Considering Samsung PN51E8000 Calibration at Best Buy?

If you are willing to spend $300-$400 on one of the highly-regarded independent pro calibrators on this forum, you will get much better results and a more thorough job done. BB Calibrators have strict time restrictions, lesser equipment, and generally are not as well-trained or experienced. In short, they don't take calibration as seriously as most pros do here and it will clearly show up in the quality of their work.

In this case you'd be wasting money as video games are not normally produced with adherence to HDTV rec.709 standards.

well, I'm not sure about this logic... I use my calibrated settings for gaming on my PS3/X360 and I find them to look far more accurate than the 'game' mode preset, which is nearly as garish as vivid mode

skin tones look more natural as well, not to mention other colors

I am. Why pay to have a display look its best with Blu-ray discs and HDTV when the actual use is for something else?

How do you categorically know that HD console games (PS3 and X360 titles) are not meant to work with the HDTV system standards? Is using the game preset going to give you PQ remotely close to a calibrated movie/cinema mode? In my experience, it doesn't come close by a mile and games look FAR better on my calibrated preset vs. game mode and I checked this on various sets. The same goes for HDTV programming. One could argue that isn't reference material either, but we still calibrate for it anyway because it's the best we can do.

I have read that thread before and other similar ones, but the conclusion to take from this is not to just use game mode and dial in the basic picture settings but rather use the same settings you would for BD/DVD and HDTV programming as that will give you a much better picture and is better than just giving up altogether and using game mode. Unless the calibrated preset has way more input lag than game mode (and not all game modes even affect input lag), I can't see why anyone would want to use a garish picture preset for gaming.

You are not assured a "much better picture" when calibrating known standards to unknown content. I could easily make the picture look "better" than presets with nothing more than the basic user controls and find somewhere else to put $250. In addition, this is all about a BB calibration and I've not seen many of those worth much more than a nickel.

Yeah, I don't recommend BB calibrations either (see my first post in the thread). However, I prefer using my calibrated preset for everything: BDs/DVDs, HDTV, and HD Console Gaming.

There's a sticky at the top of this forum that you can post your question too and see if someone in your area responds. Some of the calibrators here are "travelin' calibrators" and they may come to, or be in, your area. I too would steer clear of a BB calibration. It would be money well spent to learn from someone who does this for a living, and has done lots of calibrations, because they are more apt to "educate you" while they are in the process of calibrating your set, which should take longer than the 90 minutes or so that BB allows for their calibrators. My rule of thumb has been to always calibrate the display device for the best possible pq for watching movies, not games, because movies are more apt to follow the established standards than game mfrs. who do pretty much what they want to. I always find it a bit humorous when someone spends good money on a nice HDTV only to use it mainly as a gaming platform and then complains that it doesn't "look right". However, ALL tv's are different and respond differently to calibrations so what works for one, may not work for another. I would just calibrate the tv for movies using what ever calibration settings are available to you (Presets, Expert modes, what ever) and then see how they look for games. If you don't like it, you can always change back to default for that input and tweak to taste.

This is exactly what I do and then use those settings for HDTV and HD console gaming as well. I don't think there are zero standards for games (though it's not as clear cut as DVD/BD movies and TV shows on DVD/BD), but there may be more variation from game to game, just like with HD TV channels. Games like the Uncharted series on the PS3 look incredible with my calibrated pic mode(s) and I find I rarely need to adjust brightness or gamma settings in-game.

I agree. Video games are a pretty much artificial representation of reality and seem to have widely variance in video characteristics from game to game and even one software producer to another. From what I've seen it's a crap shoot and to say a single calibrated picture setting is "best" is unlikely. . . it may be acceptable to an owner, but saying a setting is "best for all uses" including movies and gaming is subjective at best.

Hi Badboy,

Where are you located? PM also sent.