"I want to thank Doug Kinne for taking the trouble to drive over 400 miles roundtrip to calibrate my monitor. He is listed in the ISF Calibrators section of this forum for the states of Oregon and Washington. My area does not have local broadcast HDTV yet, so I have DirecTv. Thus no local calibrators.

I have had this 65in RPTV Toshiba for almost 6 years. I thought it was in fairly good shape until recently when using the DVD " Video Essentials" I was not able to get the black levels set with brightness set up to 100%. Another symptom was lack of shadow detail. On the HDNet test pattern there is a numbered gray scale. On my set I could barely read the 8 with the 9 and 10 boxes coal black. I was thinking "the phosphors on the guns in this set are about worn out by daily use". I was wrong!.

Yes I had a black level problem, but a lot more "not right" also. Doug arrived on time and spent the WHOLE day checking and adjusting just about everything. I do think there was not one service menu or convergence adjustment he made that did not improve this set. Each time we stopped for a picture test it got better.

He started with a complete cleaning of the mirror, lenses, and inside of the cabinet. Then a mechanical and electrical adjustment of focus. There is an service menu convergence internal grid, and I had assumed that a little curvature was "the best that could be done" I was wrong. It just takes someone more compulsive than I am to have the patience to use the Service menu adjustments to straighten each line using a yard stick ( to a fraction of a inch) and go over it and over it and over it and over it until It was a PERFECT white grid. Then he repeated it on the scecond component input DVD settings in additon to the main HDTV setup.

It was the gray scale adjustment that really fixed my original problem ( although cleaning helped). Doug used a light analysis camera and computer software to analyze the intensity and color of light from the monitor. He was able to bring the brighness control back to mid scale AND adjust the Red, Green, Blue guns at each IRE brightness level for linearlity, just like mixing paint colors. This had never been done and it was way off and these settings are beyond the users controls.

I found my loss of brightness was not an expensive monitor about to wear out, but just one needing adjustment. Not only do the HD channels look better, but even the Standard Def. channels on DirecTV got a sharpness boost.

We watched some HDTV and a DVD and then he was at it again, making one more round of tweaking things I did not see myself, to get things perfect in a couple of spots on the screen.

I think most people are like me before I got my eyeglasses. I didn't know what I was not seeing, until it was corrected. It is the same with calibration. There is a LOT more built into these sets than the manufacturer is willing to deliver out of the box, not to mention aging of the components over time.

Thanks Doug for a job well done, beyond my expectations. ( His fee was quite fair too!)

Don
A viewpoint from Small Town America outside the top 100 HDTV markets"

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*Where to start.....

Doug was here about 5 hours, 10am-3pm. Probably would have been shorter but he was answering all my questions and explaining the process in detail. This he was happy to do.

He verified the projector installation, keystone and focus adjustments. I had these pretty much dialed in (pat pat).

Started out with contrast, brightness, color, hue, sharpness, overscan etc..... No convergence problems to deal with One problem initially was that the gamma was too high. I was losing detail in bright images (white crush).

The white crush was something I was aware of but didn't know exactly what to do to correct it. I had adjusted the contrast and brightness with my Avia DVD but never did get rid of it.

Anyway, the gamma was lowered and the basic settings were tweaked in. Doug used the Avia DVD, the same on that you or I would have (that I do have). His color filters were much nicer than the ones that came with the Avia. He got into test patterns that I had never paid much attention to. He explained the use of them.

When he was satisfied with the basic settings he proceeded with the color temperature calibration. He used the 0 - 100 IRE screens from the Avia.

The detector was setup to measure the reflected light from the screen. The detector was connected to a laptop, I didn't notice the software used. I imagine it came with the detector as a package.

Adjustments were made to the color gain and offsets for Red, Blue and Green to bring the color temperature to 6500k. A lot of back and forth on the gains and offsets to get 6500k from dark to bright.

I have the printouts for before and after, I wish I had asked for the files or had taken screen shots. My bad. Just about flatlined the 6500k, about as near to perfect as you can get with a two point calibration. IMHO.

After the 6500k calibration he went back over the basic settings again. Everything was saved to the USER settings on the projector. The HD input from the 811 was verified and the necessary settings transferred to that input.

We played a few DVDs that I had observed the white crush, it was gone. I noticed a big difference, increased details in the very bright and dark scenes. The gray scale is definitely gray now. No tint to the blacks. I didn't really notice this until he showed me using the test patterns.

I felt that the PQ was very good before, there is a definite difference that I can see now. I guess it depends on the projector or TV how much a difference the calibration can make. Doug said my setup was in pretty good shape and I can see the difference.

I am very pleased with the whole experience and not just the calibration. Doug is very personable and knowledgeable, it was obvious to me that he really enjoys his work and was more than willing to share his knowledge with me.

Considering what we have invested in our HT's, the $250 is a bargain.

There is peace of mind in knowing that things are right.

Lee S.

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