ISF Calibration ??? (1 Viewer)

[SeanA]

I am new to all this home theater tech stuff, but trying to learn by reading the discussions in this forum. One of the givens seems to be that even the best TV's need to be calibrated... either by a professional or as a DIY'er. I have ordered the AVIA disc and plan to try the calibration myself. As a newbie, what are my chances of getting even a mild improvement in color accuracy using the AVIA calibration disc ??? Would I have been wiser to spend my $$$ on a professional calibration ???

I am also curious what "ISF" stands for ?

NOTE: I have the Sony KV-34XBR800 & will use it primarily for viewing DVD's.

 

[Neil Joseph]

Most TV's defaults (factory settings) are set way off from their proper settings. You will notice the TV's in the electronics stores all playing the same meterial and every one at a different colour as well. AVIA will help to get things much closer to what they should be. A professional ISF calibration goes much deeper and involves internal controls of the TV to get things even better. ISF (Image Science Foundation).

 

[MichaelFusick]

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/art...&page_number=1

Good magazine article on the ISF and calibration

 

[MichaelFusick]

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/art...&page_number=1

Good magazine article on the ISF and calibration

 

[SeanA]

Thanks Neil & Mike,

Some great information !!! I guess I will give the AVIA disc a shot, and if I still want more, I will get an ISF technician in my home. Fortunately, the shop I purchased the TV from is excellent and they have their own in-house ISF technician.

 

[Neil Joseph]

AVIA is good to have. I calibrated my system with it, as well as the previous setup as well. If you ever change things you can always calibrate again with it. I just happen to be getting a calibration done fairly soon so I am sure the image quality will only improve more.

 

[Mark Paquette]

SeanA,

I initially calibrated my Toshiba widescreen using Avia. I was able to get it to look better than it did when I first took it out of the box. Problem was that it still wasn't quite "right." I recently had Gregg Loewenn perform an ISF calibration on my Tosh. That made a night and day difference. Everything looks more detailed and images are much sharper. This applies to all viewing sources. If you have the money I definitely recommend getting your set ISF calibrated. Do a little shopping around for an experienced ISF technician. Not all calibrations are the same. I would recommend Gregg to anyone looking for a calibration.

 

[Ed Swank]

Mark, I love hearing that. My new Toshiba 50" doesn't look all that great to me. I did the Avia think with mixed results. I have requested a ISF cal from Gregg. Hopefully he'll have enough interest in my area to go ahead and schedule one for me. I really hate spending the money, but I don't think I'll ever be happy with the set the way it is. Nice to hear real experiences of the calibration results.

 

[JohnnyG]

You might find this an interesting story.

I received a couple of Toshiba 57HDX82s last Friday. I opened them both up and calibrated one right away so I could show customers the difference calibration makes. With the uncalibrated set in 'Movie' mode, the calibrated set was obviously sharper, but the colour accuracy of the uncalibrated set wasn't all that bad. Although obvious to me, some people might not have noticed much of a difference.

Then I decided that anybody can adjust their sets with a disc like AVIA and this might not be a completely fair comparison. So, I popped in AVIA and adjusted as usual. The results actually made the image FAR worse! The colour control ended up at 67 and now the picture is far too red. Not because of a poor colour decoder (as reported in CNET's review) but because of poor grey scale.

This just confirms to me that grey scale balance is really the single most important part of image calibration.