calibration question (1 Viewer)

[Nathan Stohler]

I've been reading reviews for projection TVs (I'm thinking of buying one), and I notice that many of these TVs' display settings are way off "out of the box", specifically the gray scale adjustments.

My question is, why can't the TVs be calibrated at the factory. I understand that the settings are going to vary based on your source, but couldn't they at least get in the ballpark?

 

[DaveGTP]

Short Answer :

Because correct settings don't necessarily sell TVs on the showroom floor. Psychological tricks like brighter = better (like audio - louder = better) are being used to their maximum.

But any company who set their TVs properly would look very dim at a glance, thus, inferior.


Thus, everyone uses Torch mode.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

basically what has been said:

I guarantee you, if you left all the sets as is, and had an ISF guy come in and spend a weekend perfecting the best CRT RPTV out there, and putting it on the display floor, *NOBODY* would buy it.

It would be look dim, washed out, sucked out of color, unsharp, whites would not look "white." Everyone would jump at the over-bright, oversharpened, over-color saturated sets with red push and bluish grayscale.

Finally, even in the high-end FP world where many projectors aren't that bad out of the box, remember that many things affect the final PQ. The screen, the room, the source, the lighting in the room, etc. So even if they put every set in some sort of "standard" room and calibrated perfectly, you'd still want to change things if your room lighting or whatnot were different.

Lastly, doing something like that would require wearing in a set for a long time for settings to settle in, especially with CRT based televisions, and then repeating calibration. Not to mention with a CRT based RPTV, after all that shipping, you'd ideally want to install it first, than do a complete mechanical setup again, as things will likely have shifted.

Oh, and did I mention temperature of the room? Most people don't have central air maintaining a perfect 72 degrees 24/7. Yet another variable that is impossible to control.

So even *IF* manufacturers cared about more than just sales, it still would not be very feasible.

And it's obvious they dont, since the red push problem is not some inherent "flaw" in the design. It is *INTENTIONAL* MIS-calibration and INTENTIONAL "poor" design which results in more units sold because it looks better to the untrained eye.

 

[Chad B]

OK, I'm going to throw in my 2 cents worth. I've calibrated a few floor models for a local HT chain. In all cases, the calibrated sets were surrounded by other RPTV's which had only minor, if any, change from the manufacturer's torch mode. In one instance, Chris, it is as you described with the calibrated set. The CRT's were being overloaded, but bringing them into linearity meant decreasing the light output so much that the next door sets looked better. I ended up compromising.
However, on the other two (an LCD projector and a CRT projector), they are so clearly superior that they make the neighboring uncalibrated sets look nasty. I was able to get healthy light output from them, so they are not noticeably dimmer than their neighbors. In addition, they have accurate colors and much better shadow detail, among other things. Maybe not quite as vivid or contrasty, but clearly much better. These sets did have intentional red push, but I calibrated it out, and they make skintones on the neighboring sets look sunburnt. I think people are starting to wise up to red push, but the manufacturers still think they need it.

 

[Nathan Stohler]

Thanks guys for your excellent responses.