How important is professional calibration?

Greetings

Professional calibration ... heck even good amateur calibration has the goal of getting accurate images. VIVID is nowhere near accurate.

Accurate images tend to look very different.

Professional calibration is the search for accurate images ... regardless of you liking it or not. 2+2=4 ...

You may like it better as 2+2=9 ... but the correct answer is 4.

A big difference to some people is nothing to others. This is subjective ... and since we don't see the world through your eyes ... no one can tell you if the difference is big or small.

Add to that ... all TV set ups are different ... and without seeing what your set up looks like ... no one can tell you anything over email or the phone.

Regards

no, usually they enter it in to the settings for user1 or user2 (or whatever the display calls it) so you can go back and select vivid and compare the two

If you prefer "vivid," then don't waste your money on a calibration! Switch to "movie" or "standard" mode and see if you like that better; it'll at least be closer to what it would like like when calibrated.

Think about this - it should even the odds a little in favor of at least basic user calibration(Color temp, contrast, black level, color, hue, and detail):

Viewed in Vivid/Dynamic mode, does that CNN news host look like someone you'd meet on the sidewalk? For that matter, look out at your sidewalk for anyone who looks like the people on your TV screen set to Vivid.

If you live near grass & trees, do the ones on your TV look like the ones outdoors? Does the sky have the same cast??

At night, in low or no room light, does the light coming off your screen resemble that coming off your local cinema screen? And how naturally crisp are the edges of subjects? Does everyone look like they are wearing eyeshadow?

I leave it to your good judgement to provide answers to these questions in light of even a basic calibration with Digital Video Essentials, AVIA, or Getgray.


regards,

Strangely, I had a client recently who declared that he was a fan of Vivid mode before I started my work and doubted he would like what I was about to do. At the end he was a fan of what I did with both video and audio, but I did wonder why he hired me at the beginning.

ISF seminars are often colocated with HAA seminars (Home Acoustics Alliance) - HAA is not been around as long as ISF but it is becoming more likely that video calibrators can do audio as well.

http://www.homeacoustics.net/

Even if they are not HAA - a video calibrator likely has an AVIA DVD with audio setup tests on it - and can certainly balance your speaker levels and such. The room is much more involved in audio that it is in video though.