I just used both Avia and Digital Video Essentials last night to adjust my tv, and I personally find Avia to be better for quick adjustments. And there is a lazy man's way so you don't have to listen to the instructions every time. From the main screen, just go to the Advanced Calibration menu (3rd one down? one up from the bottom?), and from there, there is an option to go to basic video calibration screens on the right side, and that just gives you the needles screen, brightness, sharpness, and color screens. Here is a brief rundown of what to do on each screen:
Needles - start out with picture/contrast all the way down and increase it until the bottom half of the screen turns from a shade of gray to white, and look for "blooming" of the topmost white square in the column with different shades of gray. Blooming is when the beam gets a little too wild and loses focus, making the white square to look bigger than the square below it. I have mine just below 50% for when the room is dark, and just above 50% for when there's lots of ambient light.
Brightness - start low and increase until you see only one vertical bar moving back and forth in the dark area of the screen, when you see two bars moving back and forth, go down a notch in brightness. After doing this, check your picture/contrast again as the two settings can affect one another. This one is also greatly affected by ambient light.
Sharpness - start out high and notice the lines that cross in the middle of the screen have a white outline. Decrease sharpness until the white outline disappears. Also, the gradient on the top of the screen should appear the same brightness from end to end. The right side will darken and lighten up as the sharpness is moved around. Similarly, the bottom squares should all be the same brightness.
Color/Hue bars - look through the blue filter and adjust the color until the two outside bars are as solid as possible in color (the top and bottom), and the blinking square looks like it is blinking the slowest. Now adjust hue until the 2nd bars from the left and right are the most uniform in color, then go back and tweak the color again if you changed hue.
The last pattern has the three color gradients. Use each filter to see where the respective color bar matches the background. Most tv's will have the red up pretty high, but 15-20% red push is not uncommon, and really isn't too horrible. If it is really bad, decrease the color setting on the tv a bit to compromise.
As far as Digital Video Essentials goes, their color bar pattern is pretty cool, but I don't like their included color filters - the blue is really dark compared to the one that comes with Avia. Other than that, they have a bunch of cool patterns that come in really clear, but I find Avia easier to use, and I didn't change my settings any when using DVE after Avia. There might be an easy way in DVE to make quick adjustments like with Avia, but like someone else said, the menu system in DVE takes a lot of getting used to.
