Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Adjusting video: what do you do?

OK, you likely got a yourself a new screen at some point in the last five years. Maybe even a new receiver, and probably a bluray player.

Each of these devices probably has a video adjustment menu. So short of hiring an ISF calibrator, how do you, the hobbyist videophile, go about tweaking your video output?

Do you use the menu of the screen only and leave well enough alone with the other devices, or do you experiment with all of the options available to you? What gave the best results? In your experience, what isn't worth messing with?

And what, if anything, are you using for calibration material? I have the old Avia DVD, but clearly things have changed a lot since it was produced. I've read good things about the Spears & Munsil disc, but haven't seen it mentioned here, iirc.

Hopefully the player if left untouched will output untouched video. Unfortunately that's not always true, and the only way to find out if the player needs its setting changed is check with the ultra-picky folk at AVS. But yeah, assuming your player is doing the right thing, it's best to leave it alone (unless it has a really good scaler, than allow it to upscale video).

The same goes for the receiver. Just let it pass the video through untouched (the exception being scaling, if the receiver has a better scaler than that built into the player or display).

So all the adjustments should be done in the display. There's no reason for the display to get the settings wrong out of the box for digital inputs, but TV makers, like some speaker makers, like to "color" things a bit to make their set more appealing to certain groups when set next to another manufacturer on the showroom floor.

The Spear & Munsil disc is very good. There it's been mentioned here.

Personally, I've been happy with the Medium out of the box settings for Samsung. I think it's called Standard.

But was the set on Standard right out of the box? Or did you have to change it from an "enhanced" mode?

By out of the box, I mean one of the 3 modes that it comes boxed with, without any other modifications. I forget the names, but there's #1: The most enhanced and too bright one, #2: The standard and (I think) good one, then #3: The movie mode, or too dim and washed out looking one.

I like some color to pop out at me, so that's why I don't like the movie mode. Perhaps with a much bigger screen, I'd change my mind about that one.

I mean take it out, turn it on the first time, and look at the picture. It was on #1, right? So many people never even touch the picture mode button, and just leave the set that way that it turned on the first time.

What you said. I had to manually change it to #2. With my first couple of LCD's I must of played around with it forever, I've got AVIA Blu-ray (which is the same as the DVD), and tweaked it according to their instructions, but I was never pleased with the results. The #2 standard setting, unchanged, always looked better.

I'll give people a little leeway with color saturation. But black- and white-levels need to be spot on, along with tint.

Also color temp should not be above 7200K, but really should use the 6500K standard. Yeah, it'll look red when switching from the 9600K that most sets ship with. But looking away from the screen for a minute and then back, everything will appear fine.

How do you measure/set color temp?

Maybe a pointer to a link if it's too involved.

You need a colormeter to measure it, and access to the service menu to fine tune it. Most of the time a set will get close when set to "Warm", if it doesn't spell out 6500K directly.