Home audio & video: Auto-calibration coming for TVs?
Auto-calibration coming for TVs?
by bearvp - 1/8/09 7:37 AMI saw that Toshiba revealed their latest and greatest at CES which includes a TV that auto-detects the lighting characteristics of your room and will set the brightness/contrast/etc. settings automatically for you. Is this something that is already in other brands of TVs? I think it is a good idea to include since tons of people have no idea how to calibrate their TVs. It pains me to walk into a friend's house and see they are just using the factory "vivid" setting on their new HDTVs.
I think it could be useful for more experienced home theater people too. Let the TV do it's auto-detection routine and then tweak the settings as needed.
great concept, especially for noobs
by jostenmeat - 1/8/09 8:46 AM In reply to: Auto-calibration coming for TVs? by bearvpfor fine-tuning, I don't have high hopes. But I still think this is a great feature, and hopefully it actually works well.
Yes sounds good
by givemeaname - 1/8/09 11:52 AM In reply to: great concept, especially for noobs by jostenmeatas long as they don't dumb down the manuel menu settings.
Toshiba settings
by Dan Filice - 1/8/09 4:59 PM In reply to: Auto-calibration coming for TVs? by bearvpNot sure if this is the funtion you are describing, but I just bought a Toshiba 46RV540U and it has an option that brightens or darkens the TV image based on ambient lighting. This can be turned Off or set to On, and then the sensitivity can be adjusted. So far I like it because the LCD display does need to be slightly brighter durning the day, and at night in a fairly dark room, the display certainly needs to be toned down. The TV handles this very well.
TV
by jasondtx - 1/8/09 5:22 PM In reply to: Toshiba settings by Dan FilicePioneer Elite already does this with the sensor that you can attach to the front of the panel. It changes color, contrast, brightness, etc with different ambient lighting.
Toshiba's specialty
by 3rdalbum - 1/10/09 1:49 AM In reply to: Auto-calibration coming for TVs? by bearvpToshiba's specialty is taking old gimmicks that don't do anything, and remarketing them as something new. This is more of the same - I've seen CRT TVs that claim to do the same thing. And, of course, Toshiba released an upsampling DVD player to great fanfare, that doesn't really do anything at all.
If you're in the market to buy a TV, then there's no sense in waiting for Toshiba's reheat-ware. Most people are unimpressed with Toshiba's TVs for their regular features, anyway.
Toshiba's settings
by Dan Filice - 1/10/09 1:55 PM In reply to: Toshiba's specialty by 3rdalbumThe Toshiba has a feature called DynaLight Backlight Control. This is the feature that adjusts the LCD backlight based on ambient room brightness, and it can be adjusted to how much you want this feature. It has nothing to do with changing the display to "Vivid" or changing the actual Brightness or Contrast settings. A lot of TVs have this feature. Both of my Sony TVs have a similar feature. My father-in-law's Samsung has this feature. You can turn this feature off. I have it turned "On" on my Toshiba because it's mounted on the wall at the foot of the bed and the screen faces the window behind the headboard, so I find that it helps brighten the image in difficult room lighting. Both of my Sony LCD's do not have this feature turned "on". Why do you claim this is a Toshiba gimmick that doesn't do anything? Many TVs have this feature, not just Toshiba. Are you speaking from personal experience or just a tainted opinion of Toshiba. I'm not defending Toshiba just because I own one of their new LCDs. I owned their rear projection for 6 years which was great and still worked until I just replaced it. The Toshiba CRT rear projection was WAY better than the Mitsubishi CRT RPTV that my father-in-law has in his "Cinema Room" or the Sony CRT RPTV that my wife's sister owns, so they've been making decent products for a long time. How does their current product compare? Not sure across the board, but their LCD I bought is 120Hz, 1080p with true 24fps display, AND a 10bit color processing image, which is much better than 98% of the other TVs that only have an 8 bit color chip, and it cost several hundred less than the Samsung (Korean Krap) or the Sony. By the way, at work we have about 40 Samsung displays all in one room. You should see how they all warp the lower-third tickers when it scrolls right-to-left and how they all have pixel blur. Oh yes, they've all been professionally calibrated.
YUCK! Vivid setting!
by Hi-def Jeff - 1/10/09 11:40 AM In reply to: Auto-calibration coming for TVs? by bearvpI'm with you...Vivid or Dynamic settings are merely bright settings that fool the untrained eye. Like moths to a candle, we are drawn to the bright and edgy picture. For the best clarity though, these settings are the worst.
It is imperative that someone build in auto-calibration features if the public are to be able to experience high quality "WOW" HDTV. Even SDTVs, old or new, benefit greatly from color calibration.
Increased detail and even lifelike images can be obtained ONLY with a well calibrated TV. Calibration is possibly the single most important factor related to reports of poor picture quality-especially when these complaints refer to the SDTV programming looking so much worse on newer TVs. Color calibration is likely the culprit in such a complaint.
Here's why. HDTV is all about detail, right? But detail in a color picture comes from very small differences in color and shading. It is these small differences that make texture and give depth. It is the subtle differences in shading and color that accurately produce the detail we seek. If your colors are not adjusted correctly, you will lose the shading and subtleties that are the making of the details of High definition TV.
Unfortunately, when the new TV is just out of the box, they are set up to be displayed side by side in a store - a store with very bright lights. In that situation, it often comes down to who's TV looks the brightest and therefore gets the most attention, and sometimes the sale. To make the TV's stand out, they use the Dynamic of Vivid settings because they are very bright. You can check this out yourself by looking into your settings. If you look into Vivid or Dynamic settings, you will find that the contrast is at 100% on the scale. Contrast is about "differences". High contrast means large differences. Detail is about small differences. At 100% on the scale, this creates a very bright picture, not necessarily a quality picture. High contrast washes out subtle differences as well. Contrast generally looks best near the center of the scale, usually 50 to 60 in an average home.
Since color calibrationists charge a couple hundred dollars per TV, it is important that people learn that you can calibrate your own TV, or have the TV makers provide auto calibration. While I hope for a built in version, I expect it would be little improvement. The reason being this: There are already multiple settings built in such as daylight, movie, sports, etc. These "pre-sets" are somewhat better than vivid and dynamic but unfortunately, I find the best color and detail using a user setting and doing it myself.
Check this out for additional help with calibration and overall picture quality:
http://www.wowvision.tv/main.htm
not that new
by midlands_dude - 1/10/09 5:27 PM In reply to: Auto-calibration coming for TVs? by bearvpwell..i got myself a good tv when the wife booted me out 8 years ago made by philips..and that alters in the dark..and by the way it also has setings to cut the very high noise peaks at night so it dont wake the kids if your watching a action type film at night
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