What kind of light to calibrate a TV? (1 Viewer)

[Andrew Pezzo]

I recently purchased a RPTV and need to calibrate it (I have DVE for this). My question is how much light should be on in the room? My living room is fairly bright which makes viewing during the day not the best. This led me to think that I should do it at night. Then I got thinking should the lights be off also. Whats the best condition to do this?

 

[John S]

For the most accurate true professional calibration, the lights off and the room dark. For a more user DVE oriented calibration, I'd say how ever you will be watching it most. Or if movie's are the most important, calibrating it in the lighting conditions you most watch movies in perhaps.

 

[Andrew Pezzo]

I try to keep it as dark as possible when watching movies. During the day that means I sometimes put a dark sheet over the curtains as they dont block much light at all. I fugured night time would be best, just wanted to confirm. Thanks.

 

[John S]

I tend to trade off some day time performance for my mostly nightime movie watching performance on my setup. Definetly a trade off, but I don't think I want to be driving my set to the limits that it takes for real good day time performance, or at least very often.

 

[JohnnyG]

I calibrate my personal set in the conditions I normally set for 'critical' viewing. That's night-time, with a very low lighting level in the room. It may not be perfect for regular evening viewing, but I'm not concerned with that.

 

[HoiT]

I have a question related to this one. Hope people don't mind. The DVE that I have is for component NTSC only, what should I do if I want to calibrate other inputs apart from the component one?? Such as the S-video and the DVI inputs.
Thanks.

HoiT

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Andrew,

Most tvs these days will let you store several sets of adjustments under different "picture modes".

Sony, for example, usually has 4 different picture modes, Dynamic, Standard, Movie, and Pro, and you can store different settings for each mode. Most other makes use different names for them but you get the idea.

What I've always done is use one of the less overprocessed modes-Pro or Movie on my Sony, to store settings for my ideal movie watching conditions, very low light but not completely dark, and one of the other modes to set brighter settings for casual daytime stuff like watching the news while I have my morning coffee.

Hoit,

Just connect the dvd player to the set with the other connection types and adjust away, there's no real reason why DVE should only be used with component video inputs.

 

[JohnnyG]

That is just referring to the way the disc was recorded, authored and encoded. It denotes, to some degree, the quality of the recording, but in no ways implies the display type you should or must use.

The best thing to do is to run through all the video test patterns with the DVD connected in all the different ways (composite video, s-video, 480i component, 480p component) and write down all the results using each of these connection types. Then you can 'plug in' the correct numbers for each input on your TV. For example, if your Video2 input on the TV is s-video from a cable/satellite box, use the picture settings you determined when you had the DVD player connected with s-video.

There will almost certainly be different results with the different connection types...sometimes a huge one. Many people don't realise this and set all the inputs to the results they obtained when their DVD player in 480p mode.

 

[Allan Jayne]

The "correct" calibration will differ depending on the amount of room lighting at the time.

If your TV set has several adjustable memories, you could save the nighttime calibrations as, say, "Movies", and save the daytime calibrations under, say, "Sports", or however they named the memories. You may also need more memories if TV shows need a different calibration compared with DVD's.

If your DVD player has its own brightness, contrast, etc. you may find it possible to have just one setting in the TV for which TV broadcasts look good, and then adjust the DVD player to match. This almost always requires trial and error.

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

Q: Why did your mother say you will get a headache watching TV in a pitch dark room while going to the movies is perfectly normal?

A: Because the TV set was not calibrated for dark room viewing, which means much lower contrast for an overall lower light output.