hello there, new guy here looking for info. i'll have a new 34xbr970 in the house tomorrow (replacing my old worn out 14yr old hitachi 27") and i wanted to ask about how to get the best picture from my cable box (i have time warner--now comcast--but time warner's scientific atlanta 8000 dvr cable box). i don't have hd channels on tap yet but plan to in the future. presently i just want to know of the best way to get a really good pic from just the cable box. from what i've read on here it seems like it's fairly complicated to adjust the color on this new, more complicated set than my much older set which had a very nice realistic color picture to my eyes (after much initial manual adjustment of course). i've also read threads about not getting that great a picture in non-hd format so i just wanted to make sure i haven't made a wrong purchase here-----i did want to get a crt instead of the other options out there these days. any technical advice here would be appreciated. thanks a lot. rh

My advice:

Calibrate the picture in the "pro" mode. Set color temperature to neutral.

Best bet is to get a calibration dvd like Home Theater Tuneup, Avia or DVE. You run these from your dvd player and calibrate user settings like Contrast, Brightness, Color Saturation, Hue, Sharpness, etc. Once properly calibrated, this set does an outstanding job with non-HD material.

Best bet is to get a calibration dvd like Home Theater Tuneup, Avia or DVE. You run these from your dvd player and calibrate user settings like Contrast, Brightness, Color Saturation, Hue, Sharpness, etc. Once properly calibrated, this set does an outstanding job with non-HD material.

Double post. lol :D

I've calibrated mine Avia and THX Optimizer for DVD input only and tweak from there for HD.

My advice right now is to set it on Pro, use Warm Setting to get close to 6500K, Lower the
sharpness to 35, put the Tint/Hue on R1, Put it on Monitor instead of default.

Getting a calibration disc seems like great advice but the problem is for cable or satellite it will
not help. Those discs are meant for your dvd player and its input. For your cable I would suggest getting a ISF calibrator or if you cannot afford that then adjust the video settings until you like what you see. For dvd playback a calibration disc like AVIA or DVE are great and will get you the most correct picture. If you have a HD player I believe AVIA has come out with one that is designed for a HD player. Remember that each cable box or satellite box puts out different video levels and thus calibrating a input with a dvd calibration disc then switching the connection to your cable box does not guarentee anything.