Hey All,

Note: I posted this in the PS3 area as well. I am not attempting to "spam", I just want to make sure that an Xbox 360 owner who has gone through this might also have some insight.

It has been a while since I've been on here, but lately I've been stumped on how to calibrate my display in the home theater. I was hoping someone (or many someones) here might be able to help me out.

A little bit of background for you: my home theater includes a Mitsubishi WD-65831 which gets its input via HDMI through a Denon AVR-2807. Into the Denon AVR-2807 I have an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and a Wii connected. The PlayStation 3 is the main movie playing device (for both Blu-Ray and DVD), and is connected to the Denon receiver via an HDMI cable. The Xbox 360 is a first generation and so I have that running into the receiver via component for video and Toslink for audio. Finally, the Wii is connected via component for video an stereo RCA for audio.

I've had this system for a while now, but I keep twiddling the nobs to "get it right". I believe I'm finally happy with the audio, but I cannot for the life of me get the video properly calibrated (or at least calibrated to my liking). I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why I couldn't "get it right", when it finally dawned on me: I calibrate using a video source (Blu-Ray or DVD calibration video), but I get frustrated with the video in games.

So I guess my question is this: do game manufactures create their visuals assuming that your video settings will be set to the the standard out of the box, burn-your-retina values, or do they assume that you will have properly tuned your visuals to provide you with a good cinema experience? If they do, is there any advice that one can give me so that I don't have to go and switch the calibration values every time I switch between a movie and a game?

I guess the reason this is coming up now is that I have been asked to be in the Killzone 2 Beta, and the visual are dark, muddy and difficult to distinguish what is going on using movie calibration values. However, if I calibrate the set to account for the dark visuals, then my movies and television watching looks terrible and way too bright.

Thanks for any advice you might give.

The only way I know how to avoid this is to not run the video through the receiver, or to manually switch your connections between movies/games.

I have my TV calibrated for movies through my HDMI connection (which runs through the receiver), and games through my Component connection (I don't have the HDMI Xbox and run Toslink to my receiver for audio).

I own a PS3 and never had an issue with games displaying with my movie calibrated settings. But seeing that I am anticipating Killzone 2 (love to be part of the beta...wink wink), I could see myself changing the TV calibration on my HDMI 2 input for games, and then just switching the cable between HDMI 1 when watching movies, to HDMI 2 when playing games.

Certain games have individual settings. I would set up for movie viewing and then try to adjust in the game. Bioshock, doom3, and a few others come to mind. I have found certain games are darker and certain games are pushed and are uber vibrant. Or maybe your set has viewing modes that are customiazable.

Thank ya' much.

I appreciate the insights from you both. I guess I could switch to HDMI 2 when I want to play games, but what a hassle that would be. I could also see the wife getting very confused when the TV comes on, and the sound comes on, but no visuals come up because the HDMI cable was switched. :)

So, is it because game designers assume out-of-the-box settings, or is it because of something different?

edit: And as far as another beta key goes, sorry I just got the one mailed to me. :)

The way i did it was by downloading high res test patterns to my pc and uploading them to my 360 via windows media center. Looks great. If your only using one hdmi port from the reciever your going to have to share settings between all of your components.