually fine.  It seems like it’s mostly older material, and some stuff off the dish that need specific tweaks.  One should also try to understand what the director or DP might have had in mind.  You could go nuts trying to get a so called “normal” picture out of “Sin City” or “The 300”.

If you had visited http://www.avsforum.com when you bought your Samsung DLP you would have discovered several things.

The “sharpness” control does nothing so most owner’s at AVS have it set to zero.

All the Samsung Image enhancement features should be turned off.

Entering the service menu is easy to do, and once there adjusting the image location on the screen is no more than clicking on up, down, right and left.

There is nothing in the service menu that can damage your Samsung DLP, but using it to correct gray scale and color is a job for a professional with the right tools and experience.

The best that your DLP RPTV can do by adjusting the user controls isn’t the best that your TV can deliver. I calibrated our Samsung HL-P5063 DLP RPTV using the earlier edition of the one you used. My results were no where near the quality of the professional calibration that was done later.

Owner’s who want to improve on the PQ that comes out of the box can learn a lot by going to AVS, and checking into an owner’s thread for their model.

“If you had visited http://www.avsforum.com when you bought your Samsung DLP you would have discovered several things.”

What I discovered when I went there is what a cesspit of flamers and haters dwell there.

I’ll grant you that there are some really helpful people there, and I salute them for putting up with all the ugliness. But you need a very tough skin to stick around long enough to find these “good” people among all the bad. God help you if you ask what is seen as a ‘stupid’ or “newbie” question. You’ll get flamed so hard you’ll make a point never to return. I know I did.

I’m sorry you had such a bad experience. That doesn’t seem to be the case for most folks. There are a few “over-reactors” in any very large group.

Now this is something which I was talking about a real house, full loaded with electronic gadgets. Really this post is Heaven.