ISF engineer to calibrate the TV or not?

[admin_exported]

I've heard it costs about £250.......Is that correct? Money well spent or not?

Has anyone done it and regretted it?

Can anyone recommend an ISF Engineer?

 

[D.J.KRIME]

There is a deffinate boost to be gained in your TV from having a ISF trained technician calibrate your TV but it is a lot of money, you could save some money and do it yourself for a fraction of the cost and whilst the results won't be a good as a ISF calibration you will be able to calibrate as many TVs as you wish

Have a read of my post on the subject of propper DIY calibration HERE

 

[Anonymous]

Well if it is £250 ish? Then that seems like a small extra cost when you have shelled out £2K for the telly.

Anyone got an accurate price for a professional job.......as I'd rather drink coffee and watch someone else have the joy of tweaking it. As I'd probably get stressed out wondering if I'd done the best job if I did it myself lol!

 

[TKratz]

Hi Marnie

I fully see where you are coming from!
I didn't want to mess with my TV myself either (well, I used the THX optimiser, which did improve the picture, but I was not fully convinced), so I hired a professional to handle the calibration. It was around 280£, and it is some of the best money I have ever spent!

The improvements to the picture were impressive, and I can only recommend it.
However, with recent screens (like the VT20 you got) offering THX setting out of the box, the improvements are probably less pronounced.

 

[cwalduck]

I tought myself and bought a colourmeter and used HFCR software, hacked the TV got into service menu, the results are amazing.

Skin tones are spot on and got rid of overblown colours. Results below

 

[Anonymous]

I used Gordon @ convergent

http://www.convergent-av.co.uk/about.html

£275

There are plenty others out there tho.
As said b/4 if your gonna spend 2K plus an a TV then £300 is well worth it to get the best you can from your TV.

 

[kinda]

I agree if you want the absolute best picture and have spent a lot on the display then £250 or whatever isn't so much.

I think though a lot can be achieved with free calibration disks like AVS HD, even just by eye. I've use this and some RGB filters I got to set my projector and TV up and the pictures are great. The difference once I'd got the filters and set the colours correctly was big, and the initial difference just setting brightness and contrast using AVS instead of THX DVD was also pronounced.

If you're technically minded then it's just an couple of hours burning the disk and understanding how to use the patterns. It does also have some patterns for proper callibration tools if you want to take it a bit further.

Zombieland looked great on my projector yesterday!

 

[D.J.KRIME]

lduck:I tought myself and bought a colourmeter and used HFCR software, hacked the TV got into service menu, the results are amazing.

Skin tones are spot on and got rid of overblown colours. Results below

I use the same software and here are my calibrated results with very low delta errors

 

[aliEnRIK]

lduck:I tought myself and bought a colourmeter and used HFCR software, hacked the TV got into service menu, the results are amazing.

Skin tones are spot on and got rid of overblown colours. Results below

Nice one duck

 

[cwalduck]

Thanks aliEnRIK looks like i've still got work to do though.

 

[aliEnRIK]

Thanks aliEnRIK looks like i've still got work to do though.

As youve had to break into the service menu, your probably limited as to how accurate you can be

I wouldnt worry too much about getting it perfect (Which may prove impossible)

 

[D.J.KRIME]

The holy grail that is a ruler flat grey scale!!!

 

[strapped for cash]

To be honest, I think you'd struggle to achieve improvements beyond your current settings that are actually discernible to the human eye.

Nice job on both charts, though. I'm tempted to have a bash myself (unless either of you live in the Midlands and are feeling helpful)!

 

[AEJim]

Well I finally got some solid time to Calibrate my TV this weekend (now I've set the PS3 to the correct settings!). Once you know what you're doing it takes a good 2-3+ hours from scratch. I would say it's 100% worth it and to those who like to learn and tweak I would heartilly recommend buying yourself a light meter (approx £100 for a good entry level one), downloading the free software to use it and online in-depth guides (I'm not allowed to link to them).

The thing people generally miss is that as long as the basic screen you have is capable enough a good calibration will put it above ANY off-the-shelf top of the range model performance-wise. Once you have the meter and the knowledge, as others have said, you can then calibrate as many screens as you like, including computer monitors (very easy as it's automatically done for you!), projectors - whatever!

Below are the results of my efforts, this comes in at around 36ftl (overall screen light output) which is pretty much exactly where I want it for general all-round usage, 2.2 gamma almost perfectly flat across the range - this is important because the greyscale graph, as important as it is, does not show the light output at each point. This is covered by luminance and gamma and is also crucial to a nice even picture. Colour accuracy is also almost spot-on. I've seen graphs for the best screens available out of the box and they're not this good, or as good as the other guy's posts above - this is how important calibration can be! I could have spent much more time fiddling with the very final points but you do end up going round in circles at times and this was a level I was happy with as the sun was out and I'd already spent the morning doing this! (Note it's slightly different than the ones above as this was 20-point, not 10, more time-consuming - yay!)

This is on a TV (LG PK350) which currently retails for around £550 (at 50 inch) and has no motion problems as some other sets seem to experience. I know WHF's review gave it 4-Star and commented on a "yellow tinge" to the picture but as you can see from the colour graph above (if you know how to read one) this isn't present after calibration at all. It's only negative for calibrating is the 20-point system which is hard work as it offers so much control - 10-point is generally plenty! Someone very new to calibrating could stick to 2-point and get results not far off very easily indeed.

So for around £650 all-in you could get the same results and could confidently say you have a better picture than your neighbour who's just bought a £2k+ screen while you also have future-proofing built-in, in that you can calibrate any new TV you get as well.

I'd thoroughly reccomend trying it out if you have the means and patience, my picture now looks stunning and I can't see any flaws with it - even the black level looks amazing now the screen has bedded in fully and levels set correctly.

 

[GSB]

WOW.......any of you genious's live near wakefield????

seriously impresive....

 

[aliEnRIK]

This is on a TV (LG PK350) which currently retails for around £550 (at 50 inch) and has no motion problems as some other sets seem to experience. I know WHF's review gave it 4-Star and commented on a "yellow tinge" to the picture but as you can see from the colour graph above (if you know how to read one) this isn't present after calibration at all. It's only negative for calibrating is the 20-point system which is hard work as it offers so much control - 10-point is generally plenty! Someone very new to calibrating could stick to 2-point and get results not far off very easily indeed.

So for around £650 all-in you could get the same results and could confidently say you have a better picture than your neighbour who's just bought a £2k+ screen while you also have future-proofing built-in, in that you can calibrate any new TV you get as well.

Respect to LG. Theyre the only tv manufacturers as yet that make tvs for those that are willing to calibrate properly. I wish other manufacturers would follow in their footsteps

On the downside, LGs tend to be slightly below par if not calibrated to a high standard