You decided, finally, to change your bulky tube television with a brand new LCD TV, but when you get home you notice that there are some differences between the image display of the TV’s in your local electronics superstore, and the one in your apartment. That’s because the LCD TVs are preconfigured to make an impact on the sales floor.
To change that, we will learn in this guide, how to properly calibrate your LCD TV.
Let’s take calibration step by step:
Why calibrate?
Because you can’t assume that your LCD TV comes right from the shelf, with the best possible calibration presets, and of course you want to get the most out of your television.
When you are in the LCD TV department of your electronics store, and you take a quick look at every LCD or Plasma image display, did you notice that they look different? That’s because all the manufactures calibrate there TVs different according to what they think is “best”. This way they point out the strengths and hide their weaknesses. Also the illumination from the store can not be compared with the one in your home so differences are bound to appear.
Create proper room lighting
The first thing in calibrating your LCD TV is to prepare the environment properly. Unlike Plasma TVs which perform better in the dark, LCD TVs need a dim light, best positioned directly behind the television. Also, you shouldn’t watch TV in complete darkness because it can be disturbing for your eyes. If you watch TV in daytime or you chose to set your light source anywhere but not behind de LCD TV, make sure that the light doesn’t reflect from the screen, otherwise glare will appear and it can be frustrating.
So remember, you should always pay attention to your environment when calibrating your LCD TV.
Ways to calibrate your LCD TV
By now, in this guide, we learned why we should calibrate our LCD TV and how to prepare the environment to get the most out of it .So it’s time to take the bull by the horns and start calibrating the LCD TV.
There are 4 major ways to calibrate your LCD TV:
1. The easiest way:” The Google way”
2. The “Do it yourself way”
3. The indicated way “Using a calibration disk” (with Blu-Ray player or DVD player)
4. Hiring a Calibration Technician
1. The “Google Way”
The easiest way, and a very common way to calibrate your LCD TV is to search Google following this syntax “brand model-code calibration settings” where you replace brand and model-code to meet your actual needs.
Example:
“Sony KDL-46XBR8 calibration settings” or “Samsung LN46A950 calibration settings”
It is recommended that you use this method before trying the next one, because it’s a very good chance that somebody found the optimal settings for your particular model.
2. The “Do it yourself way”
All right, Google gave us no useful information, so the next logical step is to calibrate the LCD TV yourself .Don’t worry, it sounds complicated but it’s not. You will say this to, after finishing reading this section of the guide. With all this said let’s get started.
You should use a good video source: a Blu-Ray disc. If you don’t have a Blu-Ray Player you can use a regular DVD with a DVD player. The main thing is that your video source contains scenes with complete white (strong light), with complete black (night scenes) and a scene with an equal amount of white and black, preferably with shadows.
What you want to do now, is to disable all the artificial enhancements such as Noise Reduction, Autocontrast, Detail Enhancement, Edge Enhancement, etc. so they will not
influence the picture.
Color Temperature
What you need to do, is to change your LCD TV temperature. You can do this from the presets like Warm, Normal and Low. You need to set it on Low or Normal. Those are the common names settings but if in your particular case they are named different, you should consult your LCD TV manual.
Brightness control
This setting is also technically called “Black Level”. Find on your DVD a scene with a lot of black (a night scene), and tune this control until you get the deepest black. Be very careful to shadows, you don’t want to lose the details. Watch closely to minor things like
the eyes of the actors, if they start to fade away under the eye-brows then you need to set the brightness control a little higher.
Contrast control
Technically known as “White Level”, this setting is related to “Black Level”, it’s pretty much the opposite of it. This setting determine how much detail you see in the in a white scene. Appropriate to what we discussed at the Brightness Control, you practically need do the same thing but at the other end of the spectrum. Find a scene with a lot of white (a snow scene preferably) and tune this control as much as possibly without losing the smaller details like the edges of shadows, dirtier snow. Another way is to find on your DVD, a scene with an actor that has a white t-shirt. Tune the contrast so that you can distinguish the texture of the t-shirt.
Sharpness control
This is the hardest control to explain because it cannot be distinguished so easily by the human eye. The thing you need to know here is not to set this control to the maximum.
This is what most people do, but if you try this you won’t notice right away the false edges, let your eyes get used to this for some time and then you will notice them.
Color / Saturation control
Tuning this control is very important as it will have a very drastic effect on the overall picture. This control sets the amount of color in a picture, if you tune it to 0 you will observe that the image is black and white. Tune it to maximum and watch how the image is getting more and more unrealistic. To properly calibrate this control on your LCD TV find a scene with a close-up of a human face and tune this control until the skin looks natural. Observe how the skin looks sun-burned if you set the saturation control to high.
These are the basic settings that you need to tune to properly calibrate your LCD TV. You can follow this guide to get the most out of your LCD TV but in the end…it’s your TV and if you think that you are losing details in the dark scenes, then tune up the Brightness control as much as you like and do the same things with the other controls.
3. Using a calibration stick
This is the way that i indicate the most. Yea….it costs a little but compared to what you spent on your LCD TV is not too much. And since you spent this money on your television you really want to get the most out of it. There isn’t much advice that I can give you here. You need to buy this calibration stick (i will recommend the best ones at the and of this guide).The basic thing is that this method will save you time, you will surely get the most out of your TV, it has a step by step wizard that will guide you throw the controls we discussed in the “Do it yourself way” and other controls.
That’s why this method is the one i advice you to use.
4. “Just call the guy” way
This is the most expensive way, more expensive that buying a calibration DVD and of course more expensive that “do it yourself” way. The primary question is how much are you willing to spend for your LCD TV? A technician will probably cost you about $300 – $400 .You can find one here. But once again…are you willing to spend $300 – $400 to calibrate your LCD TV?
This is a question that only you can answer!
The conclusion
In this guide i have shown you some ways on how to properly calibrate your TV.
In the end is all about what you chose; right now the ball is in your court, study the guide well and make a wise decision to calibrate your LCD TV.
Recommended HDTV Calibration Disks:
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