Hi all,
I have a new Samsung UN55D8000 (manual here) and I am taking a crack at DIY calibration after reading this forum for a few weeks. I realize that I still have a lot to learn, and I was hoping for some advice from some of you far more experienced guys.
I picked up a new i1 Display Pro and a CalMan DIY license and spent a good 10 hours total learning CalMan 4.5 and the ins and outs of the UND8000's available controls, and tried to calibrate it with the Standard_DDC workflow. I used the Panasonic BDT210 (that so many of you recommended) and the AVS Blu-Ray calibration disc as a source. Here's what I observed (chart album here: http://imgur.com/a/sbSow#0):
0. My set started off very blue out of the box. I confirmed this with my eye pretty easily. Time to calibrate.
1. Some of the basic contrast/brightness charts on the AVS Blu-Ray (that I got off of the CalMan site) do not match the example charts. Not a big deal- I actually liked the ones on the disc better since they flash and make it somewhat easier- but I was curious as to why there was a delta there.
2. Gamma was pretty close out of the box. Any movement up or down and the chart looked worse, so I left it alone.
3. Dialing in the color gamut was easy, and from what I can tell, I was pretty successful here.
4. White balance is where everything went to hell. There is a 10p white balance scale on this TV and I was determined to use it. On my very first try, at first it was easy. I started at 10%, and worked my way up. By the time I reached the mid-points, I noticed that I wasn't able to get anywhere NEAR zero on the RGB balance scale. Then towards the upper end of the scale, getting RGB balanced at all became impossible. 80% would be too blue. 90% would be too green. 100% would be too red. If I tried to correct any of them, the other two would get worse. It became a game of whackamole.
What I then discovered was three things:
a. The 10p adjustments were very coarse at the low end, and extremely fine at the high end.
b. There was a "shift" of control as I went up. In other words, the controls got shifted away from the scale I was trying to measure. 1 seemed to affect 10%, 2, 20%.. however towards the top, 9 affected 100%, 8 affected 90%, etc.
c. The general "white balance" controls are ACTIVE when the 10p controls are enabled on this TV. They offer RGB controls for "offset" (low end) and "gain" (high end). It was only when I started to play with these controls at the extremes that I was able to get any sort of consistent RGB balance at all, regardless of how far off I am from 0.
5. My final result was the image below. As you can see, 90% and 100% are different from the rest. Calibrating these two was a huge pain. 90% was too green, so I'd correct it, and 100% would be too red. I bounced back and forth until I could get a compromise between both of them.
The result is much better that what the TV was at stock, of course... but I put in "The Dark Knight" Blu-Ray and it still doesn't quite look just right yet. I think I'm losing some detail in the low end, but I can't be sure. Is it related to my crazy-whacked-out 10p chart? I went back to verify that the overall brightness/contrast were correct on the provided charts.
Any advice on setting a 10p white balance in a way of NOT running into the problems I saw? What strategy do you guys use? Was I correct in starting from the bottom and working my way up? Should I have to use the "general white balance" controls to make this work? Or is all of this "normal" for a edge-lit LCD set like the UN55D8000? Should I have bothered with the 10% level (I thought the i1 Display Pro should be able to handle this).
Thanks in advance for any advice given- I appreciate your time guys.
I have a new Samsung UN55D8000 (manual here) and I am taking a crack at DIY calibration after reading this forum for a few weeks. I realize that I still have a lot to learn, and I was hoping for some advice from some of you far more experienced guys.
I picked up a new i1 Display Pro and a CalMan DIY license and spent a good 10 hours total learning CalMan 4.5 and the ins and outs of the UND8000's available controls, and tried to calibrate it with the Standard_DDC workflow. I used the Panasonic BDT210 (that so many of you recommended) and the AVS Blu-Ray calibration disc as a source. Here's what I observed (chart album here: http://imgur.com/a/sbSow#0):
0. My set started off very blue out of the box. I confirmed this with my eye pretty easily. Time to calibrate.
1. Some of the basic contrast/brightness charts on the AVS Blu-Ray (that I got off of the CalMan site) do not match the example charts. Not a big deal- I actually liked the ones on the disc better since they flash and make it somewhat easier- but I was curious as to why there was a delta there.
2. Gamma was pretty close out of the box. Any movement up or down and the chart looked worse, so I left it alone.
3. Dialing in the color gamut was easy, and from what I can tell, I was pretty successful here.
4. White balance is where everything went to hell. There is a 10p white balance scale on this TV and I was determined to use it. On my very first try, at first it was easy. I started at 10%, and worked my way up. By the time I reached the mid-points, I noticed that I wasn't able to get anywhere NEAR zero on the RGB balance scale. Then towards the upper end of the scale, getting RGB balanced at all became impossible. 80% would be too blue. 90% would be too green. 100% would be too red. If I tried to correct any of them, the other two would get worse. It became a game of whackamole.
What I then discovered was three things:
a. The 10p adjustments were very coarse at the low end, and extremely fine at the high end.
b. There was a "shift" of control as I went up. In other words, the controls got shifted away from the scale I was trying to measure. 1 seemed to affect 10%, 2, 20%.. however towards the top, 9 affected 100%, 8 affected 90%, etc.
c. The general "white balance" controls are ACTIVE when the 10p controls are enabled on this TV. They offer RGB controls for "offset" (low end) and "gain" (high end). It was only when I started to play with these controls at the extremes that I was able to get any sort of consistent RGB balance at all, regardless of how far off I am from 0.
5. My final result was the image below. As you can see, 90% and 100% are different from the rest. Calibrating these two was a huge pain. 90% was too green, so I'd correct it, and 100% would be too red. I bounced back and forth until I could get a compromise between both of them.
The result is much better that what the TV was at stock, of course... but I put in "The Dark Knight" Blu-Ray and it still doesn't quite look just right yet. I think I'm losing some detail in the low end, but I can't be sure. Is it related to my crazy-whacked-out 10p chart? I went back to verify that the overall brightness/contrast were correct on the provided charts.
Any advice on setting a 10p white balance in a way of NOT running into the problems I saw? What strategy do you guys use? Was I correct in starting from the bottom and working my way up? Should I have to use the "general white balance" controls to make this work? Or is all of this "normal" for a edge-lit LCD set like the UN55D8000? Should I have bothered with the 10% level (I thought the i1 Display Pro should be able to handle this).
Thanks in advance for any advice given- I appreciate your time guys.
