I've got a totally honest question for everyone..... (1 Viewer)

[John Royster]

One more interesting tidbit...

I have a 36" SONY HDTV and a 65" mitsubish HDTV. I almost never watch the sony because the mits has so much more detail and resolution and it can hold about four of the sony's in size alone. Honestly the picture is THAT much better on the RPTV.

Seriously. I consider the 2000 dollars spent on the sony tube HDTV the biggest purchasing mistake I have ever made. I never watch it.

Oh, and I play at least 1 hour a day of video games on the mits.

 

[Joe6pack99]

Well i just bought a hitachi 65 inch and love it. yes it has flaws but what doesn't? I also own a 36inch Wega and hate it now cause the damn thing is IMPOSSIBLE to move without fear of it being damaged. Damn thing is SO heavy. My rptv has wheels

 

[Phil L]

David VP,

I consider the AVIA disc essential.

I like to tweak my TV. Through the adjustments I've made I get a significantly better picture from DVDs that I did even using PRO mode. AVIA was a great help with much of this.

Get the disc.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Any thoughts on Color Blindness and the results gained/lost by ISF'ing and/or AVIA'ing?

(My guess is a LOT of men here @ HTF are in my boat....i.e.: a degree of color-blindness. What are their thoughts on seeing a correct TV image? Thanks.)

I don't believe I am. But my sister's fiancee is. In fact, it sounds like he has very similar color-blindness to what you have. It sounds like you can't see the red in colors very well since you have a tough time differentiating green from brown.

ANYWAY, I don't really know if it still makes that much sense to get accurate colors in your case although I suspect it probably still does. Afterall, art does often imitate life, and it's especially true in cinema. You've spent all(?) your life adapting/adapted to your colorblindness in what you see in real life, and that probably translates quite well into how you perceive a color accurate presentation for cinema. If the colors are inaccurate, your modestly colorblind perception of images will be impacted even if not as much as for someone w/ normal vision.

NOW, whether doing your own color adjustments is a good idea is a whole other story. One thing to note though w/ AVIA is that it doesn't really rely on YOUR ability to differentiate and recognize colors to properly adjust colors! It uses methods that rely on your ability to see saturation of primary colors (RGB) and compare such. It also uses tricks like flashing patches to help keep your eyes from becoming biased as you view and compare the color patterns. So these methods might very well still work just fine for you as long as you're not severely colorblind, ie. can hardly see one or more of the primary colors.

And who knows? Maybe you're actually better equipped to do color adjustments using AVIA than most people w/ normal vision, if what I hypothesize is true.

Of course, all these are just my own half-baked notions and thinking-out-loud based on what little I know and learned about this stuff. I could easily be way way way off-base here, so take it w/ a great big block of salt and feel free to refute away...

_Man_

 

[Steve Schaffer]

AVIA and the Radio Shack analog spl meter are the best $70 investment anyone can make in their home theater system, period.

I honestly can't see spending upwards of $2-3k on a tv set and another grand or three or more on audio equipment and begrudging $36 for AVIA and another $30 or so for the sound meter to make it all look and sound like it should, even if you have golden eyes and ears.

I'm 52 years old and remember when color tv first arrived and learned then how to adjust it by eye as far as the user controls, and my settings usually come fairly close to AVIA, but the disc gets ya even closer. It's also helpful for those who want to attempt greyscale or color decoder tweaking on thier own, as well as exactly where to set sharpness--not always best at 0, btw.


As far as pro-calibration, it's not gonna happen for me in the foreseeable future as I live 200 miles from the nearest tech. I bought a set with a user friendly service menu and invested in the service manual, did some research on the 'net, and so far have been able to disable SVM, get my color decoder error down to less than 5%, and gotten rid of a greenish hue to the low end of the gray scale. I may not be seeing quite as good a pic as what a good ISF tech could get--still have a small bit of color shift that they can fix with lens striping, but it's not noticeable enough for me to deal with myself. I'm happy with the grey scale but I'm sure a pro could get it better.

I guess my point was that a professional calibration is not absolutely necessary, desirable but not a must-have, and certainly no more necessary on an rptv than on a direct-view--it's just that any faults are maginified on the rptv where they can go largely unnoticed on a 36 incher.

I had to do the same adjustments with my last Direct view set, a 98 model Sony KV35XBR-48, which also had some geometry issues I had to deal with, though nothing like what the early Wegas suffered from. It had full geometry adjustment available in it's service menu and I still could not get geometry as good as either of my rptvs had out of the box.

 

[Reginald Trent]

quote:

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Perhaps someone with complete knowledge can chime in on this. I have seen, not one rptv that has the clarity of picture as a good direct view crt tv. Someone mentioned a difference between 'clarity' and resolution. With DV having better clarity but worse resolution. Just what are the numbers? And why do my naked eyes tell me direct view has more resolution?
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The naked eye is translating "sharpness" into "resolution". Resolution is the maximum number of distinct rows, columns, or pixels the display can resolve and still have them be distinct pixels. Sharpness or clarity is how crisp vs. fuzzy the image is, regardless of resolution. Direct view sets appear sharper because (a) the image is smaller, and (b) excessive edge enhancement gives the illusion of greater sharpness (on direct views AND RPTVs).

Also, a poorly adjusted RPTV can appear more blurry, since there are more things that can or need to be be adjusted on a RPTV (e.g. mechanical focus, convergence, etc.).

Lastly, flaws are more noticeable on a large screen, which can lead one to believe that the RPTV has an inferior image, when in reality its higher resolution is bringing out flaws that you don't notice on a small low-resolution direct-view set. It's similar to how a CD that sounds good on a cheap stereo ends up being unlistenable on a high-end system. The high-end system is bringing out the flaws in the recording.

Quote:

One more interesting tidbit...

I have a 36" SONY HDTV and a 65" mitsubish HDTV. I almost never watch the sony because the mits has so much more detail and resolution and it can hold about four of the sony's in size alone. Honestly the picture is THAT much better on the RPTV.

Seriously. I consider the 2000 dollars spent on the sony tube HDTV the biggest purchasing mistake I have ever made. I never watch it.

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I have a Sony 36XBR400 and with all due respect, I have yet to see a RPTV that has the clarity, detail and richness of color that my Wega displays. Theoritcally and perhaps in reality RPTV can reproduce a better picture but...my eyes say different. Therefore, I remain skeptical and unconvinced.

 

[David Von Pein]

Thanks, Sir Wong, for your helpful post (above).

 

[WilliamCJS]

Im still on a fence on this.
I know one thing, i could not have brought the 36" SOny HDTV into the house. The thing weighs 250-plus and looks like a Volkwswagon.
The 46 inch RPTV i ended up with is a 100 pounds lighter. Two people can easily handle it. It's still too big for the room, but with bigger picture it seems physically smaller thna the 36.
In retrospect, i wish i aimed lower, for a 32. That's as high as you can go and something that resembles a TV and not a vehicle.

 

[Jack Briggs]

But the picture is the thing, as far as room considerations must be allowed.