So here's my calibration report.
I began this saga by looking through the forum here and then seeing the wealth of info D-Nice has put up. I then happened to stumble on a thread which stated he would be in my area to do some calibrations. I contacted him via PM and was able to ask some questions. D-Nice was very good about answering all of my questions which set my mind at ease about having him calibrate my panels. So the date was set and as D-Nice has already said in a previous post, he had set aside the entire day to adjust both of my Pioneer panels. The panels in question are a Pioneer Elite Pro-141FD and a Pioneer Elite Pro 1010HD. Being that there isn't a thread per say covering the 1010HD, I'll just put my comments about it here too.
The appointment was set for 9AM. Prior to him arriving, he gave me a courtesy call to tell me he was on the way and on time and to have me get the 141 warmed up. He arrives and starts on the 141 first. Start time was probably a little before 9:30 after he got all set up. During his work, he was very careful not to disturb or cause damage to any thing in the room. In particular, he knew how much of a type A person I am and made sure he minimized moving around the chair I provided for him; even though the chair has casters. I really appreciated this courtesy. Later he found a smug on the actual glass and wiped it down with a cloth he had with him. So anyways, he gets set up and goes through the initial readings and then starts into the calibration. During his work, D-Nice was very good about answering questions I had about things. And before he got started with actually calibrating the panel, walked me through all the graphs/readings in the pre-calibration report. Some of the things he talked about I remember....some I have since forgotten. During the calibration of the screen, the friend D-Nice and I talked about in the previous post dropped by. D-Nice was also very courteous with him...spent some time answering his questions while still working on the calibration. I must say I never saw someone multi-task so well. So during the calibration, he ran into a quirk with my 141 where the settings didn't take on the panel which required him to get out of ControlCal and back in again. There were also times he had to do something to "wake up" the panel. I'll leave it up to D-Nice to explain these quirks. He had some challenges getting the 10% and 20% gray scale images dialed in which was exacerbated by the ControlCal/141 issue. He calibrated Pure mode and set up the obligatory ISF Auto, Day, and Night modes. In addition, he calibrated the component inputs as I am using them with my Meridian 598DP. He also did an adjustment on a second HDMI input so it can be used with my DirecTV HD DVR. The adjustment was done to further dial in the picture. He finally finished around 2:30 in the afternoon if not a bit later. He threw up Dark Knight to do the obligatory demo of the opening scene. We also joked about the post saying how sick and tired Chad B was of Dark Knight. The difference were very apparent to me. The slight haze that was "normal" with Pure mode out of the box was now gone. Seeing the scene under ISF Day was like almost being there...dare I say it was almost a religious experience.
D-Nice then moved all his gear up to the family room to calibrate the 1010HD. This time the calibration was quicker. I would say he spent about an hour to an hour and a half on it. D-Nice didn't use the ISF submenus on the 1010 citing known instances and issues of quirks with the ISF mode which could ruin the panel. The initial readings were done in Dynamic mode and the calibrations were done in User mode. D-Nice set up both HDMI ports and also the S-Video port I am currently using with the SD DirecTV receiver. We didn't go through an after demo as the day was getting late and he had a date with the new Star Trek movie. By this time it was around 4 or so.
You can say I'm very happy with my D-Nice calibration experience. I'll certainly have him back at a later date to do some fine tuning due to my intended plan of adding a Meridian HD621 into my system. The meticulous nature of how D-Nice went about adjusting my two sets speaks volumes for the end product you'll get. As he said a number of times, he approaches each TV calibration with the mindset that would he be happy with the results if this were his TV?
Now the calibration reports:
Pioneer Elite Pro-141FD
Pre-Calibration Pure Mode
Post Calibration Pure Mode
ISF Day Mode
ISF Night Mode
Pioneer Elite Pro 1010HD
Pre-Calibration Dynamic Mode
Post-Calibration User Mode
You start those kids down a dangerous path.....
