TV

[Wester]

You can adjust the brightness yourself. But you can not ISF calabrate your tv your self. When you get your tv professionally calibrated they adjust the chromatic setting getting into the RGB colour system properly balancing the colours because manufactures put to much blue in the chromatic settings so the tv looks brighter to the eye in the store. Also they properly adjust the picture to your tv so the tv maximized the picture on movies. Anddd when it get professionally calibrated your tv uses less energy so it lasts longer.

[sdjellat]

IT IS IMPORTANT TO CALIBRATE YOUR TV, SINCE YEARS AGO IT !!WAS!! CALIBRATED SINCE THE CONSUMER DID PAY THAT EXTRA 1000$ ON THE PRICE TAG!!! NOW THEY DO NOT NEED TO PAY IT. INSTEAD TV COMPANIES TAKE ONE MODEL, CALIBRATE IT, THEN REPLICATE IT ON ABOUT 100000 MODELS AND ASSUME THEY ARE ALL CALIBRATED, KNOWING THAT ERROR IS ALWAYS THERE, NOT ALL TVS ARE CALIBRATED THE SAME WAY.

[hatrack]

Apparently $299 doesn't include ISF calibration. It is the base price of having one input calibrated to THX standards.

Which as one commenter pointed out you can do yourself a lot cheaper. 

[AudioDog]

It is an ISF calibration, the techs are ISF certified.

ISF techs may use a THX mode to cali a TV because its closer to the final result than the Dynamic mode is.  Also, the THX mode on the DVD's are to help get people,  who have never gone into the picture menu on thier TV a little help so they can have a better viewing experience than "Out Of The Box".  Even Lucas gets his stuff calibrated.

Also, ISF techs will do more than 1 HDMI's...I'm going to assume that you knew that all the HDMI's will calibrate the same and so we don't need to do each one seperate.  The sources that you plug into the HDMI will however need to be tweaked.

You can't properly calibrate your TV "by eye"...thats just making the slider bar go up and down until you "think" its good.  If you don't want to spend the $300, thats fine...it doesn't mean its not worth it, and it still doesn't make your TV any better.

If you can measure the Gamma, 10 Point IRE and the CMS with your eye and get it even close to the measured target without a PC, generator and probe...then my friend you need to quite your job and start doing "perfectly eyeballed" calibrations...cause I would pay to see that.

There are also 2 parts to the calibration process.  Calibrate the TV first, then cailbrate the sources going into the TV, ie., PC, PS3, BD player or A/V reciever.  You can't have a better picture if your sources aren't outputting video signals properly.

So, you can still eyeball your TV or you can use the calibration DVD, which I'm assuming you knew that it only really works if you actually calibrated the TV...and why would you use standard definition media to calibrate HD sources.  And how do you know if the DVD player is outputting the proper black levels without "crushing them", or if the "whites are clipping" and if they are, how do you fix it?

If you know about everything that was mentioned here and are satisfied with how your TV looks...then you wouldn't need to spend $300, cause chances are you are an ISF certified tech and you have had your TV calibrated!   

[dobyblue]

Are you saying all FS techs are ISF certified?

Can you also tell us whether they all use the same equipment and, if so, what it is?

[sonimax]

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hatrack wrote:

Apparently $299 doesn't include ISF calibration. It is the base price of having one input calibrated to THX standards.

Which as one commenter pointed out you can do yourself a lot cheaper. 

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That doesn't make sense cause even THX certified TVs need to be calibrated anyway!!!!!

[debaser17]

Are we talking about different things here, or is the question whether or not the product literally titled "ISF Video Calibration" includes.... ISF Calibration. ?

ISF Video Calibration

If this info jives with what they say in-store, then you get 2 inputs calibrated for the $299, with addition inputs at $99 thereafter. I have this on my price watch because I do intend to get around to it sometime soon, and once in a while it goes on sale down to $200 for a week...

[AudioDog]

They will probably do all the HDMI's.  The HDMI's will all calibrate exactly the same, however the sources you plug in may need to be adjusted accordingly. 

Most TV's have a "common" video mode, say Standard or Cinema, so when you change the settings in that mode on one input, it changes that picture mode for the entire TV.  If you use a non HD source, like a VCR (eww, gross) or SD tv, the colour mode may change and need to be adjusted separately.

As for our equipment, we use a Sencore 400 video generator and a ColorPro CP6000 color analyzer.  We also run everything with CalMan calibration software. 

Not all the techs are ISF certified, but most of them are.  All the calibrators are ISF Certified.

http://www.imagingscience.com/dealers.php?search=Canada: Ontario