Sorry if this is a stupid question but I've been comparing a lot of 30" widescreen LCD monitor reviews (Dell, HP, Apple, Samsung) and in particular their color accuracy. One of the last ones I read said calibrating the monitors only saves profiles for some applications. They basically said the calibration profile is not recognized in video overlay uses like watching DVDs and I assume HD DVDs or Blu Ray discs.

Is this correct? If so I may have to wait until monitors are made with scaling chips included, which HP is talking of doing with their next displays. What I am trying to do is get rid of my 21" CRT monitor and 26" CRT HDTV and integrate my PC and TV into one system. I realize this will require a TV tuner card, which is another issue altogether. Currently the HP and Dell are the only two I'd consider as the other two don't support HDCP, which means no HD DVD or Blu Ray.

Generally, this is true for most video card overlay renderers. (The LUTs for the overlay aren’t exposed or available for manipulation by most ICC profile generators). However, the LUT’s for the VMR9 surface render ARE exposed and editable and generally will be the same LUT as the desktop. If you are rendering video to a VMR9 surface, chances are good that your video card will use the ICC profile for video as well. You can test this by doing some radical LUT manipulations with PowerStrip or VideoEqualizer and verify that they are indeed in the video render path when playing a DVD.

Dave

WOW, thanks for the reply Dave but most of that went right over my head. I have seen the "use DDC" information option in display settings in my video card panel ( ATI Tray Tools, as I use Omega drivers for my X800XT), but you lost me with the ICC, LUT, VMR9, etc. Is ICC basically the same thing as DDC?

I tried downloading and using Powerstrip once when I first got my Samsung 26" widescreen CRT HDTV but couldn't figure out how to use it to adjust overscan and such, thus I went into the service menu of the TV and was able to do it that way easily.

In simple terms, all I want to be able to do is use the 30" widescreen LCD display to game, AND watch HD DVD, Blu Ray, or DVDs on and still make use of the calibration. I would probably do the calibrating with the Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter as it's the easiest to use from what I've read and can be had new for about $150.

When you mentioned the video render path, are you saying that some video cards use different paths? I assume you mean it's dependent on the video card and not the type of disc or particular movie being played? I've yet to start building my new system, as I'm waiting for Vista to become more bug free and hardware prices to drop. Currently the video card I'm looking at is the Nvidia 8800GTX though.

One last question, HP says they're looking to incorporate a video processing chip in their next generation monitors. Does that mean they will have the ability to recieve calibration information or perhaps not need calibrating?

Thanks again Dave, I really thought someone would tell me to ask this on the Home Theater Gaming rigs board, but you've already given more info than I expected.