Calibrate your TV (PLEASE!) – A little Rant

Ok, this is one of those things that REALLY gets on my goat. Basically when you buy a TV (especially LCD / Plasma panels) and get it home, the settings that are on their by default are USELESS. They are preconfigured for displaying the TV on the shop floor and not suitable for your home viewing really. The settings are normally pumped up to the max to counter the harsh lighting in most of the shops and having the settings that high at home is not good, for a number of reasons – Cost more in electricity, shorten the life of the tv and not give you the best picture quality possible – to mention a few reasons.

So what can you do about it, well it only really takes less than 5 minutes to do some basic calibration and you probably already have a disc as well.

Numerous discs have Calibration feature built in to them – the one I use most often is the Terminator 2 DVD. If you go to Sensory Setup and press Left on the remote, a little THX logo on the side of the terminators head will light up and that’s your Calibration section there. (There are many many more, including a lot of Disney DVD’s – here is the full list of Discs with Calibration options on them: http://www.thx.com/home/dvd/search.html ). REMEMBER: Calibrate the TV in the settings you would  normally watch the tv – i.e. if you don’t watch the TV normally on a bright Sunny afternoon in summer then there’s not point calibrating the TV at that time of day, as it won’t suit for the time of day you would normally watch it.

So, once you load the calibration section you’re normally given 2 choices – Audio Setup and Video Setup (we’ll deal with Audio another day as that’s a far longer rant!).

Click on the Video setup and follow the on screen instructions to adjust the Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness etc…. you’ll be told what to do and then shown a test pattern, follow it exactly and you’ll be amazed at the difference in picture quality. (note: there will be sections you can’t do because they require special glasses / access to settings that you’re tv doesn’t allow)

The biggest mistake that most people make is maxing out the settings, especially Contrast and Brightness, there’s no need. Remember you want to get a close Black as possible (NOT GREY). That’s the goal of tv makers all over the world, get the black levels as black as possible and by setting the Brightness and contrast way up you loose all those lovely black levels!

While at first the Picture may seem a bit dark, it’s only that way because you’re not used to it yet. Live with it for at least 3-4 days and if you still find it’s too dark, increase the contrast a few levels and see if that helps.

Ok, that’s my little rant for now, but please if you have any questions about Calibrating your TV drop me a mail ( tony@techtv101.com ) or leave a comment below.

Next week I’m going to move on to Sound (or the lack of it in most cases!)