I am trying to Calibrate my Samsung PN50B650 plasma with the ACS HD 709 calibration Bluray running off of my HTPC via Media Player Classic.

When I try to adjust the brightness or contrast to check the black levels, I can't see any of the bars that the instruction manual says should be there...even if I bump it ALL the way up. Does anyone know why I am not seeing anything? Thank you.

Your video card is expanding the levels so video 16 is being output at 0.

What make if your video card (nvidia/ati)?

Ati hd4350

I think ATI ALWAY expands HD content, so you'll never see below 16, regardless if you set up your output for RGB full or limited.

so you should be able to see bar 18 and bar 20 though.

Another option would be to use the pattern generator from spectracal, it can put up pretty good brightness/contrast patterns.

I'm not super familiar with ATI but it's probably clipping. Even with nvidia getting it to output video levels can be somewhat complicated. You'll have to dig around the HTPC forum for more advice.