Arguments for and against calibration

[strapped for cash]

I think we should form a wee society, with of course Strapped for Cash, who started this thread, as the Honorary President! When bigboss and others get their sets calibrated, they will be allowed to join the Calibrated society too!

Who's the slipper in this scenario?

 

[rocketrazor]

At the risk of asking a really silly question and possibly looking stupid.........

I get day time calibration, but how do you manage to calibrate night time calibration during the day? With my curtains shut i still get a fair bit of light in compared to night time so surely that would mean the night time calibration isn't precisely spot on? My lounge is an L shape lounge, dinning room, kitchen all in one so I could never get the room night time black during the day. Would that in itself mean I wouldn't get the full benefit of calibration?

Actually that was three questions, appears I can't count either!

 

[Oldboy]

At the risk of asking a really silly question and possibly looking stupid.........

I get day time calibration, but how do you manage to calibrate night time calibration during the day? With my curtains shut i still get a fair bit of light in compared to night time so surely that would mean the night time calibration isn't precisely spot on? My lounge is an L shape lounge, dinning room, kitchen all in one so I could never get the room night time black during the day. Would that in itself mean I wouldn't get the full benefit of calibration?

Actually that was three questions, appears I can't count either!

I forgot to say about that rocket...when Julian arrived the first thing he done was ask me to close the curtains, even though mine are blackout curtains (my living room is south facing so gets very bright) alot of light still penetrates from the sides and at the top so Julian suggested blacking it out with black bin bags which I done and it worked nicely. He said usually he asks customers to black out the windows in this way directly onto the windows and then close the curtains too but as mine were blackout I could get away with just taping some around the sides and top to block out the light.

If you can cover your windows with bin bags and then close the curtains you will get a very dark room so the night time calibration will be accurate, mine certainly is and we done the night time movie mode first. Of course unless you are going to watch movies in a pitch black room then some ambient light is acceptable but the darker the better to simulate night time movie viewing, I have two lamps either side of the TV for movie viewing in the evening for example and the calibrated night time movie mode looks excellent.

As long as you can block out a fair amount of light (I know it's a pain having to black out the windows) then the calibration results will certainly make a huge difference to your picture quality and it's well worth getting it done.

 

[Oldboy]

I was very curious to see some of your pre-and post-calibration data, Oldboy, if only to console myself that I wasn't the only one whose televisions were fairly well away from being correct, pre-calibration (after Strapped for Cash's harsh but true comments on my televisions' pre-calibration errors!) - just joking Strapped, I didn't really mind! So yes Oldboy, even though your television is only a few weeks old it also did seem to be quite some way off perfect, pre-calibration.

Since I had recently been looking at my calibration data, it was easy for me to understand your calibration data, which presents the data slightly differently. Looking at your RGB histogram for example, going from 10 IRE to 100 IRE, pre-calibration your nice new Samsung UE55F8000 seems to have been as far out as any of my four televisions, but isn't it nice to look at the post-calibration graph to see all the three colours nestling very close to 100% for all values of IRE? And the Delta E Performance errors, which pre-calibration were pretty close to the undetectable threshold of 3%, are reduced to almost zero for all colours post-calibration. And your Chromaticity errors (lightness, saturation and hue) all also reduce to almost zero, for all colours, after calibration.

I'm very pleased that you are so happy with your calibration by Julian. One way in which your television differs from my four televisions is that yours is an LCD (LED) and my four are plasmas, but it seems that all televisions will be some way off perfect, pre-calibration. Interesting also that the television of my four that was the most far away from perfect, pre-calibration, was my Samsung plasma, with the blue colour much too strong. And you say that your Samsung LED also had blue too strong initially, off the scale, as mine was! Must be something to do with Samsung!

When Mr Malarky gets his 60ZT65 calibrated by Stephen Withers on Saturday that will make three of us who have had our televisions calibrated recently. I think we should form a wee society, with of course Strapped for Cash, who started this thread, as the Honorary President! When bigboss and others get their sets calibrated, they will be allowed to join the Calibrated society too!

I've still got another two sets of results which I will post in a more readable form soon so you can see the standard mode setting pre calibration which had a blue level so high it didn't register on the graph. Somehow the primary/secondary chromaticity graph got clipped so you miss two of the colours so I will re post that too, I will make sure it's a bit more legible this time though.

I was shocked by just how far out it was in it's out of the box settings and even after I had run AVS HD 709 and you really can see the difference immediately and yes it's extremely pleasing to look at the post calibration graphs and seeing all three colours nestling very close to 100% for all valus of IRE. In fact it's exteremely nice to look at all the results as it gives you a real sense of just how far out the TV is out of the box, it's so nice to know that whatever content I watch now will be as it's intended to be viewed too.

Julian said that Samsung set the colour balance with a blue bias out of the box for two reasons...blue is the least offensive hue to our vision as it represents a small amount of the RGB signal and that things like detergent adverts have engrained in our minds that whites should have a blue tinit for that bright white look, dyes are even present in washing detergent to give whites that look. Very strange.

He also said that most of his business comes from plasma TVs and was at pains to say that LCD/LED TVs require just as much by way of calibration as plasma TVs and he was perplexed as to why more LCD/LED owners don't get their TVs calibrated, I for one can vouch for the benefits of getting it done that's for sure.

I'm with strapped RE calibrated TV society and that you should be honourary president...you know you want the job lol

Will post more results as I get it organised so more to follow over next day or so.

 

[Oldboy]

Hmmm having a few issues uploading the graphs as Julian gave them to me in a pdf any ideas how I can get them onto the forum as photobucket etc won't accept the files...??? :?

You got there in the end! Looks like blue and red were pushed pretty heavily out of the box in Movie mode. Obviously everything's bang on now!

Yep very happy with the results strapped and many thanks to yourself and Son_of_SJ for spurring me on to get it done, money well spent indeed

 

[Oldboy]

Right here comes the standard mode calibration results for my Samsung UE55F8000. I will do them a page at a time in individual posts as it should make more sense that way...hopefully.

Page 1:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 2:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 3:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 4:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 5:

 

[rocketrazor]

At the risk of asking a really silly question and possibly looking stupid.........

I get day time calibration, but how do you manage to calibrate night time calibration during the day? With my curtains shut i still get a fair bit of light in compared to night time so surely that would mean the night time calibration isn't precisely spot on? My lounge is an L shape lounge, dinning room, kitchen all in one so I could never get the room night time black during the day. Would that in itself mean I wouldn't get the full benefit of calibration?

Actually that was three questions, appears I can't count either!

I forgot to say about that rocket...when Julian arrived the first thing he done was ask me to close the curtains, even though mine are blackout curtains (my living room is south facing so gets very bright) alot of light still penetrates from the sides and at the top so Julian suggested blacking it out with black bin bags which I done and it worked nicely. He said usually he asks customers to black out the windows in this way directly onto the windows and then close the curtains too but as mine were blackout I could get away with just taping some around the sides and top to block out the light.

If you can cover your windows with bin bags and then close the curtains you will get a very dark room so the night time calibration will be accurate, mine certainly is and we done the night time movie mode first. Of course unless you are going to watch movies in a pitch black room then some ambient light is acceptable but the darker the better to simulate night time movie viewing, I have two lamps either side of the TV for movie viewing in the evening for example and the calibrated night time movie mode looks excellent.

As long as you can block out a fair amount of light (I know it's a pain having to black out the windows) then the calibration results will certainly make a huge difference to your picture quality and it's well worth getting it done.

cheers for this oldboy, that gives me something to think about

 

[Oldboy]

Lastly page 6 for standard mode:

 

[Oldboy]

Here comes 3D picture mode as that was a far better upload and more legible than my movie mode attempt, again in 6 pages.

Page 1:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 2:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 3:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 4:

 

[Oldboy]

Page 5:

 

[Oldboy]

Lastly page 6 for 3D:

 

[Oldboy]

I'm going to post the movie mode results in full too as I've got the hang of getting the reports onto the forum so here goes and again one page at a time, hope you all find it useful info.

Movie mode Page 1:

 

[Oldboy]

Movie mode Page 2:

 

[Oldboy]

Movie mode Page 3:

 

[Oldboy]

Movie mode Page 4:

 

[Oldboy]

Movie mode Page 5:

 

[Oldboy]

Lastly Movie mode Page 6:

 

[mr malarky]

Blimey, Son_of_SJ, errors on all four televisions were significant, pre-calibration. I'd imagine the improvement on each set is marked. How do you feel about the results a few days further on? More importantly for those considering calibration, do you think the results justify the outlay?

For what it's worth, my VT65's ISF modes were pretty accurate out of the box, though this probably has much to do with the TV being only six weeks old when calibrated. Nevertheless, the improvements calibration brought were substantial enough for me to consider the expense worthwhile. All four of your televisions had a fair time to drift, though I suspect the (newish) Samsung pushed blue out of the box anyway

I'm really pleased that worked out well for you, Oldboy! (I was confident it would.)

I'd be interested to see the charts, if only to see how far out the TV was initially.

So am I strapped but have to say I had my doubts about it but now I'm a convert as it's made a huge difference to the quality of image I'm enjoying.

I will post the reports for you to look at then, in standard mode the blue was so strong it went off the chart pre calibration for example.

I was very curious to see some of your pre-and post-calibration data, Oldboy, if only to console myself that I wasn't the only one whose televisions were fairly well away from being correct, pre-calibration (after Strapped for Cash's harsh but true comments on my televisions' pre-calibration errors!) - just joking Strapped, I didn't really mind! So yes Oldboy, even though your television is only a few weeks old it also did seem to be quite some way off perfect, pre-calibration.

Since I had recently been looking at my calibration data, it was easy for me to understand your calibration data, which presents the data slightly differently. Looking at your RGB histogram for example, going from 10 IRE to 100 IRE, pre-calibration your nice new Samsung UE55F8000 seems to have been as far out as any of my four televisions, but isn't it nice to look at the post-calibration graph to see all the three colours nestling very close to 100% for all values of IRE? And the Delta E Performance errors, which pre-calibration were pretty close to the undetectable threshold of 3%, are reduced to almost zero for all colours post-calibration. And your Chromaticity errors (lightness, saturation and hue) all also reduce to almost zero, for all colours, after calibration.

I'm very pleased that you are so happy with your calibration by Julian. One way in which your television differs from my four televisions is that yours is an LCD (LED) and my four are plasmas, but it seems that all televisions will be some way off perfect, pre-calibration. Interesting also that the television of my four that was the most far away from perfect, pre-calibration, was my Samsung plasma, with the blue colour much too strong. And you say that your Samsung LED also had blue too strong initially, off the scale, as mine was! Must be something to do with Samsung!

When Mr Malarky gets his 60ZT65 calibrated by Stephen Withers on Saturday that will make three of us who have had our televisions calibrated recently. I think we should form a wee society, with of course Strapped for Cash, who started this thread, as the Honorary President! When bigboss and others get their sets calibrated, they will be allowed to join the Calibrated society too!

I'm up for society membership, provided that at no stage do I have to try and explain any kind of graph!!

Really glad to hear your so pleased with the results OldBoy, and thanks to strapped for setting us all off in this path.

Roll on Saturday!