In game brightness/calibration screens

[Scott_Arm]

Why should I change the brightness settings on my already calibrated TV?
Also I can see the "logo/symbol" in some game using the in-game calibrations screen but not in every game.

Seems odd that you'd frequently have issues with those gamma sliders if your tv is calibrated, but there are definitely some f'd up games out there.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Why should I change the brightness settings on my already calibrated TV?
Also I can see the "logo/symbol" in some game using the in-game calibrations screen but not in every game.

What did you use to calibrate it? You will need to calibrate each device/input.

That's true of audio as well. At the end of the day, the creators have no control over the experience of the users. They can't ensure, or trust, that users have a decently calibrated screen (and plenty have the wrong colours or ridiculous sharpness etc. when they don't set up their TV even remotely), nor that the end user's audio is equalised to match the authoring environment. At the end of the fay, the devs should just aim for a decent look across devices. If they want exactly that certain experience, they should be working on installation art.

Heck, even movies can't be sure to offer exactly the right experience, because the movie projection is going to provide a very different picture to a high-end OLED screen. Should the artists be aiming for best quality on a projector with crappy blacks, or OLED and mess up the cinema experience?

As long as the end user is happy, the developers' job is done.

No, you can't ensure users have properly calibrated screens, true. But the minimal amount of effort it would have taken Sony to include a basic calibration routine when the user first starts the console versus the huge benefit it gives, seems like an absolute no-brainer to me. Everyone is pixel peeping minute differences between console multiplats, when simply setting brightness/contrast correctly on either one would yield an even bigger difference for free.

Don't software sliders alter gamma? That isn't going to correctly.. um, correct an incorrect TV brightness control.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But the minimal amount of effort it would have taken Sony to include a basic calibration routine when the user first starts the console versus the huge benefit it gives, seems like an absolute no-brainer to me.

I wouldn't go so far to call it a no brainer, but I do agree that it'd be a valuable addition. However, look at the many PVRs and BRD players that people buy. How many of those have calibration options? They don't even come with a 25 cent copy of a free disc like AVS-HD 709! Ultimately shouldn't the calibration responsibility lie with the TV? The TVs should have this when you first run them so they are calibrated for all media. I suppose they all defer that to independent services for the niche who care enough.

Given no-one in the CE industry recognises the importance of aiding calibration for consumers, this oversight by Sony is just following a rather negative convention.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Given no-one in the CE industry recognises the importance of aiding calibration for consumers, this oversight by Sony is just following a rather negative convention.

Although bizarrely, almost every Sony authored DVD and Blu-ray movie disc contains a calibration test patterns. Hit 6-7-7-9-ENTER from the disc's main menu. Why do this but not include calibration options on their TVs or PlayStations? It boggles the mind!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why hide it behind a secret key combo??

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

I wouldn't go so far to call it a no brainer, but I do agree that it'd be a valuable addition. However, look at the many PVRs and BRD players that people buy. How many of those have calibration options? They don't even come with a 25 cent copy of a free disc like AVS-HD 709! Ultimately shouldn't the calibration responsibility lie with the TV? The TVs should have this when you first run them so they are calibrated for all media. I suppose they all defer that to independent services for the niche who care enough.

Given no-one in the CE industry recognises the importance of aiding calibration for consumers, this oversight by Sony is just following a rather negative convention.

Don't get me started on TV manufacturers

 

[Npl]

Why hide it behind a secret key combo??

Given Sonys history this perfectly random key will be used in all their certificates - you wonder why its secret?

 

[Jedi2016]

I don't see the same thing. Dropping it was definitely causing blacks to be crushed at night. How did you set the brightness control on your screen? Do you still see the logo in WD when you dropped the setting right down?

I could still see the logo at the lowest setting (only if I looked really hard). I bumped it up to 20, haven't noticed any crushed blacks. It's not actually a brightness adjustment, it's a gamma adjustment. It seems to affect only the lower end of the scale, it's still perfectly bright during the day, but it does darken the otherwise very flat shadows during the day that everyone was complaining about.

My TV was calibrated manually using various test images, some from the 'net, some of my own make.

You weren't actually adjusting your television's brightness based on that screen, were you? Your wording leaves some room for doubt, since you mentioned my screen's brightness, which I haven't touched since it was initially set up.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

I could still see the logo at the lowest setting (only if I looked really hard). I bumped it up to 20, haven't noticed any crushed blacks. It's not actually a brightness adjustment, it's a gamma adjustment. It seems to affect only the lower end of the scale, it's still perfectly bright during the day, but it does darken the otherwise very flat shadows during the day that everyone was complaining about.

My TV was calibrated manually using various test images, some from the 'net, some of my own make.

You weren't actually adjusting your television's brightness based on that screen, were you? Your wording leaves some room for doubt, since you mentioned my screen's brightness, which I haven't touched since it was initially set up.

Yeah, I realise this now that's it's gamma and not brightness. I'm guessing there's a good chance the user's display is decoding gamma incorrectly for the way the game engine is encoding gamma in it's output.

I still don't understand how showing a just-off-black logo on a black background can possibly be used to correct gamma. If your TV brightness is wrong, compensating with a gamma slider is going to push everything out of whack, surely?

I tried dropping the value for Watch Dogs, set it at 25 and while it did make daytime ever so slightly more pleasing. Night stealth scenes were definitely very difficult in places because of the darkness.

I used the AVS forum rec.709 disc to calibrate.