Title pretty much says it all. I was just at a magnolia showroom in best buy where they had two identical Samsung 6 series LCDs hung up on the wall, one allegedly calibrated and the other not. Basically the calibrated one had a much deeper, truer black while the non-calibrated one had that typical blue/gray look to it. Both TVs showing the same content btw.

Now I know the Samsung has really good black levels already, as I've seen it several times. But the type of blacks I was seeing on that 'calibrated' set was beyond any I've seen. And this is in a dark environment where LCD blacks typically suffer and you start to see blue instead of black, just like the set right next to it was showing.

So my question is, was this just some strange trickery best buy was playing, or does a proper calibration really improve the black levels of any TV? Would it help my Panasonic PZ85U?

Thanks in advance.

It can indeed. Calibration usually reduces a display's light output from the full torch mode most ship in to a more manageable and comfortable-to-view level. In fact, sometimes people seeing a calibrated display for the first time complain that it isn't as bright as before. Along with proper brightness and contrast, a calibrated display also usually has better gamma than the uncalibrated display, further enhancing image depth and shadow details.

greetings

Yes

Yes if you have it not set up correctly ... and with out a test disc ... you cannot have set it up correctly.

No ... if you already set the brightness too too low ...then it won't improve your blacks at all. Only allow you to see more stuff in the dark areas.

It will not re-engineer the TV to give better blacks than any other Panasonic of the current vintage.

regards

What Michael said.

In addition, I will add that he is referring to absolute black level, not shadow details. He is right that calibration may or may not improve absolute black level depending on how the TV is set out of the box. Some have the black level up too high, causing greyish blacks, and these definitely will be improved upon calibration. Others have them set too low, causing black details to be submerged and appear clipped off. Calibration will not improve the absolute black level of these latter sets, however, by setting black correctly they absolutely will have superior dark details near black.

So considering black as black details in ADDITION to absolute black level, it is fair to say that yes calibration will improve blacks across the board. This is also because a properly calibrated display will have greyscale aligned which also helps maintain shadow details (where you can lose a color or two too fast near black), AND because gamma should be corrected as well, which has an enormous impact on black details. And of course, many of the destructive image "enhancement" and contrast enhancement modes will be turned off, again improving performance near black.

I have 2 Samsung 650s and compared to the (default) preset modes the details in the blacks improved after calibration. Just as ChrisWiggles pointed out in his example, when my Grayscale was set with the proper Brightness value, it made the picture so much sweeter. :)