Hello all, I have a Sony 55e2000, and I was wondering if it's worth it to get my set calibrated. After reading that Calibrations dirty little secret thread I'm left wondering if he's just gonna mess with the colors, contrast, etc. cause if so, that's something I could do. What do you guys think?

I've heard that some Sony's are almost correctly calibrated out of the box, but not necessarily all. Pro calibrators go into the service menu, which requires a special code to enter, and make alterations to the geometry of the set, the way the reds, blues, and greens are used by the set (which isn't remotely possibly to get right, without special equipment. I don't know if the SPYDERs can help with that, but calibrators usually use professional level calibration equipment that costs thousands of dollars to ensure maximum accuracy), they use software on their laptops to anaylze color balance, and make alterations as necessary to get to the "6500K standard), and after all that, THEN they set the user controls for color, tint, sharpness, brightness, and contrast. Also, they usually set the service menu so the recommended optimum user settings are now dead center in the user controls (i.e. on a 100 point scale, they set the best result for 50).

If you need calibration, it can be very very worth it. My set, while he was impressed with it, saying it was better than some Sony's he's dealt with (with the exception of needing to set the brightness and sharpness a bit high, since the total scale was low compared to other sets. Oh, and the geometry was perfect out of the box, more or less), was one of the worst factory-calibrated sets he'd ever seen; it was hitting the 15,000K mark, and everything was red, and the red push was so strong that regardless of contrast/brightness, it caused me to lose detail. After, reds were red, blues were blue, and greens were green; it almost looked like real life.

For a quick check, rent The Thing, HD-DVD, if you have the player. If the flares are a bright red, and the fire effects are the type of yellow/orange you'd expect if you set a real fire in the fireplace (or wherever), you might be fine. If, for example, all of the fire looks red, that means an excessive amount of red push and you'd want to consider getting calibration. This, of course, isn't a GREAT way to figure out if you need pro calibration, but comparing it to my old setup, it was an obvious problem with the out-of-the-box settings.

Cool, thanks a lot for the reply man, very helpful!

Almost forgot; for basic user calibrations, rent or buy Digital Video Essentials or AVIA; it's not anywhere near pro calibration, but it can help you make minor adjustments for contrast, brightness, color, tint, and sharpness, to increase image accuracy a bit. If you have a high-definition TV, you'll want the hi-def disc coming out for DVE (I think it's just been released), since the color treatment is a little different vs. normal CRT. I'm too lazy to check if the sony model you have is hi-def or not, so... eh.

Yes it is, native resolution is 720p. That one you recommended is hd dvd only though, right? Anything similar for blu ray?

The HD version is here: http://www.*********************/Toshiba_HD-A2_and_HD-XA2.htm, but I didn't see a blue-ray version in the blue-ray player section. You might want to check out the Blue-Ray software forum, they might have heard something about a Blue-Ray calibration disc/

Alright, thanks man.

Anyway, I've been thinking, and it seems to me that the best thing I could do is, rent one of those star wars movies, calibrate my set as best as I can, then after a month or so, have it professionally calibrated. What do you guys think?

I think you're worrying about it a little too much, as there's only so much you can do. If you're just talking about calibrating with basic user adjustments, as opposed to service menu stuff, use the THX optimizer that's included on some discs, or see if you can rent/buy AVIA or DVE.

ETA: Here's something I stumpled upon in the forums: [quote]the test pattern from Sony Blu-Ray discs

Hit
1. menu
2. 7669
3. enter
this only work on Sony Blu-Ray discs.

Alright, thanks man.

Anyway, I've been thinking, and it seems to me that the best thing I could do is, rent one of those star wars movies, calibrate my set as best as I can, then after a month or so, have it professionally calibrated. What do you guys think?Even a SD calibration DVD is better than the THX optimizer (those are biased to the DVD movie that they were designed for). From other threads, your Blu-Ray player should convert the Rec. 601 color space to the correct Rec. 709 color space, if you are connecting to your display using the HDMI input and have the player set to up-scale the ouput to 720p (or 1080i).

The only calibration difference between SD DVDs and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DVDs is the color space, the grayscale is the same.