How do I calibrate TV through HTPC source? - Page 2

Yes, I've discovered this myself: using both 16-235 in ATI driver and in renderer double compressed the rannge, so the setting must be Full RGB in the driver.

I don't know have I mispelled something, I think that never in my test results I got bars 2-16 flashing with 0-255 set in renderer.

Thanks for the advice, you've correctly described all symptoms and working solution

Do you maybe know why is in the media players like PowerDvd 11 and TotalMedia Theatre 5 default setting 0-255 range (and I cannot find any setting to change this).

TMT has a brightness and contrast setting that can be used to approximate 16-235 output.

I just did a calibration on my dlp i thas been awhile since the new lamp was installed, so it was badly overdue.. Lots of distractions.

Anyway, I am using a DUO and I calibrated from the internal patterns. I am amazed at how different the color is on the PC as a source. Getting the levels to match pretty close is duck soup but the color is definitely off.

I guess I will mess with a separate calibration and create a profile on the DUO for the PC. I just could not believe the difference in the HD Color Bar Pattern btween what the DUO and the Pioneer BD Player delivered (they look identical) and what the PC put on the screen. It was just a quick compare using Spears and Munsil but Cyan difference stood out like a sore thumb. This compare was going through the same settings on the DUO CMS.. PCs are a different animal. Nvidia GTS 450.. I used PowerDVD as my player.

MadVR is another color gamut too. MadVR look very nice but the color is not accurate, maybe using a LUT... all that sounds like a lot of trouble. Now if the DUO had the ability to save and switch a bunch of profiles.

Great topic, i was struggling with this too.

I have an 82 Mits DLP and I first disabled the CMS in my DUO. I then used the Advanced mode in the Mits to set grayscale and gamma. On the Mits this is very quick and easy. Just two point control but it has a choice of gamma targets and is quite easy to get right.

I made sure that peak white was very close, adjusted it in White Balance control. I then did an autocalibrate run. I was pleasantly surprised what a good calibration came out of that auto run. There was a gamma dip at 80% but it was easily touched up in the DUO manually. So basiclly at that point I had a near perfect calibration or at least to the point it wasn't going to make any visual differences if I screwed with much more. Besides I would have to manually retweak it for the PC as a source anway.

I then used the AVS HD 709 disc with PowerDVD on the PC as my BD player. I checked the grayscale and there were a couple of steps that needed minor touch up. Very qucik and easy. I then went to the gamut and used the 75% ChromaPure color fields pattern set and made the necessary manual adjustments. The primaries need very minor changes, the secondaries more. The results were impressive. I have never seen content from my PC look this good. I had alway avoided using advanced mode on the Mits, While Advanced had a simple effective grayscale control, its gamut tools were clunky and unpredictable. Somehow using the DUO controls in combination with TV controls made the PC calibration pretty straightforward. So now I have a DUO profile for CE devices and use the Natural Picture mode for those devices. I have a DUO profile for the PC and use ADV mode for it.

Now that I see how good ADV and the DUO autocalibrate work together I will probably use the other available ADV memory for CE devices. I was able to get lower dEs for blue and green using the TVs ADV mode than I could in Natural, that was never the case before auotcalibrate and I am not sure why.

I still have some questions about the accuracy of output of different software BD players and different renderers but TV from WMC looks very good, and ATSC TV via J River MC and madVR looks insanely great. The output out of PowerDVD while it looks good, does not look as good as the BD player. Colors are very close but not exact. dEs are nice and tight and basically under 2 across the board.

I always hated the PC as a source until recently but it looks very good now. It stll can't quite match good CE devices in some ways but overall the integration and the quality of image I am getting now make it the main source for Live/Recorded TV and for movie playback on big screen.

Thanks to Tom for the tools!

If I have guests over and a new BD is on the agenda I would probably still go to the Pioneer BD player. But if they are over for the big game, they are going to watch it via OTA rendered by madVR and they are going to see the very best my TV can do a broadcast source. If it is something I have had time to rip to disk and converted to mkv thee PC will also be the source.

I anxiously look forward to having control over the dE and gamma targets in auto-calibrate. I love how fast it is with the current target, but would be willing to let it run considerably longer for say a 1.25 target on dE, greyscale and color gamut. Selectable Gamma targets don't seem like they should increase processing time much.

I just got my PN59D8000 setup over the weekend.
I connect ATI 5850 > HDMI > Denon 3310 > HDMI > PN59D8000 (HDMI1/DVI port)
My old 2006 Aquos LC37DB5U had a native resolution of 1360x768.
I had to compensate for the image not fitting the old display by messing with a scaling bar in the CCC (Catalyst Control Center) since my resolution of my Aquas was not standard. On my old display I set the GPU to output 720p@60Hz. This all worked fine. I run WMC with a Ceton InfiniTV4 for cable and my BD's are on a server for streaming.
Now I finally have a 1080p display and was expecting it to fill the entire screen of my Sammy when setting the ATI 5850 to output 1080p/60Hz. But, I still have a 1IN black bar around the entire screen and have to set the same scaling setting in CCC for my image to fill the screen. I would expect there to be no scaling needed with a 1080p display.
This setting holds fine and when I hit the info button on the remote I see 1920x1080/60p as expected. BUT, when I shutdown the TV + Reciever and the Power back up (HTPC is always on and Denon has a HDMI setting that is always on + WMC is set to go straight into LiveTV) the display is showing my resolution is now 1920x1080/60i not 60p. I then have the black bars around the entire screen - telling me my GPU scaling is not sticking. If I exit WMC, then my desktop goes back to 1920x1080/60p and no more black bars. I'll hit the Green button and WMC is back to fitting perfectly and the scaling setting sticks.
1) So, what could be going on here?
2) Is there a difference in the HDMI ports?
I'm setting the display 16:9. not fit screen. I tried fit screen when I had the black bars - but I'm thinking this may be a handshake issue.

Also, I set the GPU to output RGB full. I plan on getting the display calibrated after I have the bugs worked out, but that's still a week or 2 away.

Any CCC suggested settings?

What am I missing?

I'd wait until the display has a couple of hundred hours on it to let the electronic components settle down.

I don't use WMC, and there are a lot of ATI settings that I simply leave at default, but on my ATI card the only thing that's really necessary for 1080p is to choose zero scaling. If you're not running the current drivers, I'd suggest to get the current official video drivers. If you are running the current drivers go back a month or two. I've just seen too many simple problems that resulted with the ATI month to month changes, so my first suggestion would be to see if multiple ATI drivers exhibit the same issue.

Well the zero scaling leaves a 1IN black border - that's why I moved the slider to about 5. I have always turned almost all CCC settings off as well. But, I'm thinking the video driver is confused since it now has a new display to deal with and needs to be re-installed or updated to a different version. I've been running CCC 11.5 since they came out and my system has been very stable - so here we go again...
But, as you suggested (and I would think is true) I should not have to deal with the scaling slider at all and my output should fit my 1080p display - always.
I have a Geffen HDMI detective that I have been waiting to give a go - as this may be an HDCP handshake issue as well.

What do you guys suggest I use i have an msi pr400 laptop and i have a vga to hdmi converter hooked to the back of my d6500 samsung plasma. I "calibrated" hdmi2 input using gcd patterns by having an extended desktop. Where I opened Chroma pure and had the secondary device be the laptop and the tv be the primary device. I displayed the greyscale patterns and drag them so you could see them on the tv and adju6sted the 2pt and 10pt white balance using my d3 pro . However I could not get refrence black 16 to show up, Let you know that the video card driver does not have an option to set video levels or pc levels. It just has settings under the notebook icon color correction Gamma , Brightness and Contrast, these are at default. Under Monitor Color Correction it has again Gamma, Brightness , and Contrast. I also have a video overlay radio button which has settings of Gamma , Contrast, Saturation and Brightness, current out put mode is Intel Dual Display Clone.