Hello everyone,
I wanted to help kick off this forum area and provide some context of why we wanted to create it.
Back in 1994 I had just purchased a Pioneer Elite RPTV and was really curious about getting the best picture, but nothing was on the market and I couldn't find anyone that knew anything about it. I eventually discovered Joe Kane's LD and started learning about the basics of display calibration. As I moved up to a Sony G70, I met friends on AVS that were in my area and we started learning from each other to calibrate our Sony G70's. Joe came out with the DVD version of Video Essentials in 1997 and we were able to borrow friends colorimeters to start working on gray scale and primary and secondary colors.
In 2005 I switched jobs from creating database engines and had the incredible opportunity of joining a newly forming team, HD DVD (it was the best job of my life --- be involved in the specifications for HD DVD, play with HD content, meet with the studios and see the creation process from film transfer to optical disc, and get heavily involved in the art of seeing what the cinematographer was seeing). It was during this process that I personally met Joe Kane, Joel Silver, Gregg Lowen and Derek Smith and tied in what I had learn ad-hoc from Stacy Spears, Darin Perrigo and Steve Smith. Since I was doing HD DVD and we were showing it all over the place, including studios, it quickly became evident that very few people new what a "good picture" looked like. I felt it was time to stop tinkering around with just calibration discs to do the basic calibrations and really understand and learn how to fully calibrate a display. This is when I took Joel Silvers ISF class and became ISF certified (at the time they just had level 1) and then took the newer THX Display Video Display Calibration Classes and became Level 2 certified. I purchased my Minolta CS-200 from Gregg years ago to allow me to calibrate 100's of displays while doing HD DVD meetups and then later for doing reviews here on HTF. I still borrow Stacey's Minolta LS-100 for accurately measuring contrast ratio.
The purpose of the forum is to have experts help answer questions that you might have and help guide you along the process of three areas of calibration:
1) DIY for basic callibration by purchasing either JKP's Digital Video Essential disc in HD DVD or Blu-Ray format or purchasing Stacey Spears Blu-Ray calibration
2) Stepping up and purchasing an entry level system that will allow you to set gray scale and primary color points
3) Really stepping up and purchasing high end measuring equipment and pattern generation equipment
4) Deciding that it might be best to hire a professional calibrator that has all the equipment and have them do it for you at a price point that would be significantly cheaper that option #3
I'm pretty passionate about display calibration. Gregg makes a living off display calibration and training proffessionals to become certified in display calibration. Derek was a founder in SpectraCal and I have known him for years as Stacey initially introduced me to him.
At the end of the day, the display calibration community is a pretty small community and we have all interacted with each other at some point.
This particular idea hatched when I was at CEDIA and stopped at the SpectraCal booth and started talking with Derek. I felt that there was a need for this type of discussion on HTF and my previous history with Derek and SpectraCal (I use SpectraCal for my calibration software) seemed like there could be a great fit for HTF members to discuss the swath of various levels of display calibration.
I look forward to seeing how this grows
