My plasma TV retains different video settings for each input. So, while I have used the Avia DVD to calibrate the display for my DVD player, I'm not sure how to calibrate the cable input other than by eye. I could duplicate the video settings that I arrived at after calibrating the DVD input, but I'm not sure if that's going to yield the best outcome. Any suggestions?
Calibrating cable TV signals
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Greetings
Unless you can tell us which TV station sends a reference signal, you can't calibrate for Cable directly.
All you can do is use your DVD settings as a starting point and cross your fingers. You will still have to make adjustments based on each show you watch.
What is better than the DVD settings ... likely those based on a reference signal generator ... but once again ... just a starting point and nothing more.
regards
Unless you can tell us which TV station sends a reference signal, you can't calibrate for Cable directly.
All you can do is use your DVD settings as a starting point and cross your fingers. You will still have to make adjustments based on each show you watch.
What is better than the DVD settings ... likely those based on a reference signal generator ... but once again ... just a starting point and nothing more.
regards
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3,857 Posts
Feed the signal from your DVD player through the input you use for cable. Then tweak by eye from there. If not available, copying over the settings from another input might help, as long as the signal used for it was the same scan rate. If you are using the TV's internal QAM tuner, you will have to live with eyeballing it.
Best regards and beautiful pictures,
G. Alan Brown, President
CinemaQuest, Inc.
"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"
Best regards and beautiful pictures,
G. Alan Brown, President
CinemaQuest, Inc.
"Advancing the art and science of electronic imaging"
Joined
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674 Posts
What i did to calibrate my HD cable box was one night i got lucky. I fell asleep with my TV on and when i woke up at like 5 am i noticed some smpte color bars when starz HD went off the air! LOL being the crazy person that i am i jumped out of bed, hit up my service menu , cut off the color guns so only blue was showing and calibrated my set for TV. It was only a few clicks off from how my color was calibrated from using my xbox 360, but i use the component inputs for both my 360 and HD cable, so that was possible why. Also the fact that not every channel is going to share the same settings, but now i know whenever i watch am movie on starz my color is calibrated right for that channel i guess lol.
C-Span(I, II, III, IV?) are the most life-like & accurate channels on cable in my estimation. They use, to the largest extent, the light existing within the chambers of the House of Reps and the Senate. Whether focused on the Speaker, an individual Senator, or a wide-angle of 3/4 of the chamber, the image impresses me of "being there" more than the content of any other indoor TV show or footage. Friends, Reba, King of Queens, even L&O, all use lighting to create a mood, a context. C-Span uses existing lighting as much as possible(of course they'd have to, given the venue!).
But truly, most channels delivering evening prime-time drama, comedy, or reality are all over the gamut as far as color and temperature are concerned. Align to one of them, and the other 399 will be off!
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But truly, most channels delivering evening prime-time drama, comedy, or reality are all over the gamut as far as color and temperature are concerned. Align to one of them, and the other 399 will be off!
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LOL damn! so even straz would be out of whack even though i calibrated the color? or just everything else would be messed up except that channel? LOL back to the drawing board for me !
I would imagine Starz, or any dedicated cable/sat movie outlet would pass material through as unaltered as possible, in terms of grayscale, gamma, saturation, and even aspect ratio. That is, unless they want to stand out when you are surfing rapidly through a series of adjacent movie stations. TCM, imo, has consistently done the best job of any regular(non-demand) movie outlet on my iO-Digital cable. AMC, otoh, consistently shows films blown up to fill the screen, because its target audience is probably not as particular regarding presentation as that of TCM.
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As I previously stated, it's the sitcom/drama/reality/my-dead-aunt-can-dance-better-than-you genres that are the least reliable for judging picture quality.
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Just calibrate to a standard - not to a channel - and you'll do alright. Some channels will approach or match that standard, most others will be all over the mark. If your calibrated TV is analagous to the bullseye on the dartboard, some channel's darts will have hit the bathroom door or the bartender's back(!) in terms of accuracy. Nothing you can do about it.
I would imagine Starz, or any dedicated cable/sat movie outlet would pass material through as unaltered as possible, in terms of grayscale, gamma, saturation, and even aspect ratio. That is, unless they want to stand out when you are surfing rapidly through a series of adjacent movie stations. TCM, imo, has consistently done the best job of any regular(non-demand) movie outlet on my iO-Digital cable. AMC, otoh, consistently shows films blown up to fill the screen, because its target audience is probably not as particular regarding presentation as that of TCM.
As I previously stated, it's the sitcom/drama/reality/my-dead-aunt-can-dance-better-than-you genres that are the least reliable for judging picture quality.
Just calibrate to a standard - not to a channel - and you'll do alright. Some channels will approach or match that standard, most others will be all over the mark. If your calibrated TV is analagous to the bullseye on the dartboard, some channel's darts will have hit the bathroom door or the bartender's back(!) in terms of accuracy. Nothing you can do about it.
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5,531 Posts
That's the reason some people say that NTSC stands for "Never The Same Color", and unfortunately, the ATSC (digital and HD) content providers can be nearly as bad.
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My intent is not to challenge your composure but simply to get the facts that led you to make such a broad and general claim. Please provide more specifics. Since when is it logical to expect someone else to support an assertion presented by another? It's wise to be prepared to back up statements made in public discourse. Don't you agree?
It's common knowledge that saturation, in particular, varies channel by channel. And I'm not so naive as to blame it solely on the old NTSC "never twice the same color" acronym mentioned here and elsewhere.
If television set manufacturers jack up the color/contrast/sharpness etc. to get sets noticed on the retail shelf, it is logical to believe that some-not all - but some outlets do the same thing to shout out in the same manner.
Like I said, I'd be naive to assume that all variation in video signals occurs by accident or through "no particular act on anyone's behalf". And I'm no "conspiracy theorist" either - just pragmatic common sense.
Pick up a remote control and flip through a string of prime time shows on one of the TV's I'm sure you've done full ISF calibration on. If you don't see oversaturation or oversharpening on some channels, then your TV is probably turned off.
Or better still, turn on your FM radio and listen through a good set of speakers or headphones. Different radio stations sometimes EQ their sound to suit their primary genre or target audience. A country & western station might emphasize the midranges for the vocals country is known for. A hip-hop or dance station may boost the low bass region and apply dynamic-compression to the middle & high freqs, to emphasize the thump & bump of those styles of music. Classical stations probably EQ the least - perhaps adding just a little high-end to bring out the strings, etc on a medium whose top end is limited to around 15kHz.
If radio does it - so do some TV stations. You'd be surprised the things I know about, George - it's my delivery that sucks - and I have the guts to admit that.
It's common knowledge that saturation, in particular, varies channel by channel. And I'm not so naive as to blame it solely on the old NTSC "never twice the same color" acronym mentioned here and elsewhere.
If television set manufacturers jack up the color/contrast/sharpness etc. to get sets noticed on the retail shelf, it is logical to believe that some-not all - but some outlets do the same thing to shout out in the same manner.
Like I said, I'd be naive to assume that all variation in video signals occurs by accident or through "no particular act on anyone's behalf". And I'm no "conspiracy theorist" either - just pragmatic common sense.
Pick up a remote control and flip through a string of prime time shows on one of the TV's I'm sure you've done full ISF calibration on. If you don't see oversaturation or oversharpening on some channels, then your TV is probably turned off.
Or better still, turn on your FM radio and listen through a good set of speakers or headphones. Different radio stations sometimes EQ their sound to suit their primary genre or target audience. A country & western station might emphasize the midranges for the vocals country is known for. A hip-hop or dance station may boost the low bass region and apply dynamic-compression to the middle & high freqs, to emphasize the thump & bump of those styles of music. Classical stations probably EQ the least - perhaps adding just a little high-end to bring out the strings, etc on a medium whose top end is limited to around 15kHz.
If radio does it - so do some TV stations. You'd be surprised the things I know about, George - it's my delivery that sucks - and I have the guts to admit that.
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3,857 Posts
I'm not familiar with broadcast radio engineering practices other than experiencing what you have from the listening end. I am somewhat familiar with television broadcast engineering practices, however. As an active member of SMPTE for several years, I've spent time with the local chapter members in seminars, classes, demonstrations, tours of broadcast facilities and social gatherings. The topic of consistently and purposely altering signals to "jazz up" the appearance of the programs on a channel in order to distinguish it from other channels has never come up.
This may very well occur, but the guys I've met haven't admitted doing this. On the contrary, these guys are more into precision and following the rules of the system. Perhaps a forum member who works as a station engineer could shed more authoritative light upon your assertions. Are you a broadcast engineer, or have you talked to one who admits to such manipulation?
I'm not familiar with broadcast radio engineering practices other than experiencing what you have from the listening end. I am somewhat familiar with television broadcast engineering practices, however. As an active member of SMPTE for several years, I've spent time with the local chapter members in seminars, classes, demonstrations, tours of broadcast facilities and social gatherings. The topic of consistently and purposely altering signals to "jazz up" the appearance of the programs on a channel in order to distinguish it from other channels has never come up.
This may very well occur, but the guys I've met haven't admitted doing this. On the contrary, these guys are more into precision and following the rules of the system. Perhaps a forum member who works as a station engineer could shed more authoritative light upon your assertions. Are you a broadcast engineer, or have you talked to one who admits to such manipulation?
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2,421 Posts
GeorgeAB is correct and you really do not know about it in this case.
Despite your post, Radio and TV are different birds.
Processing is common of audio on radio - not so in TV (as can be proven by the threads about commercial loudness.
People tried to tweak video years ago and ran across that age old "for action there is an equal and opposite reaction". For everything it made look a little better to some people, it made other things look worse. Thus, that thinking went out literally decades ago.
Virtually every TV station has a reference vectorscope (or more for comparison) and fine tunes the station and the signal path to what they see on that scope. If you do not know what a vectorscope is, you might try google or wikipedia.
Radio doesn't sound very good flat in a car - and thus is processed accordingly. TV Video does not have that issue.
GeorgeAB is correct and you really do not know about it in this case.
Despite your post, Radio and TV are different birds.
Processing is common of audio on radio - not so in TV (as can be proven by the threads about commercial loudness.
People tried to tweak video years ago and ran across that age old "for action there is an equal and opposite reaction". For everything it made look a little better to some people, it made other things look worse. Thus, that thinking went out literally decades ago.
Virtually every TV station has a reference vectorscope (or more for comparison) and fine tunes the station and the signal path to what they see on that scope. If you do not know what a vectorscope is, you might try google or wikipedia.
Radio doesn't sound very good flat in a car - and thus is processed accordingly. TV Video does not have that issue.
I'm familiar with what a vector scope is. And it is well with in the realm of possibility that once an engineer sees that everything is lined up to NT/AT-SC standards acc to the scope(s), his bosses - the owners, sales & marketing gurus, whoever ha$ a financial $stake, - may order that engineer to deviate from scope in order to make their picture pop out, just enough, but just before it becomes blatantly obvious.
And of course no engineer you or anybody else knows is going to admit to doing it! Probably because it wasn't their choice to do it.
Somewhere either in AVS or on another site regarding calibration someone mentioned that on their calibrated TV ESPN appeared to have artificial line enhancement or oversharpening compared to the smooth edges viewed on other stations.
If I recall, this is one thread/blog that brought it up:
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4229
It's also mentioned throughout this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/22829-4-football
See if you can look this guy up and tell him it isn't real:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/forum...ead.php?p=8742
I'm familiar with what a vector scope is. And it is well with in the realm of possibility that once an engineer sees that everything is lined up to NT/AT-SC standards acc to the scope(s), his bosses - the owners, sales & marketing gurus, whoever ha$ a financial $stake, - may order that engineer to deviate from scope in order to make their picture pop out, just enough, but just before it becomes blatantly obvious.
And of course no engineer you or anybody else knows is going to admit to doing it! Probably because it wasn't their choice to do it.
Somewhere either in AVS or on another site regarding calibration someone mentioned that on their calibrated TV ESPN appeared to have artificial line enhancement or oversharpening compared to the smooth edges viewed on other stations.
If I recall, this is one thread/blog that brought it up:
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4229
It's also mentioned throughout this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/22829-4-football
See if you can look this guy up and tell him it isn't real:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/forum...ead.php?p=8742
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3,857 Posts
D-6500,
Here are a couple of quotes from the threads you linked to that make the most sense to me to be examples of the usual causes of program "enhancements" we see at times:
"Because this is one of those cases where not knowing what is happening
leads to bad judgment about the picture quality.
In this case, Fox went for less depth of field on their camera shots, so
the "far" stuff wasn't as clear as the "near" stuff, because it wasn't
supposed to be...it was out of focus a bit. But, when they focused *only*
on the crowd (even in a far shot), it was good and sharp. Fox also sets
an absolute limit of 15Mbps for their signal, which could cause a tiny
amount of resolution loss.
On the other hand, CBS uses longer depth of field to keep everything in
focus and give that "ultra sharp HDTV look" that people like.
Unfortunately, they undo all this by using some edge enhancement that isn't
"object-size variable". This makes smaller objects look bad because the
relative size of the EE to the object is too high. Thus, the crowd was
"sharp" originally, but then the rings from overlapping EE made it look
fuzzier. Generally, the players and field weren't affected too badly,
because the amount of EE wasn't as much as Fox used last year (which
screwed up everything...even the clumps of grass looked bizarre).
ESPN tends to go for large depth of field, little to no edge enhancement,
and has the advantage of state-of-the art trucks and broadcast center.
ABC has the same large depth of field, some edge enhancement that is only
noticably bad when line is separating two colors that are *very* different,
and less high quality trucks and broadcast center."
And:
"The worst offenders for this are CNN, ESPN (TSN here in Canada) Spike TV and, lamentably, SpeedVision. Good channels include the History Channel, W network and A&E. My local cable representative swears they aren't responsible for this and that they pass on each video feed unaltered. I tend to believe him because there isn't 100% consistency within a channel. For example CNN seems to have a different amount of enhancement between studio shots and remote shots. It seems like each camera opperator is setting the amount of enhancement that he likes."
Facts are much more persuasive.
For someone who's not a "conspiracy theorist" you sure do talk like one.
![]()
Here are a couple of quotes from the threads you linked to that make the most sense to me to be examples of the usual causes of program "enhancements" we see at times:
"Because this is one of those cases where not knowing what is happening
leads to bad judgment about the picture quality.
In this case, Fox went for less depth of field on their camera shots, so
the "far" stuff wasn't as clear as the "near" stuff, because it wasn't
supposed to be...it was out of focus a bit. But, when they focused *only*
on the crowd (even in a far shot), it was good and sharp. Fox also sets
an absolute limit of 15Mbps for their signal, which could cause a tiny
amount of resolution loss.
On the other hand, CBS uses longer depth of field to keep everything in
focus and give that "ultra sharp HDTV look" that people like.
Unfortunately, they undo all this by using some edge enhancement that isn't
"object-size variable". This makes smaller objects look bad because the
relative size of the EE to the object is too high. Thus, the crowd was
"sharp" originally, but then the rings from overlapping EE made it look
fuzzier. Generally, the players and field weren't affected too badly,
because the amount of EE wasn't as much as Fox used last year (which
screwed up everything...even the clumps of grass looked bizarre).
ESPN tends to go for large depth of field, little to no edge enhancement,
and has the advantage of state-of-the art trucks and broadcast center.
ABC has the same large depth of field, some edge enhancement that is only
noticably bad when line is separating two colors that are *very* different,
and less high quality trucks and broadcast center."
And:
"The worst offenders for this are CNN, ESPN (TSN here in Canada) Spike TV and, lamentably, SpeedVision. Good channels include the History Channel, W network and A&E. My local cable representative swears they aren't responsible for this and that they pass on each video feed unaltered. I tend to believe him because there isn't 100% consistency within a channel. For example CNN seems to have a different amount of enhancement between studio shots and remote shots. It seems like each camera opperator is setting the amount of enhancement that he likes."
Facts are much more persuasive.
For someone who's not a "conspiracy theorist" you sure do talk like one.
That's because I dare - and care - to question and challenge conventional knowledge on a range of topics. Labels don't phase me, and I encourage others - including you - to do as I do.
But if the folks in Madrid can't be convinced that Earth is round, then I'll just take these three ships and see if they'll actually run out of ocean! LOL..
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeAB /forum/post/14408192
D-6500,
For someone who's not a "conspiracy theorist" you sure do talk like one.![]()
That's because I dare - and care - to question and challenge conventional knowledge on a range of topics. Labels don't phase me, and I encourage others - including you - to do as I do.
But if the folks in Madrid can't be convinced that Earth is round, then I'll just take these three ships and see if they'll actually run out of ocean! LOL..
Joined
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2,421 Posts
1) We did really land on the moon
2) Oswald really did kill Kennedy
3) Bin Laden was NOT working for the US Government on 9/11
4) A Plane REALLY did fly into the Pentagon
5) The WTC was not wired with dynamite.
6) TV Engineers set their signal flat.
It is entirely possible that the white balance is off on live shots or might be improperly adjusted on commercials or from outside sources.
I've been into more TV stations and Transmitter Sites than you will ever dream of - and looked at scopes at virtually everyone. I've even been up OUTSIDE on the Empire State Building at their Master Antenna - something you will do.
Please, seek help or please change your nick.
Seek help or please change your nick.
1) We did really land on the moon
2) Oswald really did kill Kennedy
3) Bin Laden was NOT working for the US Government on 9/11
4) A Plane REALLY did fly into the Pentagon
5) The WTC was not wired with dynamite.
6) TV Engineers set their signal flat.
It is entirely possible that the white balance is off on live shots or might be improperly adjusted on commercials or from outside sources.
I've been into more TV stations and Transmitter Sites than you will ever dream of - and looked at scopes at virtually everyone. I've even been up OUTSIDE on the Empire State Building at their Master Antenna - something you will do.
Please, seek help or please change your nick.
Seek help or please change your nick.
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