Customer Reports About Their Professional Calibrations - Page 14

I am a long time lurker of the AVS Forums and have gotten alot of excellent input, ideas and help from everyone here. This is a fantastic site for those of us who are looking for input. I had purchased a Mitsubishi HC6500 back in April (upgraded from a Mits HD1000U) and I was finally looking to have my pj professionally calibrated. Through this site Gregg Lowen from Lion AV was recommended. I contacted Gregg and recieved a very quick response even while he was down at Cedia, he still took the time to answer any question I had. We had set a time of Sept. 28 for calibration. Gregg showed up and analized my theater and equipment, gave me a couple of esthetic recommendations and began to setup. This all started at about 5:30, he then proceeded to run though GreyScale and what not. Explaining everything step by step and detail by detail as he went along. I couldn't follow some of the things that he was explaining but I could definately see the results. This man is just full of knowledge and a great guy to boot. He really knows his stuff. My Mitsu has never looked better and to my ultimate surprise, my wife even noticed a difference and I didn't even ask her. So if you need a calibration on the east coast you have got to call Gregg. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you Gregg for the time and effort that you put in. I am enjoying my theater more and more.

Below are before and after calibrations

 

ron payne pre calibration.pdf 132.525390625k . file

 

ron payne post calibration.pdf 81.294921875k . file

I have to agree with what you have said about Gregg's work. before he calibrated my Kuro 111FD I thought the picture looked great. After he finished the picture was spectacular and all of my friends could see the difference!

The moral of the story is if you have a high end set it is worth the investment to have it calibrated and Gregg is among the best out there. If there was a "Calibrator's Hall of Fame" I would vote for Gregg.

very helpful thread

Just had my P54 V-10 calibrated by Gregg Loewen. Improvement, would be a vast underestimation of the visual differences of before and after. He calibrated THX for night viewing and Standard for daytime. The difference is amazing relating to black detail and color. Now I understand what is all over this board regarding pop! The picture on this unit when professionally callibrated using the over $70,000 in equipment was well worth the money that I spent. Greg took his time to explain not only the before and after but also to show me the nuancinces that Directors use in lighting and colors to enhance the visuals for the audience. He also calibrated my sound on the Pioneer Elite reciever and Def Tech speakers. Wife and I watched the new Transformers movie last night and even she was impressed at both visuals and sound. She made me smile but not where she could see it when she said " boy was he ever worth his money". When you spend this much money for a tv,my humble advice would be to get get it professionally calibrated.

I meant to do this months ago but forgot. Greg Loewen did my 9 year old 4 x 3 Toshiba TP61H95 RPCRT in April. I am very happy with the results.

TV: Pioneer PDP-151
BP player: Oppo 83
Sat: Direct TV

I recently had my system calibrated by Lee Gallagher from Advanced Audio Visual and thought I would share my experience. As many have mentioned in the past I have been reluctant to have my system calibrated due to concerns about whether I would see the results and if they were worth the money. I can now say I am happy I had it done. Lee was professional and answered all of my questions and at the same time provided a brief lesson about how the settings are interrelated. I had tried some of the settings found on AVS and was unhappy with the colors and ended up using the Optimum' just as a default. Lee was able to open up the ISF day/night modes and I am much happier with the results. I think the most surprising change was the sharpness of the image. Lee showed how bad the Optimum' mode was for all elements of the image. He went through and made all of the changes of everything from the orbital selection to the different noise reductions settings and I think that has made the biggest difference. He also took the time to balance all of the levels of my speakers from both the DVD and receiver.

I feel I am getting the most from my system now.

Advanced Audio Visual

I just had my Panasonic 65V10 calibrated by Lee Gallagher (Phoenix), who is both ISF and THX certified. All I need to say is the results are worth every penny. I thought the TV looked great after I tweaked the custom mode using a calibration disc, but after a professional calibration the results are absolutely stunning. Lee was very professional and walked me through every step of the calibration. A fun learning experience. It took about three hours for the entire process. He calibrated two of the HDMI inputs on my TV for both night and day, THX mode and Custom mode respectively. I use a Pioneer SC-25 to feed the two HDMI TV inputs (the AVR has two HDMI outs) and this unit handles the selected input and output. When he was finished with the calibration he played a Blu-Ray and pointed out how to evaluate the performance of TV. It is awesome. I highly recommend a professional calibration with the V10, you will not be disappointed.

BTW, as we were evaluating the results using my Dish network 722K he noted that the signal from Dish is noticeably better than his DIRECTV feed. We played an HBO channel and it was outstanding.

Phoenix AZ
TH-58PZ850U


After reading alot of posts from this site and I decided to have my
Panasonic TH-58PZ850U calibrated by a Professional that is
ISF certified.I found the page here that list the ISF professional
calibrators for the Arizona area. I called Lee Gallagher form
Advanced Audio Visual. Lee made or first conversation easy
with a lot of q&a ,so we setup an appointment.Lee arrived on time
with his equipment and got right to work.He spent about 3 hours
adjusting my plasma and explaining everthing in detail.
After he was done I could not believe my eyes. This guy is good.
Thanks Lee I will recommend Advanced Audio Visual to my friends.

Just had Chad B do my Samsung 8500...
\\
Spent 3 hrs..

Man, it was WAY OFF from the factory..

Now, the colors & depth are 100% spot on..

Very crisp, clear & natural, without oversaturation or blooming.

Thanks Chad B!!!!!
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attac...1&d=1258553512

I too just had Chad B callibrate my Panny TC-P54V10 yesterday. The plasma set looks just great - he callibrated THX and Custom settings for dark and light room conditions respectively.

Could not be happier with the results. I would highly recommend Chad to anyone who is considering a professional calibration. A very worthwhile investment IMHO if you want the very best PQ.

I have the 50PZ800U and after almost year i decided to have the tv professionally calibrated. I contacted a very reputable company(the owner supposedly one of the best in country) and setup a appointment. The guy coming out (not owner) contacted me and we made a appointment. I asked if he would be going into the service menu and he informed that he probably would not and practiculy guaranteed that i would be satisfied with the picture after he was done. Now i am little confused and skeptical...first of all he is only planning on spending a hour and probably will not go into the service menu unless he absoulety has to... I just dont see how he could improve the picture over what i have now...(used settings from a earlier post and it looks pretty damn good) He also mentioned that he was bringing a 12K piece of equipment and has fifteen years of expierence.... i dont know...it just doesnt sound right...everything i've read. especially on here the service menu is used to achieve a perfect picture...

You're right, the 800u THX grayscale adjustment must be done in the service menu. THX mode is by far the most accurate mode, and that is what he should concentrate most on.
An hour is suspiciously fast unless he doesn't include setup and tear down time, but I'm not going to say it isn't possible. I know it isn't possible for me, though.

Thanks Chad,

Just wondering what are some questions i should ask this guy before he gets started..i really know nothing about the parameters that go into making a good picture?...He did mention that hes bringing a 12K (minolta) piece of test equipment and quaranted i would be happy with the picture after he was done or didnt i have to pay...soo i dunno..

That's not as easy as it sounds; some questions you could ask would be too easy to just make up a quick untrue response to. For example, "How many 800us have you done before?"
I guess one thing you could ask for would be before and after graphs.
Make sure he calibrates the white balance for the THX mode. He must go into the service menu to do that. Hopefully he won't try this, but don't let him tell you that THX mode is good enough as is and does not need adjustment. After calibration, THX mode should look very natural, and should not look dull or dim in a dark room.

I just wanted to jump in here and throw my coin in the hat for Chad B.

I've had Chad out twice to calibrate my Mitsu CRT RPTV and I can tell you the guy is not satisfied until your set looks as good as it can. He's a class act and is very interested in you being happy with the work he has done.

On top of doing quality work, he's very easy to talk to and is willing to answer all your questions. His work ethic is incredible.. the guy is a calibrating Terminator.

I've encountered several ISF certified calibrators over the years.. some fantastic (Robert Busch) and some less than stellar (don't wanna bash anyone here).. Chad is one of my favs.. He does good work for a more than fair price. If he travels to your area, it's quite simply worth your time to contact him.

-D

hi i am just letting everyone know what a great job chad b did calibrating my 54v10 panny on nov 14th the before calibration and after calibration picture was amazing was well worth the money thank you chad b:

I am having Chad come to my home right after the New Years holiday to not only calibrate my TV, but to calibrate my entire audio system...PLUS...he was so helpful and said he would connect my entire system for me and show me how to operate everything, since I am brand new to all of this. I cannot wait.

Hi Chad. What areas do you travel to?

Here's a link to my entry in the "ISF calibrators Where are you located?" thread. I'll add that my primary areas (ones I get to monthly or close to monthly) are OH, WV, VA, IN, IL, PA, MD, and MI. I go farther, but sometimes with a longer wait.

I had my Panasonic TC-P58V10 professionally by Robert Busch of Busch Home
Theater. He is fully ISF certified and has been doing it for over 25 years and has loads of experience. He is from Santa Rosa and has done calibration for George Lucas and Pixar to name a few. Just go to his site to find out more.

Needless to say my 58V10 now has a phenomenal picture and it is more energy effecient. My set doesn't even get warm.

He also calibrated my Onkyo 905 and my PS3 and Sony BDP-550 to produce full true DTS Master Audio 7.1 sound. He showed me how to get my equipment to perform at it full capability. Before my Onkyo 905 never showed DTS Master Audio 7.1 sound now it can run at is full capability.

His audio calibration was worth every penny and I was more than satisfied.

Henry

What: Calibration of Mitsubishi WD-73837
When: Sunday 29 November 2009
Who: Gregg Loewen of LionAV
Where: Fullerton, California

I finally had my 73837 calibrated yesterday by Gregg Loewen of LionAV. As others have said before me I cannot say enough about how much of a difference there is in the picture my television is displaying post-calibration as opposed to pre-calibration.

Gregg showed up exactly at the mid-point of the timeframe he gave me for his arrival. He is a warm, friendly man who comes armed with two suitcases of equipment to ensure that your set is looking as good as possible by the time he leaves.

We have had our 73837 since early June. The television has well over 1000 hours on it so the bulb is well broken in. We had done some semi-calibration of our own previously with a Spyder2 device and were happy with the results. But we knew it could look better. We just didn't know how much better. Now we do and the results are astonishing.

Gregg set up first and was kind enough to thoroughly explain every step of the process. The first thing that he did was reset the television back to 1x1 pixel mapping. I didn't realize how much detail we were losing until I saw the massive moire in his test patterns at 720p and 1080p. We only have a slight bend on 4x3 material at the bottom of the screen and it's very easy to live with.

After this it was time to set up greyscale and while we were "close", Gregg really dialed in the greyscale. It helps to have a trained eye that knows exactly what it is looking for as well as appropriate test patterns. The differences were very noticeable. The one thing that he explained that I hadn't previously known about before was the concept of "blacker than black" as an actual colour in movies, television and on the film colour spectrum.

From there Gregg went and adjusted the colour to get it correctly set. He explained what every graph on his software was telling us, what our present values were, what acceptable tolerances are for each measurement, etc. Back and forth adjustments were made to the gains for red, green and blue. Picture+ adjustments were made to all of the primary and secondary colours, some more than others, to get within acceptable tolerance.

One of the biggest things brought to our attention is how narrow our colour gamut was before adjustments were made. I don't have the graphs on me, but our initial "colour triangle" was well under the standard colour gamut triangle. It looked as though we were missing about 25% of the colours we should have been seeing based upon the plot points. On top of that our triangle acutally looked more like the spaceship from Asteroids in that it had two relatively straight sides and the third side had a "kink" to it in the middle pointing inwards.

Gregg let us know that we weren't going to be able to dial the colour gamut triangle in exactly so. We were more than likely going to have a gamut that would lie outside the standard. But it is better to have too much colour available than too little. At least now we are able to render the entire colour gamut standard.

The difference was immediately noticeable. We were surprised at the overall changes when we started looking at test material. The largest differences came in flesh tones and blacks. Gregg introduced us to "Jennifer", his skin-tone test queen. With colours set appropriately he was able to use our standard colour and tint adjustments to show us what happens if the colours are off. Too much one way and Jennifer turns green. Too much the other way and she turns shades of violet. With everything set correctly she's just a really pretty redhead with pasty white skin.

With greyscale and colour set, Gregg moved on to making adjustments to our BluRay and HD-DVD players. Combined with the changes made to the greyscale and colour gamut the players were set up to perfection.

Gregg showed us demo material consisting of selected scenes from the X-Men: The Last Stand (I think... I'm not sure) on the BluRay player and Transformers on the HD-DVD player. While watching Gregg was able to show scenes where blacker than black came into play, shadow detail came into play and also how filters and lighting were affecting each scene into warmer or cooler tones.

Once that was done we set about doing a daylight calibration. This was just a minor modification of the brightness that had been set in the dark environment.

What is most noticeable? Pretty much everything. Our blacks are much more bold and deep. The colours are all more vivid. Flesh tones are all "correct". My wife immediately noticed every change that was being made and was most appreciative. It is also immediately apparent that everything is much darker post-calibration. This takes a little bit to get used to as things initially appear "dim". Well, that's because we had everything set a little high in terms of brightness and contrast.

In reality there is nothing I can say that can adequately prepare one for the differences in their television after Gregg gets done doing his magic. While how much one likes what Gregg does is certainly subjective, the numbers are very much objective as are the standards they are based on. I initially thought my television looked a little dim post-calibration. I had to remind myself that it's now set to a standard and my eyes, though good for me, aren't set to "standard".

As an example, my previous setting for brightness had been 35. My Spyder had previously told me to set it at 17. I thought that looked a little too dim after always previously done what the Spyder had said and had bumped it back up to 35. What was Gregg's final brightness reading? 16. Whereas I second guessed my own reading there was and is an assuredness and certainty of getting the numbers from Gregg and seeing exactly what his readings were showing and why we were getting to the numbers. So brightness is 16 for a reason and I know the reasons behind

If you ask, Gregg will explain. I don't know what'll happen if you don't ask because both myself and my wife were very interested in what Gregg was doing and he couldn't have been more forthcoming with details of what exactly was happening. I couldn't have been happier with this part of the calibration. It's one thing to see your television's picture improve incrementally with each adjustment that is made. It's another thing to know "why". This took what Gregg was doing from being some sort of television voodoo to true audio visual science.

I don't have my final before and after numbers from Gregg as he is due to email those to me when he gets back home. Doesn't matter though as I wasn't going to post them anyway. My numbers will be different from the next person who has this television and I think that there has been enough variance in numbers floating around that it is best for people to just have Gregg out for themselves so they can get their television set right for their particular environment.

In closing, I can't recommend Gregg highly enough. The man is a true professional with a love of his craft that you just can't fake and the results speak volumes for his efforts. This was $450 dollars I couldn't have been more happy to spend.

This just came in from an owner whose Pioneer PS board I recently did the resoldering op on, and sent back. It appears in the (CRT) Pioneer Elite 510 Problems thread -

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...402397&page=72

b



The board arrived within a few days of you mailing it back. Good thing I double boxed it because the outer box was pretty smashed by UPS, but the board was fine inside. Anyway, I got it reinstalled a few days later, though getting some of the white connectors on was difficult to tell if they were fully seated. On power up everything was fine. Since then I've seen about 4 DVD movies and it appears to be working fine. The picture has been sharp and steady so it looks like it's on its way to a longer, healthy life.

I also did a little research and based on your recommendation and bought a Blu-ray player—the Panansonic DMP-BD60K. It had high reviews, was a affordable (on sale for $159), and has the features I want. I bought a couple of BDs to test it out the picture (over component) is as sharp as the high-def signal I get from my Cable DVR. Further, it plays old standard DVDs with a slightly better picture than over the Sony DVD player I had.

So, all around I'm very pleased. The Pioneer Pro510 appears it is breathing on it's own and back to life. Thank you! I'm now able to play Blu-ray high-def disks over the component inputs (which many people had told me was impossible without HDMI). And, on the Blu-ray player my library of DVDs look better than before even though it's not upconverting them. After I got it all back together I adjusted the convergence for all the inputs, but most of the points needed little adjustment.

You've saved another Pioneer Pro510HD from its mid-life crisis to live on to a healthy and ripe old age!

—A Colorado Customer

Bill calibrated my LG 55LH90 last month.

He did an excellent job, the TV looks absolutely stunning and Bill remarked that this is an excellent set. He especially liked the 10 point IRE setting accessible from the user menu. No need for the SM at all.

He also remarked that the THX mode was below par and I agree.

Considering his skill, good equipment and reasonable fees, he is highly recommended