LCD/LED vs PLASMA

and the majority of those sets (which will be of the much cheaper variety) may well not be worth calibrating in the first place
There's certainly a bottom cut-off point. For example, I wouldn't expect much from a TV with a poor quality panel and weak electronics. So your basic Supermarket budget Vestel clones aren't going to be a calibration candidate. However, once you raise your sights from scraping the bottom of a barrel then you'd be surprised at what can be achieved.

As for the TVs on AV Forums. As far as I can tell there's a lot of folk downloading the AVS disc and thinking that that somehow means they have calibrated their TV. So it's hardly surprising that the results are variable.

The guys using meters get consistently better results. Without a meter then all someone is doing is setting up the TV to PLUGE. It's certainly worthwhile doing, but it's not calibration and so you can't judge it in the same way.

I'm not doubting that in some cases you can get a good tv to look great just by calibrating, and you can get a great tv even better. For the most part it wont make a jot of difference (especially to an untrained eye)
Actually, it does.

You don't need a trained eye to know when something is right. All you need is to be either interested or aware. I think most people can look at a photo and tell the difference between a portrait shot on a basic camera and one shot on decent gear. That's the only skill one needs to appreciate the benefits of calibration.

Quite often it's the midrange TVs that respond the best to calibration. High-end TVs are bought for picture quality as much as features. It's the midrange TVs that are bought for size and features where the factory settings are geared to "showroom bang" that can yield the biggest improvements.

I'll admit though, I can't do anything with any TV or projector for someone who just isn't interested.
 
The main issue is a lot of people don't care what the standard is and just want to set up to to their personal preference, I remember when tons of people used to use Digital Vibrance on their Nvidia cards even though it messed the colours up.

There will be people who do the same on their TV's, they don't care about the standards.
 
As a simple experiment try setting your contrast, brightness etc. using some calibration images or a disk and then set your TV to the "warm 2" setting.... That will get you much closer to a calibrated image and will probably look a lot better just for that. Most TV's are blue on the factory defaults which actually looks bad once you are aware of it but it looks ok in a showroom for example.
 
The main issue is a lot of people don't care what the standard is and just want to set up to to their personal preference, I remember when tons of people used to use Digital Vibrance on their Nvidia cards even though it messed the colours up.

There will be people who do the same on their TV's, they don't care about the standards.

I think it is more that they are ignorant to what it should look like... Surely when people buy a decent quality screen it is because they want good image quality. Calibrated image always looks better than the standard settings just people do not realise it and assume the settings are right. Most people probably dont even know that you can get your screen calibrated using a meter.
 
my panny isn't perfect for motion but you get used to its faults.....but compared to a CRT it's miles better, the CRT is years old now and it really shows.

you only get a good image on a CRT because the screen is so tiny, you expand that to 50'' and it'll look horrid

the CRT has a rich smooth image... YES it's tiny, you dont notice its faults

the panny looks brilliant on HD/GAMING.....

It depends which CRT you are comparing it to and with what content. Nearly all crts will be better at standard def than plasmas and not just because they're smaller. It's easy to forget how good standard def can look if you've been using flat panels for years. It looks awful on even the best plasma, don't start me on lcd/led, yet perfectly natural and closer to what we get with HD content on panels with a crt. And that's just with rubbish like Neighbours :) HD wise crts suffer because they were phased out before it came into it's own - they don't have hdmi for example - but try outputting a signal to a FW900 and any current plasma and you will see the difference in image quality. And yes, it's much smaller, but it can handle the same resolution (higher actually), has greater depth to the image, motion, blacks that are actually black and not grey, better colours, everything.

This thread has turned out even dafter than I expected, yeah let's all go out and buy a CRT,

I never said go out and buy a CRT (unless you can find a FW900 and have a PC desk big and strong enough to handle it, in which case you should!) There's quite a lot of lcd/led bashing on this forum and there's no harm in reigning that in a little in reminding people that in pretty much everything that plasma does better than lcd in terms of pq, crt does better than plasma - and with pretty much the same leap in quality.
 
CRT TV are just simply too big and also I dont think you can even get them in big sizes without them being the size of a small country... They are not HD either are they? Dont CRT TV run at 60hz also?
 
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We didn't get many HD crt in this country. They were far more common in the states. My 32" crt is HD (1125i) and runs at 50/60hz, like most tvs. It doesn't flicker like a strobe light at 60hz like with crt monitors. Not sure why or what the difference is. My monitor is 24" with a max res of 2304 x 1440 at 80 Hz, but with a sweet spot of 1920 x 1200 @ 85 Hz.

You're right, they're massive and ugly as sin! The pictures are beautiful, though, and I'll be sad to see them go.
 
The main issue is a lot of people don't care what the standard is and just want to set up to to their personal preference, I remember when tons of people used to use Digital Vibrance on their Nvidia cards even though it messed the colours up.

There will be people who do the same on their TV's, they don't care about the standards.
Yep. Or they believe that the out-of-the box settings are correct. Even if they do want to tweak the settings, most of the function names don't really help the average user.

So lets see how Mr Average might get on...

Preset: Current setting - Dynamic. Let's try the other settings. Normal... Urgh... it's done a bit dull. Don't want that. Movie...Argh! Even duller. Video... a bit better. PC...now you're getting there... and back to Dynamic... Well that's the brightest picture so that's gotta be the one. Okay, what's next?...

Brightness: Makes the picture brighter surely? Do I want a bright picture? .. Well I don't want a dull one like that Cinema and THX crap... so Yes!. Let's turn it up. Oh... er, that looks a bit rubbish. Let's turn it down. Ah, now that's a bit better. Look how black everything is.

Contrast: Haven't a clue. Let's have a play. Can't really see much difference. Hang on, some white bits look a bright brighter. Why don't they call it "whiteness". Don't really know what I'm doing with this. Let's move on.

Colour: Well I like colourful images so lets have plenty of that.

Sharpness: Yep, plenty of that too. Wow. Look at that. There's like a white line round everything. That must be sharp, right?

What's next? Tint: Don't know. I'll just leave it in the middle.

Ooo... Advanced Settings. That's me. Mr Advanced... let's have a play....

Colour Tone: Normal... nah. I'm in advance settings. I've got to change something now I'm here. I don't want plain old normal. Warm... Urgh. It's all really red. Cool... Now we're getting there. Heh heh heh..My TV is 'cool'

Dynamic Contrast: Don't know what that is, but it's got the word Dynamic in it so it's gotta be good, right? And I like the Dynamic preset. So I think I'll have this on.

Black Tone: On/Off... I think my blacks should have the right tone so let's have that On.

Flesh Tone: -5 ~ +5 ... Let's see what this does... Not really sure. Looks okay at +1, and +2... oh I don't know. I'll leave it there

Gamma: WTF?? Is this something to do with the Hulk? Urgh, things gone a bit pale when I adjust it this way. Let's go the other way. Ah, now look. The colours are getting more vivid. What setting is that... -4. That'll do.

Motion Lighting: Off/Min/Max. Well I'm a max kind of guy so let's have it there.

Digital Noise Filter: I don't want any digital noise thank you. We'll have that on Max

MPEG Noise Filter: Same as above. Max.

LED Motion Plus: It's Plus so it's something extra, right? So let's have that On.


There we go. Who needs fancy test discs. That took me 10 minutes and the picture will be perfect. Let's have a look.... Oh, er... crap. How do I get out of this... Factory Reset. Oh bugger, now I have to retune. If she comes in I'll tell her the shop sent it out set to the wrong channels. Okay, that's good. Got me channels done. What was it before, picture preset Dynamic? Yeah, that's the one. Job done.

;) :D
 
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