Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Anyone paid a professional to calibrate their TV?

I was wondering a similar thing. Can you record or get a printout of all settings in case you lose all or part of them due to user FU or power outage, etc. I guess you'd not (normally) be able to access service areas of the menu to correct those. BUt from my reading of the Mitsubishi thread over on AVS a while back, there seemed to be folks 'with codes'. (like press 'menu' then 2 4 7 0 to see how many hours are on your set. )

PS. Rick have you tried this?

I took pics of the service menu before i changed anything to know how to fix it.

You, sir, are smarter than me. I'd have written it down, but then been unable to read my handwriting afterward. I've done that with BIOSes enough times...

Its a good idea to write down any settings you can for your set. I wonder if the calbrator will give you a print-out of the service settings?

In my case, the set was pretty good out of the box once I switched to the 65K (warm white) setting. Lots of sets are on a cool white setting out of the box that pushes the blue quite a bit. I guess this looks better in showroom conditions.

I did some minor tweeking of black and white levels (I found white levels hard to set) and a bit of a tweek with tint/hue.

I could probably improve the picture a little with greyacale calibration, but my main issue is a slight red push that cannot be corrected (no service menu controls either).

Fred, do you have a Mits. DLP? In my color set up, red was dominant. I could not tell from the picture. I felt at a loss to try adjusting the various tints on my own. Luckily on the AVS Mitsub. thread, someone posted a link to a review where they showed tint settings for a very similar Mits. model to mine. The red was still a bit away from the center of the scale, but before it was off the scale! I'm happy.

For the record, I have had power failures over the years with my sets and whatever changes are made in calibration aren't affected. I must admit with the newer technologies i.e. plasma, LCD etc., I am not 100% sure but realistically it shouldn't. There is also the issue, depending on the set, of whether or not it has more than one setting for each input. In other words, many sets have the capability of two or more inputs in which you can do independent color, contrast, brightness etc. I know in the case of my 7 yr old 1080i RP CRT, I have four separate inputs with independent settings which could also be "calibrated" independently of one another. I counted over 100 individual separate adjustments in the service menu!

Mind you, the question is whether or not someone will give you access to the service menu and of course, how to get in to it which is generally codes thru the remote. That could be a stumbling bloc because they don't like doing it, unless you know someone that could get you the service manual. No matter what, there is generally no "default" setting per se, so any changes made during re-calibration should stay that way even with a power failure.

I don't believe so Adrian, simply because I asked Doug Blackburn to check out the website of the local ISF certified calibrator and to give me any feedback/concerns etc., and he mentioned that the diagnostic tools that they use are fairly old and not "high end".

Jack, I did get a reply from both of the calibrators that you suggested, and the Asian gentleman will be in my area in September. He did suggest to decrease green offset/bias or add red and blue on the offsets. I went into the TV menu and noticed that I didn't set any of the white balance settings (when they reset a couple weeks ago) to the recommended ones by Home Theater Magazine, so I'll check out a DVD tomorrow and see if it makes a significant difference.

He seems like a very nice guy, and here was his response to my issue-

"Greetings

Greenish tint ...

look at a black and white image ... and tell me if the blacks and dark grays are greenish. if yes ... you have a grayscale issue. A calibration can fix it ...

short of that ... if that is all you are looking for ... go to thewhite balance area of the tV ... and decrease green offset/bias

or add red and blue on the offsets

If you want more than just this addressed ... then professional calibration is the route"

I do have a calibration disc called The Ultimate DVD Platinum that I'll pop in tomorrow and tinker around with, it's not as good as AVIA, but I just found a decent review of it here . I did a quick check of all the available tweaking utilities and it wouldn't allow me to adjust the chroma or hue. I'll have more time tomorrow so maybe there's something I'm doing wrong.

Dave, no, mine is a Sony XSRD. From what I remember when I was researching, the Mits sets give you full access to all the colour controls within the service menus.

Overall I am very happy with my set. The red push is not that strong and you only notice it in some dark scenes where close-to-black stuff has a slight red tint.

I have been wondering the same thing. I can remember people posting about loosing their settings after a power outage. It would make sense to use non-volitile memory so you don't loose settings.

GREAT! Good to know that both guys werre helpful. Hope the reset solves the problem and you don't need a calibration.