Originally Posted By: dakkon
So, you would say that the cost of the calibration was worth it ya? How much did it cost you?


The jury is still out on if it was worth it. It was a THX calibration, for $450. The picture is beautiful. But, it was beautiful before the calibration. I'm not sure how much improvement there actually was. The most noticeable after affect is, 1) The THX Cinema is dimmer. 2) The THX Bright Room is about the same. 3) The THX 3D Cinema is brighter. 4) Skin tones overall are better looking.

To me the blacks are too black with little detail in THX Cinema. I asked the calibrator about it and he said to try increasing the brightness and/or contrast no more than 2 or 3 clicks to see if that helps any.

I have the same disk he uses for demo material to check for black detail and I can see good detail in the demo material, but I had 2 noticeable problems. 1) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, near the beginning, where Harry is being told about Serious Black by Mr. Weasley. They appear as 2 black silhouettes with little to no detail. Not what I remember. and 2) In New World when Mr Smith is romancing with Pocahontas, there's an Indian with face painted in blue. The blue is mostly washed out and appears too dark.

He's supposed to e-mail me the before and after settings, so I assume that I could setup either the standard or custom the same as THX cinema before changes to flip back and forth and examine the changes. Will have to also make service panel changes to do that, perhaps.

Sometime later, I might hire an ISF calibrator, if I can get one at a decent price, to calibrate at least one custom mode as a dark room cinema mode. Then I could really compare the difference.