Calibration of a 40H80 (1 Viewer)

[Paul_L]

I have heard a lot of people (boith here and on other forums) that say it is a necessity to have the Toshiba 40H80 professionally calibrated for $300. What's up with that?
Is it necessary? Do I have to build in that expense?
Can I just do it myself?
Enlighten me......thanks!

 

[PerryD]

After spending $5200 for my 65" Toshiba, it was a no-brainer to spend the extra $500 to have it professionally calibrated (it costs extra for a widescreen set, each mode must be calibrated seperately).
But looking back (and after looking at the Keohi HDTV webpage), I could have done 80% of it myself. The only parts of the calibration that can't be done easily yourself is the focus and gray scale. The most time consuming and costly part of the ISF calibration is the convergence and geometry which is not difficult at all once in the service menu. Of course, the color and tint, along with brightness, contrast and sharpness should be set using Avia or Video Essentials. As far as gray scale, setting your Picture Preference to Theater and Color Temperature to Warm is a pretty good start.

 

[Michael TLV]

Greetings
Calibration (ISF or otherwise) is the functional equivalent of hotrodding a car. What they do to cars, we do to TV's.
Like your car ... you drive it off the lot, it's pretty good ... but you tweak it here and there ... swap out the spark plugs ... etc ... and suddenly your "stock" car performs a tad better. More HP, better mileage ...
Same with your TV. It's pretty good out of the box, but it has the potential to be much more than just very good. Much of the calibration effort you can do yourself if you are the hands on kind of person. If not, then that is where the Video Calibrationist comes in.
I can spend 2 hours changing the oil on my car myself ... or I can pay $35 and let the local quick lube do it in under 15 minutes. Same idea. Now take that same 15 minute job and extend it to 4 hours and you are talking $560 of work.
Some of the more advanced tweaks out there for TV's do require expensive instrumentation to properly implement ... such as grayscale adjustments, lens striping, Herman-TLV maneuver ... etc.
Regards
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Michael @ The Laser Video Experience