Okay, the questions; for those of you who have had your sets professionall calibrated:

1. Did you perceive a shift in how colors were presented? I mean this in that some people mention a display being overly blue (or whatever) and calibration will make "white" actually look "white." Did you notice that despite looking "right" before calibration, that it looked ACTUALLY right after calibration?
2. For CRT people, did you notice a difference? I know it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, as well as individual sets to individual sets. Is the most noticable difference usually with other technologies (LCD, DLP, Plasma), or can you get a big jump with CRT as well?
3. For direct view tubes, do calibrators usually clean the optics, or is that only with the older style non-flat CRTs (they guy's coming by on Thursday, and I forgot to ask him when I talked to him this afternoon).
4. Yes, this question gets asked a lot, but... excepting those rare sets which are almost 6500k out of the box, is it really worth it? I'm OCD, so I pretty much have to max out the quality of my set, even though it's a 4:3 Best Buy Insignia brand, but have you gotten significantly impressive results after dropping the cash?

Thanks.

Greetings

Worth is only something that you can answer. We cannot see the world through your eyes. We do not know your value judgement system.

Big real changes to some people still mean nothing ... and small tweaks here and there are raved about by others ...

Until we know who you are on this scale ... we cannot answer this.

Pro Calibration seeks to make the image as accurate as possible. Whether or not you like it is irrelevant. When you ask the question ... what is 2+2=? ... You get the answer 4 ... from the calibrator. That's it. There is no more. Doesn't matter if you don't like that the answer is "4" ... it still is.

Regards

The major question is whether you have calibrated the set using basic settings yourself first. This is the most major direct improvement, but going all the way can be well worth it depending on many things, and of course this is an economic question that can only be answered by the particular individual and their preferences.

3: there are no optics to clean with direct views except the screen which collects dust. Suggest you dust this regularly with a dry soft cloth.

I'd say CRTs are by far the displays most prone to improvement from calibration, especially projection CRTs. IT really depends on the tech though, and what the display allows them to do.

A lot of beam setup/focus and geometry issues are present with CRTs that are not present with digitals, along with convergence etc etc. CRT projection is the extreme of this, but they are well-renowned (or hated) for the hours and hours it takes to set one up properly from scratch. Hours and hours and hours. And hours. And hours. ;)

I've used AVIA, and it did help. Being a cheap (though good) set, I dunno how much the improvement would be, since I don't know if that means that they would skimp on proper calibration out of the box so they could get it out as quickly as possible.

I do get some geometry issues, according to AVIA, over a contrast of 14 (out of 100), but I don't see any actual problem in use. I tinkered a bit with overscan, and I only had to make a very slight adjustment to max out the picture.

Michael, I've heard that a lot, but it doesn't answer my question. I acknowledged the differences between all the sets, etc. I just wanted to know if anyone had a set where the colors LOOKED RIGHT before the professional calibration, but it turns out that they weren't ACTUALLY RIGHT, after the calibration set it to the correct color level.

I just wanted to know if anyone had a set where the colors LOOKED RIGHT before the professional calibration, but it turns out that they weren't ACTUALLY RIGHT, after the calibration set it to the correct color level.

99% of people have no idea what the colors are supposed to look right, so generally they assume that the colors are right, and that includes out of the box colors which are usually horrible. So yes, this is the norm rather than the exception. I'd say only calibrators or people who have spent years viewing calibrated displays really have a good idea and feel for what the colors are supposed to look like when accurate, and even then only with content they are intimately familiar with.

Thanks Chris, I appreciate that. Watching The Thing for the billionth time, I've been wondering if it wasn't already the "right white", so we'll see how it looks when it's corrected.

There's been a dearth of people having pictures of "before and after" shots of calibrated TV sets, so I'll snap a few "before" shots before Thursday, when I'm getting the calibration done. It's only a 4:3 27" HDTV set, but still. I'll take some pics of HD movies (King King, Batman Begins, The Thing) and some SD movies (Dawn of the Dead remake, a couple of others). I know there's a question of looking at the pics on a computer monitor that isn't calibrated, showing inaccurate viewings of calibrated TV pictures, but the DIFFERENCE between the before and after shots should still be noticable.

Greetings

The saying goes ...

"The marketing of a TV set has nothing to do with presenting accurate images. It has everything to do with selling TVs. If marketing studies tell you people buy more TVs because you make your pictures green ... guess what ... you make your pictures green."

This is why pretty much no set comes from the factory in an accurate state. Accurate does not sell ... bright and flashy does ...

Sorry ... but that is just the way it is.

Regards

Greetings

Unfortunately ... all the pictures will show us is that the images look different. Not much more.

Regards

That's the point.

But not his point. There may be differences but the may or may not be meaningful in the context of your system. Have you any of these questions to the calibration specialist who will be doing the work? Have you discussed what is possible with your set, what will be done, and what expectations are reasonable?

I used to own an A/V store and often had a fully calibrated set beside an "untouched" set. Everybody could see the difference, but not everybody had a clear preference and a few even preferred the un-calibrated picture. Many have been conditioned to the "TV look" and expect the picture from a TV to look a certain - unnatural - way.

The image from your display may not actually look better to you afterwards as that depends on one's own expectations and perceptions, but it will definitely be more accurate and that, ultimately, is the goal.

I can absolutely promise you that you will grow to appreciate it though! When you then look at un-calibrated displays, you will instantly understand. It will be painful!

Greetings

Unfortunately ... all the pictures will show us is that the images look different. Not much more.

RegardsLet me add to that: the digital camera will "do it's own thing" in regards to color balance - so it will present a distorted view (may even tend to make the pictures look the same :rolleyes: ) and then, us folks looking at those pictures will be viewing them on our own "uncalibrated" screens (well, most of us - I do have one computer monitor that is properly calibrated).

Let me add to that: the digital camera will "do it's own thing" in regards to color balance - so it will present a distorted view (may even tend to make the pictures look the same :rolleyes: ) and then, us folks looking at those pictures will be viewing them on our own "uncalibrated" screens (well, most of us - I do have one computer monitor that is properly calibrated).
I know. I stated that in an earlier post. Just hopefully, it'll show that there's A difference.