Recent content by ThomasL

Thanks very much Michael. At some point, I would like to have the set's grayscale professionally calibrated for the HDMI inputs but at the moment, the funds are currently not allocated. It is nice that they have included both cuts/drives in the user menu in order to do this though. Overall...

Thanks Michael for the reply. The tv in question is a member of the Samsung LNT-xx61F LCD series. I am curious if these models are tweakable by a pro with regard to such issues as I described. Overall, in reviews I've read recent Samsung LCDs seem to be fairly accurate with regard to color...

Hello all. Hopefully one of the calibration experts can answer a simple question I have regarding Avia and color settings. If a set's saturation and tint/hue controls have been calibrated using the blue filter and the set also has excellent color decoder results (all primaries are at 0...

Greg, do you know how well the current crop of Samsungs - in particular my model line the 61F - respond to professional calibration? I know of the user menu level grayscale adjustments as well as gamma, backlight, etc. Are there more detailed color management options in the service menu...

Mike, Since I just did a recent search for a set in this exact category (I had 40 inches max width to work with), I figured I'd share my list. The Toshiba model that you list might be a bit wider than 41 inches - you'll definitely want to double check. I eventually came up with the...

Thanks for the reply George. I actually stuck Avia II in the dvd player again tonight and decided to fiddle with the backlight setting. I lowered it from 5 to 2 and it made a marked difference on how "black" blacks were to my eye. Of course, it dimmed the entire white balance range so 100 IRE...

Thanks much George, Everything you said makes sense. So, I guess my more practical question would be is there anything harmful to having a backlight set to maximum as opposed to having a lower setting? Does it lessen the life of the illumination device itself at all? My guess would be that it...

Thanks George, As you can guess, this is my first LCD tv and backlights are new to me. I wasn't sure if by lowering the backlight a few notches and upping contrast I would achieve the same intensity of white yet perhaps improve black level by increasing the overall contrast ratio. But I...

I have a Samsung LNT4061F which I've been tweaking using Avia II. What are the pros and cons of lowering the backlight/raising the contrast? I currently have the backlight at 5 (default) and contrast at 70/brightness at 39 along with Movie/Warm 2 modes. I've noticed that there are number of...

Shtyrayum, I've seen similar "garbage" on the extreme edge of the image when viewing HD through HDMI in Just Scan mode. It is normal - what we're seeing is some of the non-visual data such as closed-caption which is being sent with the signal. Typically, tvs have a bit of overscan which crops...

Jake, you may want to look at FLAC as your lossless storage method since both the Squeezebox and Audiotron apparently handle this format (on the server side - not decoding a FLAC stream in hardware although the Squeezebox folks may indeed include this soon). As for video out to the TV, yes...

Flac - http://flac.sourceforge.net - is another good option for storing ones CDs in a lossless format and it seems to be growing in popularity with the new SlimServer/Squeezebox supporting it as well as some other hardware products. I've tested it out along with the Winamp plugin and it works...

Jake, since it sounds like you're planning on storing the ripped CDs (in whatever format) on a remote server, have you considered just using an Audiotron or Squeezebox device down in the home theater room in order to play back the collection? Since it sounds like you have a wired network, the...

Blaine, if you set all the speakers to Large and Sub to On in the Pioneer menu then you are effectively turning off bass management. The Pioneer will only send the .1 channel to the sub and it'll send the full frequency range to the other 5 speakers. hope this helps, --tom

Nathan, I agree that the crossover points are problematic. I went the Large route for both SACD/DVD-A since my CSW M50 bookshelves that I'm using seem to handle down to the 55-60Hz range. I know I'm losing the lower bass but I'd much rather drop that then drop the higher frequencies as you...