By David Katzmaier, CNET.com
30/04/2009
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/digitalliving/tips/0,3800004921,61988192,00.htm

The average consumer spends hours in front of the TV each week, but the picture on an out-of-the-box TV looks like colors on steroids: Too bright and garish to seem anything like real life. That's because default settings for TVs are configured to make an impact on the sales floor of your local electronics superstore, not necessarily in your living room. With the emergence of higher-quality widescreen and high-definition TVs, not to mention the DVD movies and HD programs that fill their big screens, living-room images can look better than ever before--as long as you don't settle for the manufacturers' default settings.

Our guide includes three steps you can take to help make your television picture looks its best. For starters, we'll tell you how to properly set the basic picture controls available on most TVs. Next, we'll take a look at various home theater setup DVDs that provide expert advice for both video and audio fine-tuning. And, lastly, we'll give you the lowdown on professional calibration and whether it's worth the investment for your high-end set.

Basic

You can do a lot to improve your picture using the simple adjustments found on all televisions. Taking the steps below will make the picture look more realistic and closer to what the director intended.

Room lighting

Since most people turn down the lights to watch a movie, our recommendations are designed to deliver a better picture in rooms with controlled lighting. Unless you have a big-screen projector or you're sitting at the minimum viewing distance, you shouldn't watch movies in complete darkness--it can cause eyestrain. For bright plasmas and smaller direct-view sets, the ideal setup is to place a dim light directly behind the TV and leave the rest of the room dark. Look for special daylight bulbs that glow at 6,500 degrees Kelvin. You should also prevent any light in the room from reflecting off the TV, as glare will hamper image fidelity. Watching at night is best, but if you watch during the day, thick curtains will really improve the picture.

Before you make any of the adjustments detailed below, set room lighting as if you were about to watch a movie. For viewing in brighter environments, we recommend you use one of the picture presets, such as Standard, Sports, or Vivid, and reserve your custom settings for dark rooms.

Brightness

What it is: Also called black level, brightness actually adjusts how dark the black sections of the picture appear.

What it does: Excessive brightness can result in a two-dimensional, washed-out look with reduced color saturation. Images with brightness set too low lose detail in shadows, and distinctions between dark areas disappear in pools of black.

How to set it: After connecting your DVD player using the highest-quality input available, insert a DVD that has letterbox bars above and below the image, and find a scene that has a roughly equal amount of light and dark material. Turn up the control all the way, then decrease until the letterbox bars begin to appear black, as opposed to dark gray. If you notice a loss of shadow detail--for example, when people's eyes disappear into the depths under their brows--then you've set brightness too low. Some plasma, LCD, DLP, and LCoS TVs won't ever look black, so you'll need a setup disc to properly configure their brightness.

Contrast

What it is: Also called picture or white level, contrast controls the intensity of the white parts of the image and determines the overall light output of the display.

What it does: Contrast is usually set extremely high by default because it makes images look brighter in the store. High contrast can obscure details and distort lines in the image, cause eyestrain in dim rooms, and shorten the lifespan of tubes and plasma elements. Setting contrast too low robs the image of impact.

How to set it: Display a still image from DVD of a white object with some visible details--such as someone wearing a white button-up shirt or a shot of a glacier from the Ice Age DVD. Adjust the control up all the way, then reduce it until you can make out all the details in the white (such as buttons on a shirt or cracks in the ice). In general, TVs look best when contrast is set between 30 and 50 percent.

Color

What it is: Also called saturation, this control adjusts how intense the colors look.

What it does: When there's too much color, the set looks garish and unrealistic. It's most noticeable with reds, which are often accentuated (pushed) by the TV's color decoder. On the other hand, too little color diminishes the impact of the picture, making it look drab. Setting color to zero results in a black-and-white image.

How to set it: If available, first set the color temperature control to the warmest option as described below. Then find an image of someone with light, delicate skin tones, preferably a close-up of a face, on a DVD. Turn up the color control until it looks like the person has sunburn, then reduce it until the skin looks natural, without too much red. If the rest of the colors look too drab, you can increase color slightly at the expense of accurate skin tones.

Other controls

Tint: Unless you're using one of the DVDs mentioned in the Intermediate section to set it properly, this control is best left at the midway point.

Sharpness: This adds artificial edges to objects, which sometimes helps with soft cable signals but almost always mars the already sharp image from a DVD. Reduce it to zero unless you detect visible softening along the edges of text; if you do, increase it until the edges appear sharp again.

Edge enhancement: Also called VSM or SVM for scan-velocity modulation, set this control to Off if possible.

Color temperature: This important control affects the entire palette of colors. Select the Warm or Low option, which should come closest to the NTSC standard of 6,500 degrees Kelvin.

Generally, the image looks best for DVD with picture enhancements such as autocolor, autoflesh tone, autocontrast, noise reduction, and other proprietary processing modes turned off. DVD image quality is good enough that these modes usually do more harm than good.

Intermediate

Adjusting your TV with the quick tips on the previous page will yield good results, but you can do even better by investing in a home theater setup DVD. Each of the discs described below contains explanations and interactive demos designed to get your system looking and sounding as good as it can, short of retaining a professional.

Video Essentials

Upside: Wide array of reference test patterns; varied montage of images.

Downside: Difficult to navigate; test patterns not adequately explained.

Best for: Experts who want reference-quality patterns and are already familiar with basic calibration procedures.

The first setup DVD available, Video Essentials is still the gold standard for professional calibrators and other experts who are intimately familiar with its labyrinthine navigation. Created by video consultant Joe Kane, its patterns and excellent video/film montage have tested thousands of monitors--but they're not easy for beginners to use. People who want less of a learning curve should stick to newer, less arcane discs.

Avia Guide to Home Theater

Upside: Wide array of reference test patterns and well-detailed calibration procedures; easy navigation; optional in-depth looks at many home home theater topics.

Downside: Sometimes pedantic tone.

Best for: Beginners with patience and others who want comprehensive explanations of system details.

Although it's not the newest test DVD on the block, Avia arguably the most complete. This well-designed disc includes an excellent 40-minute walk-through that covers major aspects of home home theater systems and setup, and curious users will love the in-depth, text-only explanations of topics from aspect ratio to subwoofers. The heart of the disc, however, is the suite of thoroughly explained calibrations that takes you step by step through TV and audio system optimization.

Sound & Vision's Home Theater Tune-Up

Upside: Simple explanations of calibration and setup routines; nice graphical demonstrations.

Downside: Constant corny jokes; little elaboration of home theater concepts.

Best for: Beginners who want a quick-and-dirty way to tune up--as opposed to calibrate--their systems.

Endorsed by the home-entertainment reviews magazine, this disc is positioned as an easy-to-use guide to home theater setup. In most areas, it succeeds. The body of the program consists of a tutorial on equipment, room environment, and calibrations hosted by a lively pair of hosts--whose trite antics become tiresome after the first minute. Common-language explanations and clear diagrams help beginners immensely, but some important concepts, such as variations among different display devices, are glossed over or eliminated altogether.

Digital Video Essentials

Upside: Excellent in-depth explanations of up-to-the-minute home theater concepts; comprehensive test patterns and montages; mastered in 16:9 wide-screen format.

Downside: Sometimes inadequate explanations of setup routines; constant chapter stops; no human host.

Best for: True and aspiring videophiles who want the most current, in-depth video information and don't mind falling asleep to get it.

The successor to Video Essentials, also available in both 1080i and 720p resolutions, has the advantage of being the newest calibration DVD--and a lot has changed in the last few years. Watching the tutorial is a little like attending a class taught by HAL from the movie 2001 since there's no visible human host, and the narrator sounds a little too nice. The explanations are extremely informative and complete, and they include details that other discs miss. But the actual how-to of setup isn't as straightforward; beginners should avoid Digital Video Essentials.

(Editors' note: The author contributed to the production of Digital Video Essentials and is a contributor to Sound & Vision magazine.)

Advanced

If you've just dropped S$5,000 or more on a new TV or projector, chances are you're serious about home theater. For true videophiles, the most effective--and expensive--way to get theater-like pictures is to have the display professionally calibrated. But some TVs perform well enough out of the box that you may not consider professional service a worthwhile investment. This section will help you decide.

CNET US Labs uses Sencore's CP5000 color analyzer to calibrate the color temperature of most TVs reviewed.

What do the pros do?

Although the service you get will vary, professional calibrations almost always involve a few common steps aimed at improving the image. Many of these require accessing the display's internal service menu and measuring the image with test equipment--two reasons why the service calls for a trained professional. We strongly advise against tampering with the internal service menu unless you know what you're doing.

Here are the services included in a typical calibration:

Direct-view and flat-panel TVs: Set grayscale to the NTSC standard of 6,500 Kelvin, improving color accuracy of the entire palette; set contrast, brightness, color, and so on using test patterns designed specifically for each of these controls; optimize overscan and picture position, enabling display of more of the incoming picture; correct red push in the color decoder when possible; optimize all DVD input sources using DVD test patterns and HDTV input using an HDTV test-pattern signal generator.

Rear-projection and front-projection TVs: All of the above for non-CRT displays; for CRTs, also converge all aspect ratios and focus the three guns to maintain image sharpness.

Other advanced services include mechanical focus of projector lenses, custom setups for every aspect ratio and input source, full projector installations from scratch, and the like.

Is it worth it for my TV?

Professional calibrations can be costly and if you're on a budget, we recommend you first purchase one of the test discs and follow its DIY calibration procedure. If afterward you still feel like your set isn't performing as well as it should or you simply want to guarantee the best picture, you should get a calibration.

One of the most important components of professional TV service--and one that definitely requires special gear--is grayscale calibration. This procedure equalizes the color of gray at various light levels, from very dark to very bright, at the NTSC standard color temperature (a.k.a. white balance) of 6,500 degrees Kelvin, or D6500K. DVDs are created to be displayed at that color temperature, so if your TV is set to 6,500K, you're that much closer to seeing the image the director intended.

Some TVs, however, have color temperature presets that come close to 6,500K. If that measurement comes close to this standard, then the set is in less need of a grayscale calibration. Note that very few TVs come close to the ideal color temperature, even in their warmest mode.

The Imaging Science Foundation is a good source for qualified calibrators.

How do I get a calibration?

There are two ways to get your display calibrated. If you bought the set at a specialty retailer, the vendor would probably be able to refer you to someone who could perform the service. Some retailers even include calibration in the price of the television.

The more common way, however, is to retain the services of an independent contractor. However, there are limited calibrators operating around Asia. We recommend you choose a contractor with calibration equipment who has been certified by the Imaging Science Foundation and who owns his or her own calibration equipment. Note that they may perform their services only in conjunction with full audio/video installations and may not offer separate video calibrations.