Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler CatBrat

it's for a good reason that tv's, as sold, are in the "torch" mode; lots of people want to have an image so bright that it's watchable in a sunlit room. in the showroom, the manufacturers do this so their tv's are brighter than the one next to it and people will think brighter = better.
but all this is not very good for those poor overbright tv's. it shortens their life.

a good test to see how well a tv is calibrated is to go at a well equipped cinema and watch a good quality movie. then you go back home and play the same on Blu-ray.
on the Blu-ray, the images should not look different than those at the cinema.

most new tv's are set to very high color temperatures, some as much as 18000 K. when they should all be at the 6500K standard.
as you say, there is too much blue, because it makes the screen "appear" brighter, and it sells more.

I've got the Pioneer Elite 21 replaced with the Denon 3312ci, and the Harmony 1100 remote about 90% programmed for it, Audyssey 6 point run. Done for now.

The subwoofer works again. Yay!

The outer box it came in was trashed, pretty much, but the inner box was untouched. As soon as I got the box free of it's contents, the cat couldn't be happier with a new box to play in.

You probably got the cat thinking it's Christmas again.

I just finished trying this. Put TV in HDMI 3 where nothing existed. Noticed the mode changed, so I set it to THX Cinema. The brightness was at 44. I had to change it to 50 before I could detect any change. Set it back to 44. Will have to try that with something playing on HDMI 1.

I've been trying to get the Panasonic VT50 plasma to play audio through the HDMI cable using ARC to the Denon 3312si. So far, no luck. (HDMI 1.4 from HDMI #1 on TV to Monitor #1 on receiver.)

I can't get it to play via the digital optical cable either. (Optical out on TV to TV Optical port on receiver.)

About the only thing I watch on broadcast TV is some news and weather, so it's not a big deal. Currently just using the TV speakers for that.

The Denon seems to drive the VP160 and M22's good. I won't know what it really sounds like until I get the VP160 and all 5 M22's attached, then crank it a bit.

Someone said to use HDMI #2 on the TV. It's reserved for ARC to pass the sound back to the receiver.

So, you would say that the cost of the calibration was worth it ya? How much did it cost you?

The jury is still out on if it was worth it. It was a THX calibration, for $450. The picture is beautiful. But, it was beautiful before the calibration. I'm not sure how much improvement there actually was. The most noticeable after affect is, 1) The THX Cinema is dimmer. 2) The THX Bright Room is about the same. 3) The THX 3D Cinema is brighter. 4) Skin tones overall are better looking.

To me the blacks are too black with little detail in THX Cinema. I asked the calibrator about it and he said to try increasing the brightness and/or contrast no more than 2 or 3 clicks to see if that helps any.

I have the same disk he uses for demo material to check for black detail and I can see good detail in the demo material, but I had 2 noticeable problems. 1) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, near the beginning, where Harry is being told about Serious Black by Mr. Weasley. They appear as 2 black silhouettes with little to no detail. Not what I remember. and 2) In New World when Mr Smith is romancing with Pocahontas, there's an Indian with face painted in blue. The blue is mostly washed out and appears too dark.

He's supposed to e-mail me the before and after settings, so I assume that I could setup either the standard or custom the same as THX cinema before changes to flip back and forth and examine the changes. Will have to also make service panel changes to do that, perhaps.

Sometime later, I might hire an ISF calibrator, if I can get one at a decent price, to calibrate at least one custom mode as a dark room cinema mode. Then I could really compare the difference.

If there is an ISF Calibrator with an ISF certification and experience in my area, or will be going through my area (Kansas City, MO) that is up to the challenge of producing a better picture than a THX Calibrator, then send me a PM. Maybe we can work something out.