Effects of next gen consoles on you to buy a new HDTV?
- Thread starter Cyan
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I have problem with your use of word calibrate - calibration, you present your personal preferences while using word calibration in same sentence.
There is nothing wrong with setting up your TV to your personal preferences but process of calibration is completely different thing. With your own eyes and test patterns you can calibrate brightness, contrast, sharpness and that is all.
djskribbles
Legend
Ya, some THX/ISF calibrators in particular get a bit offended when people say they're 'calibrating' when they're really just tweaking by eye. The term 'calibration' to calibrators means calibrating Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, Grayscale/white balance, Gamma, Color saturation, luminance and hue with a measuring device. Brightness sets the black level, Contrast sets the white level, Grayscale/white balance ensures that the colors are displayed on a neutral canvas (so to speak) by balancing Red, Green and Blue to make White (which is D65 according to rec.709 standards). Gamma essentially sets the brightness in-between black and white and is typically calibrated between 2.2-2.4 for HD video (depending on lighting conditions) or a relatively new gamma stanard, BT.1886. Color gamut is calibrated using the Color Management System (if available) to make sure that your primary and secondary colors (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan and magenta) are plotted correctly (or as close as possible) in the rec.709 color space.
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The term 'calibration' means to a scientific measure, full stop! Not just to calibrators. Someone tweaking something by personal sense is 'adjusting' and not 'calibrating' by any stretch of the definition.
Calibration is in the field of metrology where you need to go by standards. There is a definite right and wrong.
Tweaking is just playing with settings until you find one that you prefer...sometimes it coincidently nearly matches industry standards and sometimes it doesn't. There is no right or wrong.
Tweaking is just playing with settings until you find one that you prefer...sometimes it coincidently nearly matches industry standards and sometimes it doesn't. There is no right or wrong.
djskribbles
Legend
The term 'calibration' means to a scientific measure, full stop! Not just to calibrators. Someone tweaking something by personal sense is 'adjusting' and not 'calibrating' by any stretch of the definition.
True. What I meant was that to calibrators, 'calibration' involves a full on calibration (ie the things that I mentioned above)... not just the basic controls like Brightness and Contrast, and certainly not tweaking to your preference. A calibration is using all of the available controls on the TV to make it as close as possible to the HD video standard (D65/REC.709) using a proper measuring device.
There are a few things that are subjective when it comes to calibrating; but for the most part, yes... calibrators follow industry standards.
The things that are subjective are things like, what kind of test patterns you should use for calibrating displays with an undefeatable feature that dynamically changes the picture (ie Plasma or CRTs with an Auto Brightness Limiter, or ABL for short); or what gamma you should calibrate a display to. Gamma is the one area of calibration where there's no industry standard... you'll see calibrators setting gamma to anywhere from 2.2 - 2.4 or using BT.1886 gamma (which plots your gamma curve based on your black and white measurement).
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I followed some advice from "professional" people, but is there really such a thing as djskribbles (thanks for the link you shared, I am still deciding what's the program from that list I should use, and there are still parts I have to read in their entirety) has described? Only machines can be calibrators then, not people, evidently.
In addition I have been trying to find the best possible configuration. This is mostly a personal choice, but I think I got it right -I am always fiddling with things, so I try many different configurations.
I found the most perfect configuration my eyes have ever witnessed on my TV. It is great. For instance, in Halo 4 when the Master Chief's life bar blinks red
the halo surrounding it has a perfect contrast and it looks like one of those video presentations you can see on Youtube featuring Global Illumination, where you can see lights reflecting and bouncing off walls.
I am happy with the contrast of the TV, really happy.
The reason why I tried that configuration is that I saw a screengrab of the movie Epic the Secret World 3D, and I wanted to picture style of the TV to look like that, like in your regular cinema, with warm colours.
I selected Movie picture style and only a few tweaks, very few in fact. Some of the non mentioned tweaks are defaulted when you set the picture to Movie or don't need tweaking.
(Modified calibration settings)
Halo 4 had never looked better before. Sometimes it felt like a movie, indeed. It's amazing how far videogames have gone in improving their quality.
I also set the Xbox 360 to Expanded -Full RGB-, but this setting is a hit and a miss. That configuration on the TV gives me the best contrast and colours I've seen in a TV of mine.
However, if Full RGB is enabled, it looks ideal on Halo 4, but in other games the black crush is unbearable,
making those almost unplayable at times, because you can't see a thing and miss out on many details.In spite of the different RGB choices, with those TV settings though, using Standard or Intermediate HDMI reference levels, any other game looked as beautiful as Halo 4 did --of course the nearest they could get, Halo 4 is a technical powerhouse.
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djskribbles
Legend
The mind is easy to trick when it comes to color, therefore the eyes are not a good instrument to measure it. However a person is still needed to calibrate a display. A calibrator must have the knowledge and hands-on experience to know the quirks of various display types and which test patterns to use on a given display panel. Calibration usually consists of measuring a certain amount of color points which gives a somewhat limited amount of data. Typically you measure grayscale and gamma in 10 steps from 0-100% stimulus, and you measure color in 6-24 points (or sometimes more) in the rec.709 color space. Ideally if the color points that you measure are where they should be, the rest should follow (more or less). But that's not always the case, and usually you have to use your eyes to verify some of the points that you're not measuring.
With said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. The majority of HDTV owners don't calibrate their displays. Most people just do what you're doing and are satisfied. It's just not technically classified as 'calibrating', but 'tweaking' to your tastes. Some people don't even like what a calibrated display looks like and would rather tweak it to their liking.
With said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. The majority of HDTV owners don't calibrate their displays. Most people just do what you're doing and are satisfied. It's just not technically classified as 'calibrating', but 'tweaking' to your tastes. Some people don't even like what a calibrated display looks like and would rather tweak it to their liking.
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I've got my eyes on a Samsung PN43F4500AF if anyone has any experience with that or the previous model (e450)
Thinking about calibration, I wonder if there's an app for that...
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there's a thx iOS app, no android version still atm, tho I was thinking more of something you could use the camera to read the colour intensity etc, but then I guess you'd run into issues with different sensors so...
Thinking about calibration, I wonder if there's an app for that...
edit
there's a thx iOS app, no android version still atm, tho I was thinking more of something you could use the camera to read the colour intensity etc, but then I guess you'd run into issues with different sensors so...
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I think that perhaps the new TVs are calibrated when you buy them, factory design.
The TV I bought looks kinda fine with each setting, and you could get something of everyone of them.
But I am also very curious about calibrating, that's when the tools you mentioned enter into the equation. Perhaps I like the results, perhaps I don't, who knows. Right now it's not something I am going to lose my sleep over, but it is quite interesting and useful.
I am always fiddling around with those things. Thankfully, the TV got a very neat "Factory settings" option just in case. But it's not that you have too much to tweak.
My favourite favourite settings are Personal, Natural, Movie and Photo. Vivid is too garish and gaudy, Standard is a bit dull, Energy Saving looks a slightly dark...
Personal, Natural, Movie and Photo have some very interesting touches in their own right.
The configuration I tried lately looks spectacular to me, were I to believe my eyes. Moreso with correct Full RGB settings, but full RGB is bugged on the Xbox 360. Black crush is a very common occurrence.
Halo 4 looks amazing at Full RGB, but Skyrim and Assassin's Creed 2 become unrecognisable. Skyrim at night looks way too dark and the day looks way darker than it should be, shaded areas are like a patch of extremely dark paint.
Some areas of AC2, parts of the image, like a part of the characters' face which isn't hit by sunlight, are basically invisible. You just see something dark and empty.
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It is a large TV with decent sound -well, TVs can't compete with a good Dolby system, but you get what I mean- and a fine price. I wonder though, 3D aside, why not full HD? There has to be a full HD version of that TV and the price difference might be worth it.
djskribbles
Legend
Many TVs come calibrated to a certain extent. But TVs are made of a thousand or more parts... when the parts are manufactured and the TVs are assembled, no two TVs are exactly the same. This makes it nearly impossible to have a TV calibrated out of the box. Some high-end displays might use higher quality parts with lower tolerances and might have higher quality control, so panel to panel variances might be lower and the picture might be closer out of the box. But again, in my many years at AVS Forum speaking with professional calibrators and calibrating many different high-end displays myself, I don't think I have ever seen a TV calibrated out of the box. I have, however, seen many displays that were close enough for the majority of HDTV owners.
djskribbles
Legend
I recommend RGB Full range whenever possible for PC/consoles because that's what they natively output, as long as it doesn't affect other devices that may share the HDMI input. Set your PS3 to RGB Full range and set your Panasonic to Nonstandard (Picture menu -> HDMI settings -> HDMI/DVI Range). If you have a European model, it might be in a different location.
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Not to mention that 720p plasma actually has resolution of 1024x768. Pixels will be stretched horizontally due to rectangular shape. (aspect ratio remains the same) I used to have an LG plasma with same native resolution, and while its odd resolution is absolutely fine for movies, games suffer quite a bit.
The TV I purchased, and the Philips 42PFL5008T have a great image quality out of the box.
I certainly trust you because of your experience and passion studying TVs, image quality, calibrating them, etc, and I would like to see mine calibrated some day, whatever the results, just out of curiosity.
Lately I am keen on the Energy Saving picture style of my TV. The backlight isn't as strong and it has a very nice colouring. I can easily replicate it on Personal, Natural, Standard, Movie and Photo. Vivid is somewhat a lost cause, it looks odd to me, a bit over the top.
In addition, I am partial to Energy Saving 'cos I feel good using it, and it is not hard at all replicate on other settings.
I also tried not only Game mode -it looks the same to me as default regardless of the setting I choose- but also Computer. Computer mode seems to be meant for PCs -which are always at the vanguard of technology- and the image quality is awesome.
I was awestruck when I saw it. The only thing I didn't like that much is that you can't change it around, it is basically for PCs. It looks slightly washed out had I to say something negative about it, but I was enamoured with it when I saw it for the first time.
The TV essentially didn't need tweaking, thankfully, but since I am very curious and like to try almost every setting, I have been fiddling around with settings, as you might know.
Well, I finally settled it, and I am going to say my peace on the matter.
I chose Personal as my setting. Simple. :smile: The only thing I changed was turning Noise Reduction off, & MPEG Artefact Reduction: Off.
I also decreased the Video Contrast -found within the Advanced section of the TV's picture setup- from 100 to 70, in order to give Personal a similar look to the Energy Saving setting.
And finally the most important details. I decreased Sharpness from 8 to 4 -the TV accepts a Sharpness value between 0 and 20-. Then I enabled Advanced Sharpness -found within the Pixel Plus HD section-.
Those settings are the best I found yet -- probably ever will. At least til I try one of those utilities djskribbles mentioned to calibrate the TV professionally, but that might take a bit of time after all.
In regards to the Sharpness, I explained in a different thread why it worked so well for me.
Well, I finally settled it, and I am going to say my peace on the matter.
I chose Personal as my setting. Simple. :smile: The only thing I changed was turning Noise Reduction off, & MPEG Artefact Reduction: Off.
I also decreased the Video Contrast -found within the Advanced section of the TV's picture setup- from 100 to 70, in order to give Personal a similar look to the Energy Saving setting.
And finally the most important details.
I decreased Sharpness from 8 to 4 -the TV accepts a Sharpness value between 0 and 20-. Then I enabled Advanced Sharpness -found within the Pixel Plus HD section-.Those settings are the best I found yet -- probably ever will. At least til I try one of those utilities djskribbles mentioned to calibrate the TV professionally, but that might take a bit of time after all.
In regards to the Sharpness, I explained in a different thread why it worked so well for me.
Yeah, the price/PQ is what's attracting me really
They do make larger full hd plasmas but they seem to cost way more, and we don't have much (any) spare room for a bigger one tbh.Well that's... bizarre. I knew about the rez & pixel shape but I didn't think about gaming. Luckily (I guess...) I don't have any console atm but I'll prolly be getting one in the near term, anyone wanna go into more detail?
In that price range you can find Full HD LED TVs with excellent image quality. The difference is going to be huge.Yeah, the price/PQ is what's attracting me really
Well that's... bizarre. I knew about the rez & pixel shape but I didn't think about gaming. Luckily (I guess...) I don't have any console atm but I'll prolly be getting one in the near term, anyone wanna go into more detail?
For things like 3D and Smart TV the price goes a tad higher but it might be worth it depending on what you are looking for. My favourite model is one whose review I shared here, by the way.
In my case it took me about 3 months to find what I wanted/needed, so be patient and take your time.
My TV is a Philips now -I am keen on the brand and partial to Philips quality-, 3D -active (passive can be as good if not better, depends on your preferences)-, outstanding picture quality according to reviews, Full HD, Smart TV, okay input lag.... Sound is just fine, don't expect anything fancy for most TVs.
The Smart TV features can be slightly slow if you're used to your PC and there isn't a lot of Smart TV content from the get go. Some menus are also somewhat slow. Other than that, I am so very proud of it. I think that, maybe..., just maybe, I chose wisely.