Our top source recommendation is a Blu-ray disc player — either of the standard or Ultra HD variety — or game console. That sort of detail will come in handy later. Plus, calibrating your TV for the best possible picture source right out of the gate just makes sense. The key is to get the best source possible while maintaining the ability to pause images as needed. Pick something that has a good blend of bright and dark scenes as well as a lot of color.
Avoid dreary, under-saturated shows, such as Game of Thrones. Computer-animated films can make excellent sources of vivid color and resolution detail, but live-action films are going to be better for judging more subtle aspects like skin tone accuracy and shadow detail. Your TV will come with several different picture modes and presets.
These are usually labeled sports, games, vivid, movie, cinema or standard — some will even get specific as to which type of sport. Most of these are horribly out of whack. The movie, cinema or standard settings serve as the best launchpads for creating your own custom settings. Keep in mind that a Blu-ray disc image is natively very high quality and requires little to no processing help anyway.
The very first thing we suggest you disable is the motion smoothing feature, e. These processors make everything you watch look like a soap opera and defeat the cinematography that makes films look amazing.
Other picture enhancements that can often be disabled for improved quality may include edge correction, digital noise reduction DNR , MPEG error correction, flesh tone, dynamic contrast, black enhancement, and HDMI black level, among others. Note: We highly recommend that only qualified service technicians get into the locked service menus. For those in brighter rooms, more backlight intensity will be desired. Try to avoid making this adjustment while the sun is shining directly on the screen, as this will result in an unnaturally high setting.
Instead, make your adjustments when the room light is at its average for when you watch, and pick a program or movie scene with a lot of white in it — a daylight scene on a snow-covered mountain, for example. If after watching the scene for 10 minutes you begin to squint, the backlight is too strong. Reduce the backlight and repeat until you are happy. Setting the brightness too high will result in grayed out blacks and a loss of dimension. When brightness is set too low, you will lose detail in dark areas of the screen called clipping.
The easiest way to adjust the brightness is to use the black letterbox bars at the top and bottom of a movie. These bars are meant to be dead black, and will usually be darker than the black background often found in movie credits. Pause on your scene of choice and turn the brightness up until the letterbox bars appear grey.
Then, reduce the brightness just until the black bars are totally black. Once this is done, find a scene that involves large dark sections that still contain detail. Either of these do not do justice to the video. Further, they can be taxing on the eyes as well. Both require quite different settings for the best results.
An uncalibrated TV may cause a sub-optimal viewing experience in some scenarios. For instance, if your TV was not correctly tuned, it would be extremely likely that you may have missed the finer details in the dark themed Season 8 Episode 3 of Game of Thrones — The Long Night. TV calibration is a long and demanding process with multiple tweaks being done iteratively. In a nutshell, TV calibration tweaks the light being output by the TV and then each color.
This entire complex process takes between 2 to 4 hours, depending on the type of TV and its capabilities. TVs require re-calibration from time-to-time. This article from Datacolor suggests calibrating your display once every year. So, a TV should be calibrated between 12 to 18 months after the first calibration.
TV calibration can really make your TV deliver the absolute best viewing experience it can. However, it is prudent to view it without calibration for at least hours after unboxing. How long should I wait to calibrate my TV?
Why should you wait to calibrate your TV? There are two major reasons why you should wait before getting your TV calibrated. What exactly is TV calibration? The image has a, relatively, warmer color temperature. Despite what proponents of calibration tell you, the difference between calibrated and uncalibrated settings for most TVs isn't huge.
This difference is getting even more narrow, as the better modern TVs tend to be relatively accurate out of the box i. So if you put the TV in the Movie or Cinema preset , choose the "warm," "low," or in some cases "medium" color temperature mode, and you use a setup disc to get your other settings correct, it's going to be "close enough" for most people, and likely more than adequate.
If you don't want to bother with that, or you want to make sure it's as accurate as possible, calibration might be worth it. A correctly calibrated TV will likely look more pleasing to the eye, and may -- depending on its light output afterward -- draw less power and even last longer. This is because a calibrated TV generally has a dimmer picture than the "torch mode" default settings. So because the TV is producing less light, it uses less power and can enjoy a longer lifespan thanks to reduced strain on the light-generating parts of the TV.
Certain TV manufacturers have a relationship with the Imaging Science Foundation , one of the leading companies that offers training for calibrators. These allow different settings depending on the amount of light expected in the room, making sure the TV looks its best regardless of the time of day.
Again, this is all something to discuss with your calibrator. In many cases, if someone isn't familiar with what a calibrated TV looks like, they're probably not going to like it A correctly calibrated TV will appear, to the uninitiated, reddish and soft.
This is because the accurate color temperature is far warmer redder than how most TVs look out of the box. The sharpness control -- often set very high -- adds an artificial edge to everything. This masks real detail, but when you take it away, the image initially appears soft, even though it's actually showing more fine detail.
To get a preview of what your TV might look like calibrated, switch to the Movie or Cinema mode. This is usually the picture mode closest to "accurate. We've been discussing calibration mostly as it relates to televisions, but projectors can be calibrated too. In fact, they're more likely to need it.
Projectors are a two-part system: There's the projector itself and the screen. There's no way for a manufacturer to know what screen you're using. So in addition to the unit-to-unit variation, there's also the difference between screens. Some might shift the image blue, for instance. You can find calibrators in your area at those links. Your local Best Buy might still offer calibration, but not all will.
I'm an ISF-Certified calibrator myself, having gone through the training. I haven't been through the THX training, but I'm familiar with it. In both courses, trainees are taught the basics of TV setup and the advantages of calibration.
Then they're shown how to calibrate a television. THX claims its course is more "hands-on," though both do an excellent job. You could buy a color meter and calibrate your TV yourself, though the more accurate tools to do this often cost as much, if not more, than a professional calibration.
The cheapest options aren't going to offer accuracy much better than what your eye can do on its own. Also, even if the device is accurate a bit "if" , the learning curve can be pretty steep. The new Apple TV has an autocalibration mode , if you have an iPhone, though don't expect this to work as well as a real calibration with gear designed specifically for that purpose. Another shortcut to calibration is copying someone else's settings from the web.
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