I am hearing mixed things about this. Say I am using ColorHCFR, and am calibrating an HDTV using a standard-def/upconverting DVD player. Would I set my reference in the program to SDTV - REC 601 (NTSC) or HDTV - REC 709?

If you are only playing standard DVDs, I would calibrate to Rec601. That would give you the correct, i.e., intended, colors for the films you are playing, and should be compatible with most cable/over-the-air TV as well, at least in North America.

When you do get a blu-ray player, you will need to decide then whether to connect the two players to separate inputs on the set, and hopefully the set allows you to maintain a separate calibration for each source, or whether you will want to calibrate to Rec709 to get the best color for blu-ray and accept the compromise on the standard DVD color.

It is said that there are some upscaling players that convert the standard def colors to different RGB values while upscaling to 1080p, under the assumption that the set that accepts 1080p is calibrated to Rec709, and that you will want the correct Rec601 colors when watching an upscaled standard DVD. You should be able to test if this is true of your player by measuring the primary/secondary colors at 480i, then measuring them again at 1080 and seeing if they moved. Unless, of course, your set is also moving the primary/secondary colors based on the resolution or the color space flags. Regardless, given your question, you should be able to obtain correct standard DVD results setting the player to upscale to 1080, then calibrating the primary/secondary colors to match Rec601.

I am hearing mixed things about this. Say I am using ColorHCFR, and am calibrating an HDTV using a standard-def/upconverting DVD player. Would I set my reference in the program to SDTV - REC 601 (NTSC) or HDTV - REC 709?

In addition to what Bill said, if your display does not have a working CMS, what you set this to in HCFR is not as important as it first seems. In the end, if you don't have a CMS, all you most likely have are color/tint/color decoding controls which should be optimized given your display's native primaries (you'll need to use a separate color gamut calculator to this though).

hope this helps,


--tom

Thanks all. It's for an LG LCD which does have a CMS. Tom, although I might not need it, do you have an example or link to the color gamut calculator you mentioned?

Thanks all. It's for an LG LCD which does have a CMS. Tom, although I might not need it, do you have an example or link to the color gamut calculator you mentioned?

You can use Gregr's Accupel display calibration calculator which can be found here:

http://www.accupel.com/HDG4000_manuals.html

at the bottom of the page.

Before adjusting the CMS controls, I would use the calculator to check your display's color decoding abilities (i.e. adjust color and tint to optimize things given the display's native primaries). This also lets you see if anything in your source chain is causing color decoding problems. Once color/tint are properly set and the display's color decoding has been checked, I'd then use the CMS controls to make adjustments to the display's color gamut.

hope this helps,


--tom