About to buy Best Buy Calibration...bad idea?

Check this tread out from a few weeks ago
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&highlight=buy

Id spend the money on a D2 probe and use HCFR and do it myself for the same money outlay before id let them do it. Also you now can do any display ant time you want. Calibrations do not last, in a year or two things change and it would need calibrating again. Why not have the tools to do it yourself each time or when you want to. Sources change as well and would need calibration. it all depends on how much your own time is worth, and the willingness to lear it yourself.

Athanasios

Greetings

If we give the Geek Squad calibrator the benefit of the doubt, then the 90 minutes that they are allotted to calibrate a TV is more than enough for the physical job. You are not going to find any independent ISF guys or THX guys at that price point.

Given that time window, what the calibrator does is come in ... do it ... and leaves. There is little time for banter, let alone any type of education of the process.

There is also the saying (even from BB calibrators) that you have in 1 in 10 chance of getting a calibrator that actually cares about doing the job right.

Given the price point ... go with it and see what happens. Make sure you ask for the main calibrator and not one of the back up guys. Back ups never even attended the class in most cases.

regards

One of the Geeks "calibrated" my TV two years ago for about 300 bucks. He did:

black level
white level
sharpness
color saturation
color hue
All five of which can be done in the user menu by anyone with a calibration disc.

He did go into the service menu and did a 2 point grayscale calibration but didn't even attempt to do color. WTF? Admittedly, my display is a PITA to calibrate and he probably knew it but in neglecting color he FAILED to calibrate the TV.



I agree with this 100%. t1337Dude I'd give a lot of consideration to this. You can charge your buddies a relatively small sum to do their TVs and you'll have the extra hundred bucks or so replenished in no time. Take a look at this. The software is much better than HCFR and the meter will get the job done.

Buzz

Greetings

BB calibrators are supposed to do the user controls and the grayscale for up to two inputs. In the grand scheme of things, that is 95% of the calibration process right there. Color management falls into that last 5% area.

And just because someone does not do cms does not mean that the TV was not calibrated. So 95% means nothing? There are levels of calibration .... and just because the work is not done to one person's standards ... does not mean that no calibration was done.

Simply call BB and make sure you get the primary calibrator rather than their back up guys.

Regards

While not disagreeing with you, some people are better than others.

Here's what I found this spring with a Chroma 5.

Attachment 185057

Attachment 185058

I had good reason for my post.

Buzz

According to who is primary & secondary color accuracy (CMS) just 5% of the total calibration process? Where are you getting these figures from?

Greetings

As long as the color starts out close, this rule pretty much applies. So this applies to Samsungs, Sony, JVC (THX), Panasonic, LG, Epson, even sharp. Which pretty much covers all the main players.

The debate is not whether you see a change on a graph, but rather if you see a drastic change in the actual color when it is being changed ... and then realize that in almost all cases, the changes are slight (even for a test pattern) and then imagine if you can see that on moving material in a movie.

Of course since the thread starter has a Panasonic THX model with no CMS, the answer is academic for him. The color can easily be set to be well beyond human perception in terms of errors.

Regards

Greetings

Buzz,

I started out giving the BB calibrator the benefit of the doubt ... (and that is a gigantic gimme/freebie). The 10% chance of a good calibrator still holds true and some of the BB guys that care have said that even that ratio may be too generous.

Sometimes people just don't want to do the oil change on their car themselves. It doesn't matter that it costs less ... its the hassle.

Regards

OP, if you're not that bothered about learning how to calibrate, but are prepared to risk using BB then why not just put the new TV in THX mode? Then use the voucher you have to buy some films (I'm in the UK, so forgive me if BB don't sell discs) to enjoy on the new TV. While the THX mode may not be 'spot on' it sounds like it could be closer than 90% of the BB team.

Within your specified 4 hours you could download AVS709 calibration patterns, burn it to disc and use only the basic patterns to correctly set brightness and contrast to match your player. That, plus THX would be a long way to accuracy, so why bother with a BB calibration just to use up a voucher?

Just my 2p worth, hope it helps.

Greetings

at that price point, that really is all there is to go with.

Pro calibrators tend to have better gear than that though so one way or another, you end up getting what you paid for. Of course one always pays for what they get ...

There is also a lot of reading ahead of you as a disc and a program and a pod will not stand up and calibrate the tv on its own. Time to spend many many hours reading and reading and experimenting ... and realize that there is more to calibration than just working on the tv. Many considerations for the environment and the gear you have plugged into the TV.

regards

t1137:

I was previously tangentially/technically affiliated with BBY, and went through their ISF training.

If the calibrator is competent, he should be able to do a fine job.

I can't say that I have any experience with local Seattle-area BBY techs beyond my neighbor's samsung LCD. They did a fine job given the expectations, which is black level, white level, color saturation & tint, 1:1 mode, and a solid greyscale. They also put the samsung in a better gamma mode, and turned off motion interpolation.

I do not know BBY/Magnolia's current policy; before you couldn't use BBY giftcards at Magnolia AV locations. If that has changed, however, I would recommend going that route locally. I know personally the ISF calibrator (if he's still there I am assuming, we could discuss privately via PM), for MagnoliaAV, and can testify to the quality of his work. Mag is also differently equipped hardware-wise than BBY.

IMO, panasonic plasmas are not terribly difficult displays, and can benefit substantially from a good greyscale calibration. As long as you ensure that you have a reasonably knowledgeable/interested geek-squad tech IMO it would be worth the $100 out of pocket expense if you care about image quality.

You should not expect BBY to do CMS work at all, and AFAIK that panasonic doesn't have a CMS anyway.

For most people I think that's pretty fair. Unless you have a lot of experience with imaging and accurate color gamuts, or are a colorist, or are otherwise something of an extremist for color accuracy, it's rather small fry in the grand scheme of things.

Keep in mind that for many MANY years there was nothing at all you could really do about color accuracy. There were no color management systems. And even if there were, CRTs struggled just to get as far as SMPTE C, let alone beyond that where a CMS would even be of any use to anyone.

Displays have grown far more capable, and technologies like CMS have allowed an amazing degree of accuracy which can be achieved at a RIDICULOUSLY low price.

You could stick a display in front of someone that was perfect except for a fair amount of oversaturation on the primaries, and 99% of people would never notice anything. And there's a good chance the remaining 1% is just an inebriated friend giving you a hard time.

Until CMS capabilities came along, it wasn't even PART of the calibration process. So, while I love CMS for situations where it does matter to the viewer, let's not exaggerate how often that is of much significance, even among the self-selected, anally retentive and obsessed wackos that populate this forum (myself included.)

I bet I can tell you what kind of display that is...

Do you think it might start with a Hotel Lima, followed by a couple of XX's, suffixed with an Alpha and a seven and a five and a zero? LOL


Buzz

So with a gamut like this, I would not notice the errors in any significant way (with regular program material)?

 

LN32B650 CAL-NIGHT WARM1.zip 3.638671875k . file

Greetings

Take a color ... like blue and move it around by a number of x,y digits and visually look at the test pattern. Now increase or decrease its brightness by 10% ... 20% ... 30% and ask yourself again.

Now ask yourself if you will see this on moving material in a movie ... since one has to struggle with even the test patterns to see a difference.

Now try it with red ...

As long as it starts out close ... then the visual difference is really really hard to see ... and for most mainstream sets, it does start out close.

regards

If you have to ask, you'll never notice it.

If you are a colorist or something or otherwise work regularly with color and are an incessant stickler for color gamut precision, then maybe it might be a minor issue.

There are displays which are fairly heavily over/undersaturated which might be more objectionable.