What is the best way for a 'dummy' to calibrate his new LCD TV  

Start with 'Avia II: Guide To Home Theater' if you only have a standard DVD player. If you have an HD DVD or Blu-ray player, get 'Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics.' Those will get you started with a foundation via narrated tutorials and basic test patterns. After that, you can consider going deeper yourself or hiring a pro.

Try Amazon. It may be hard to find at a local store. If you have Netflix, they do offer it for rental.

Hire a professional.

Anything else for a dummy will not be the "best" way.

Yeah... That is true, but we all started somewhere.

I think if someone gets the above mentioned discs, they could at least make their set much better that what comes out of the box.

So i suggest following that advice, the AVIA, DVE discs and go through them. You will be surprised at ow much you can get done.

Ultimately, you may want a pro to ISF calibrate your set if you are still not satisfied, but go ahead, get one of the discs and give it a shot. Anything you do can be undone, by setting things back. After all, you're not going to access any service menu.

Mike

yes every body started somewhere stick to that!

here is a good actually am not aware of any better guides out there.
so detailed and holds your hand until the end.

The question was "What is the best way for a 'dummy' to calibrate his new LCD TV"

Yes, everyone has to start somewhere, but that is not the BEST way for dummy to get his TV properly calibrated. It's without a doubt, the WORST way.

There is no better (and efficient) way to learn than by hiring a competent professional that will take the time to educate and answer questions during the calibration process.

I agree with GeorgeAB's advice. It won't be truly calibrated, but it will be greatly improved over the default settings, IMHO.

Once you get acclimated to the (significant) changes, you can better evaluate whether or not you feel hiring a professional to get you all the way there is prudent.

I did mention getting a pro if they weren't satisfied. The Curt Palme site does a commendable job of answering a lot of questions... If you're on this forum, my guess is that you're probably a bit "less" of a dummy that most.

But agreed as the best - for almost anyone - is a pro, but if the person is willing to read, they can learn much, and accomplish much. As long as they avoid any service menus! Everything can be re-set, no harm, no foul.....

So Randy what would you recommend as a way for a dummy to get started? Kal over at Curt Palme does an excellent job of detailing what is needed and how to do it for as little cost. We have not seen the calibration guide for dummies by Randy yet.

Unfortunately, all this does take time...

If you really don't want to spend the time, you may not learn what you need to, and a pro may be the way to go. You can generally find competent ISF people that service your area. I'd look at a broader geographical range....

If the TV has a backlight you can try turning that down, and you can reduce picture (contrast).

Interesting comparing apples with oranges and spinning away. I have in the past suggested that exact Curt Palme article in the past for people who have asked about a guide to get started calibrating their sets, as noted here :http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post15688661

You must be more interested in selling meters instead of answer the topic/question the OP asked "What is the best way for a 'dummy' to calibrate his new LCD TV", which my post answered.

You know what really helped me calibrate my television to satisfaction? I put my laptop on my knee and pulled up screenshots of Blu-Ray movies I own from a site like bluray.com, and then put in my own copy of the film on the television and scanned the disc to find the same frame. Then I'd compare what I could see, and if I was missing any details on the television then I knew I had my blacks too dark or dynamic contrast too high. It also helped determine color. I did this with several dark scenes and several light scenes until I found a balance that got me the most out of each, and until I was more happy with the picture on my television than on my laptop. Before I calibrated, the default settings the television came with actually looked significantly worse than what I could see on my computer screen! When I was finished, I could see all of the details I was seeing on the computer, and a whole lot more color depth.

OK - so for this to work you have to have 2 things...
1) - The screen shot itself has to be "perfect" with the black level correct, color correct, etc... it has to be a "calibrated" reference image.
2) - The Laptop has to be calibrated... with a meter. The black level has to be correct, the gamma has to be appropriate, color has to be accurate, etc.

It's HIGHLY unlikey (not impossible, but HIGHLY unlikely) the image being used is an accurate representation of what the film frame should look like - it could be too bright or too dark or color shifted... you can't assume that a screen image from any website is remotely accurate. Laptops are often notoriously difficult to calibrate to any reasonable accuracy because their video subsystems tend to be "limited" in available adjustments compared to specialized video adapters you might find in an HTPC.

So you can achieve a rough "match" with this method, but the question is... what are you matching? It's not likely to be anything accurate. So the next question, then, is "does matching something that's not accurate improve the images or not"? Hard to know without measurements from a meter.

The point isn't to match the laptop; it's just helpful to have a second source of the same image for comparison sake. If the color looks more natural on the dimly-lit, low-saturation laptop or there's all kinds of details in the whites or blacks that can't be seen on the television, then it becomes obvious more steps need to be taken.

If the source isn't accurate, you are simply using an inaccurate "reference". For example... if you go to 5 websites and download their image of a Blu-ray disc cover shot (the same title from every site), then put them side by side, they will very likely all be completely different (unless they were copied from the same source file). One may be dark with little shadow detail, another may be quite light with much more shadow detail, a third may be too blue, the forth could be undersaturated, and the fifth could have too much yellow. Which one should be your reference? Unless you are holding an original Blu-ray in your hand to use as a comparison, anything you download from an online source is HIGHLY suspect - it could be MUCH too bright, MUCH too saturated (or undersaturated), etc. etc. - the online image, in fact, has little chance of representing the image the director and cinematographer intended you to see. So using it as any sort of comparison is really no help.

Test patterns from a test/setup disc are much more appropriate and helpful. Digital Video Essentials HD Basics (Blu-ray) sells for less than $20 at Amazon - that's the sort of reference people should be looking at. You don't need to see a scene from a movie to know your display is setup correctly with that disc - in fact, after using that disc, your display will be better than images you can find online in regards to black level, color, tint, sharpness, etc.

Dummy=Hiring a pro EVERY SINGLE TIME. You will never learn nothing, they want you to keep comming back.

Smart guy= Joining avs forums, learning from other owners what the best settings they recommend. And then using your own judgement what looks best.

My wife complained of images like the ones you describe when I had the Contrast set too high on my Samsung LCD. I had tried following the advice of setting Contrast as high as I could without seeing or measuring color shift, which maximized the overall contrast ratio to more than 2000:1. But with a measured light intensity greater than 50 ftL, bright white seemed to generate reflections, or effects that overwhelmed anything nearby on the screen. When I went back to an earlier range of calibration, with the maximum white light in the range of 45 ftL, this effect disappeared and my wife was happy. (I know. You don't have the instruments so the numbers per se don't mean a lot to you.)

So it sounds to me as if you should back off on the Backlight (or whatever Sony calls this control) or the Contrast a little, and you'll be happier with the result. There are several discussions in this forum on how to set Contrast, including the criteria to use, some of which require instruments but most require just a calibration DVD. As George suggested at the top, the DVE and AVIA disks come with lots of explanations for the newcomer. Backlight is the generally recommended control to reduce the overall illumination, as it preserves the maximum contrast ratio.

Bob - Bill's latest reply is probably the best you can do, since you are not convinced you're only "evaluating" the set. Those two discs are going to be the only way you may have to get an idea of what the set is like.

You MUST take the time to follow the process.

Have you tried the Sony forums looking for assistance? I know in the Samsung forums there are many helping hands.

Your advice might have some validity to it if HDTVs were built to Hospital grade or Military Specs.

Unfortunately, parts that have a high degree of variance in their specs will never perform similarly - and the errors are compounded through various stages.

There might be extremely slight differences from model to model. But from my experience all models perform pretty close and are consistent.

Zues is a user who has no experience with a calibrated image, and simply runs around ranting about the concept of accurate images in general. Please pay no attention to the troll.