Why Calibrate Your Video Display?

ISF Video Calibration Should be one of the first steps you consider in further improving your Home Theater experience.

Installing a Home Theater, investing in a “Big-screen” HDTV is no small step. You may have just spent your money on a new Home Theater video display (TV, Flat-panel or Projector), a new DVD player or just had High Definition Cable/Satellite installed.

· Does your HD or DVDs look as good as in the movies?

· Does everything look like it’s the right color?

· Are you happy with the picture you have?

· Do you feel fatigued after watching the TV for a while, headaches?

· Did you watch a movie at a friend’s house and thought; "Why doesn’t my picture look like that?"

Yes, No, Maybe ??? How can you fix that situation?

Simple! >>>> Have me professionally calibrate your system.

· Don’t settle for the “Out-of-the-Box” factory settings on your new display.

· Don’t be misled by the salesman that says “this TV doesn't need to be calibrated". He may not even know what a calibration is.

· I have been told that some salesmen are trained to walk away from the customer if they start asking technical questions.

· Many of the big stores are only interested in a quick sale and moving on to the next customer.

· The store manager, of a leading big-screen seller, told me, “we don’t calibrate any of our displays, see how good they look. The HD pictures on these TVs are so much better than our customers currently have, they wouldn’t even know the difference” (not the kind of dealer I want to deal with, and I didn’t, I went to another store to buy my HDTV).

Factory settings are for only one purpose, to attract you to buy it. How did you choose your TV? In the showroom, it’s usually the brightest picture that attracts the most attention; therefore, the manufacturer usually adjusts the user and service settings to achieve the highest attention getting picture. Not the most accurate picture. While these settings may catch your eye in the store and generated a sale, they are not the best for your viewing environment, comfort or life of your TV.

So, why is the grass blue? Why do all the faces look sunburned, and why don't sports jerseys look the right color? Why don’t DVD movies look like the cinema version?

Don't panic, there is an easy solution. If you have your display professionally calibrated, to industry standards, you can enjoy the full quality capabilities of your new (or older) TV, monitor, or video projector.

"How much difference would it make to have my TV, monitor, or video projector calibrated?"

When TV programming is produced, or a film is converted to video or DVD, the process is precisely controlled to industry standards (NTSC, ATSC, and SMPTE) by monitoring the programming on correctly calibrated displays. A great deal of effort and expense is invested to be sure that the picture light levels and image colors are processed properly at every step of the way. You can accurately reproduce the full, original quality of those video programs in your home only if your video display is calibrated to the same industry standards.

Your display, the final step in that precisely calibrated distribution system, can do full justice to that high quality video signal. It can give you picture quality approaching, or even exceeding, that of the local cinema theater. But, more often, a mis-calibrated video display mangles the picture miserably. Remember how different all those TVs looked at the store, even though they were all receiving the same program? The difference wasn't so much the different quality of the various models as it was the non-standard adjustment of each display. Calibration is one of the most effective and least expensive improvements you can make to your video display.

You will see a significant difference immediately.

"But when he installed it, the technician said he adjusted it for best performance. Besides, wouldn't I be voiding my warranty?"

Not at all. Most installing technicians simply adjust the display to "look right," and don't calibrate it to any specific standards. Often, once the system has aged over a few hours of normal operation, it looks quite different. In fact, manufacturers realize that optimum performance and maximum life expectancy of your system can be realized only when it is professionally calibrated after a "burn in" period of about a hundred hours of normal operation.

The manufacturer doesn't calibrate the display at the factory for the best possible picture in your home because they want the display to look as appealing as possible (brightest) next to competing displays on a dealer's showroom floor. Since a showroom floor often has a high ambient light level, the manufacturer usually sets the brightness, contrast, and service controls for the highest “apparent” light output.

Even if the manufacturer had spent more time setting each adjustment 'just right' on every display, according to industry standards, that would greatly increase what you had to pay for your display, and many of the adjustments would still have been incorrect after it was installed in your home, due to the effects of shipping, initial aging of your display, and the lighting effects of your particular viewing environment.

"So how can I get my video display looking the best it can?"

How do you ever get to see the deep, fully-detailed dark grays and vivid blacks; bright picture highlights with no out-of-focus blooming; and most stunning, those gorgeous accurate colors the cinematographers and videographers wanted you to see?

If you have your video display calibrated to be just as accurate as the professional displays that the artists and engineers used to monitor the picture at every step of the way as the video was created, transferred from film, broadcast, or cut to DVD, you can see the same beautiful pictures and true colors that the artists and professionals see. I will precisely calibrate your display’s user controls (brightness, contrast, color, hue, sharpness) and service controls (white balance, SVM, color decoder, focus, geometry, etc.) to industry standards, using a suite of precision calibration tools.

Video display calibration is recommended by: Home Theater Magazine, Widescreen Review, Stereophile's Guide to Home Theater, and Sound & Vision magazines for the best picture a display can make

"But, can my consumer display look as good as the video monitors that the professionals use?

You can sure get close, and in many cases, just as good. Video display manufacturers are making great products, and better every year, but they're adjusting their displays to catch your eye, not to move your soul. To produce the most accurate image, with the truest colors, with film-like picture qualities, and often with a much longer life, you owe it to yourself to have your display calibrated to industry standards, for the optimum viewing pleasure in your own environment.

Even a modest home theater system can look like a system costing thousands of dollars more - providing you with a more life-like, engaging entertainment experience that you'll want to share with your family and friends. Video calibration to industry standards is the only way to capture the full potential of your home theater video display.