So you have this new HDTV or does your old HDTV seem to have lost some of its luster? Many experts agree that most TV’s sold at your local big box store are not calibrated correctly. Most have the contrast and brightness set way too high for the average user and in some cases, if never tuned properly, can shorten the life of your display.

So here are some HDTV calibration systems that can help you out. These range from nearly free to hundreds of dollars. This is a two part series to help you evaluate each type of calibration system and decide which is best for you. Let’s take a look.

ISF Calibration
First, if you are a person with deep pockets and you can pay for an ISF trained technician to come out with their professional equipment and calibrate your machine, do it. This is probably the best investment you can make (Henning wasn’t so lucky to have a great experience, but most reviews of ISF technicians have been positive). A trained technician is a tweakers dream. They not only calibrate your set, but in many instances they could enhance your set by taking it apart and adding sound baffling, darkening the interior so as to soak up light that could be bleeding and give you tips on how to get the best picture with the best color balance. The amount charged depends on many factors, one being the type and model set you have. I wouldn’t use this for my Runco CL-410 because it comes from the manufacturer ISF calibrated, but I have considered having my Sony Wega 42″ LCD RPTV calibrated just to see what they can do.

Hardware Calibration
Another type of calibration tool is one that actually sits on your HDTV (sorry not really meant for front projectors) and calibrates your set. These are nice if you are color blind or don’t like sitting in long sessions squinting through a blue filter feeling like your at the eye doctor (OK, 1 or 2….1…or….2 - know what I mean?). The only real drawback is the price. At $200 +, unless you are doing this for many TV’s, you may be better off paying for the ISF technician.

Another toy I saw that piqued my attention, but I haven’t seen in use is the Calibug. This is essentially a number of test patterns put into a USB flash drive. It does look intriguing, but I don’t know if I would spend over $100 on screenshots unless I was trying to be the ultimate geek.

Monday, I will get into some more cost effective (as low as $1) methods you can use to calibrate your HDTV.

Datacolor SpyderTV Television Calibration System Review
SpyderTV Review by PCMagazine
HDTVexpert — Tutorial — How to Calibrate a Professional Video Projector
Calibug

When my brother first told me about this camera, I thought it was a hoax. You know how before the Xbox 360 or PS3 designs were revealed, lots of computer-rendered shots of supposed “official” versions of the consoles were “leaked”. And they all turned out to be fakes, of course.

Well, it looks like this thing, as crazy as it looks, might actually be the real deal. It’s an HD video camera, but man it looks funky! It has a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor to make this camera truly HD.

You can reserve one of these baby for a paltry $1000. (Refundable, of course.) Final MSRP is tentatively set at $17,500.

Whew!

Red One Camera - Now With Mysterium!

Here’s just a small reminder that Blu-ray.com has a list of Blu-ray Disc (BD) movies in the offing. The list is quite substantial and it looks like there will be a good many released on May 23rd, even though the first BD player, from Samsung, won’t hit stores until June.

Desperado is on the list, which I remember being one of the launch or near-launch titles on DVD. (Or is my memory just playing tricks?) But I look at the list (and the same was true for the HD DVD titles) and none of them really stick out as must-buy titles. I might pick up one or two just because they’re new and HD, but other than that, I’ll have to wait for the truly good movies to come out before starting my HD disc collection.

It would have been nice, though, to have the list in chronological order instead of alphabetical. Or both, even.

Blu-ray Movies

A week or two ago HD Beat took a look at the Akimbo HD download service. The subscription fee is $9.99 per month, and you download content to a stand-alone set-top-box, or to your Windows Media Center Edition PC. Mr. Drawbaugh chose the latter option.

Akimbo has only recently started carrying content from HDNet, so the selection of HD content is still limited. Hopefully that’ll change as time goes by. Lots of content is free, but shows from cable range between $0.49 and $9.99. I don’t know if that’s per month or per episode, but either way, that’s steep when you consider that you’re already paying the $9.99 monthly fee.

Mr. Drawbaugh was impressed with the service, but didn’t like the limited selection.

Hmmm, not for me. Like I’ve said before, the Akimbo service seems too expensive for what you get.

Review: HD Downloads via Akimbo

It seems that Mitsubishi is dipping their toes into laser. Michael Fremer from Ultimate AV doesn’t love what he sees yet, but these were just prototypes to start getting the hype up.

Will we see laser HDTV’s in the near future?

Brighter. Colored lasers so possibly no color wheel required. Low or no heat. Longer lasting. As Dvorak puts it:

Like an LED-driven display, the Laser HDTV uses less power and delivers a greater color gamut (in this case, up to 1.8 times greater than an LCD TV). In addition, although it may not be flat, it’s not nearly as deep as a CRT and uses far less power than a plasma

The other future technology on the block is SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display). Say that 10 times real fast. In essence it is a souped up version of CRT. CRT has a big advantage to all of the current technologies out there (DLP, LCD, LCOS etc…). Contrast. Depending on what you read, you can see contrast ratios for CRT from 20,000:1 to 50,000:1. SED claims to hopefully deliver:

* Response Time: Less than 1ms
* Contrast Ratio: 100,000:1
* Viewing Angle: 180° in each direction (full hemisphere)
* Power Consumption: Less than LCDs, highly efficient
* SED is also expected to fully support all HDTV video modes (1080i, 720p, etc.)

100,000:1? That would be something to see. Some units were on display at CES this year, but only yielded a 10,000:1 ratio. only.

Anyway look for more on on SED later this summer and fall, and laser technologies most likely at CES ‘07.

Ultimate AV: There’s No Business Like The TV Business

GotFrag Hardware - Hardware Home News Story - SED: The Next Big Thing

Two quick articles with a lot of information. The first one states that both of the Toshiba HD-DVD players output their signal at 1080i, but it also goes on to explain that Blu-Ray will only be 1080p.

However, it seems certain now that some HD DVD player owners will have 1080p movies in their repertoire, which their players downgrade to 1080i, only to have the images reassembled by their digital displays into 1080p again. Both players and movies for Blu-ray - whose dual-layer format has a 50 GB capacity - are currently slated to support only 1080p resolution

Point Blu-Ray.

The second article is on how HDCP is a boondoggle to consumers and the MPAA is just laughing all the way to the bank. Let me explain. Even with HDCP cracked, High definition hardware must still support HDCP and pay royalties to use it. China, Korea, and anyone else must also bow to the HDCP god and pay if they want to ship to the US.

With the MPAA adding an encryption scheme (no matter how weak), they now have precedence to sue anyone and everyone under the DMCA if they in any way try to circumvent their “scheme”. Let us hear from my new “buddy” Ed Felton:

A much more plausible answer is that HDCP encryption exists only as a hook on which to hang lawsuits. For example, if somebody makes unlicensed displays or format converters, copyright owners could try to sue them under the DMCA for circumventing the encryption. (Also, converter box vendors who accepted HDCP’s license terms might sue vendors who didn’t accept those terms.) The price of enabling these lawsuits is to add the cost of 10,000 gates to every high-def TV or video source, and to add another way in which high-def video devices can be incompatible.

Warner, Universal experiment with HD DVD format variations in new releases
HDTV and HD-DVD encryption not intended for security - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity
Freedom to Tinker
Ed Felton’s beginning series about HDCP. Read all three!
EFF blog on why hollywood want HDCP broke

Here’s a strange one. How would you like to go to the store, bring home Terminator 2 on BD, plop it in your computer, transfer a video file over to your iPod, and then watch the movie on your iPod?

I don’t get it. I never understood why a study would release a movie on UMD because I never understood why anyone would want to watch a movie on a PSP. (Disclaimer: I have a PSP.) Similarly I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch a movie on an iPod.

iPod and PSP screens are just too small to get a good movie experience. They’re too small to watch television shows, for that matter. I’ve been wondering what these tiny little screens might be good for. Maybe video podcasts, maybe some news snippets? Like Rocketboom or something like that.

Anybody have thoughts?

Apple trying to include iPod video content on Blu-ray discs?

Warner Brothers is releasing Rumor Has it with Jennifer Aniston as their first hybrid title. What’s a hybrid title? Glad you asked. It’s a disc that holds the HD DVD version of the movie on one side, and the normal, standard definition, DVD version on the other. I think this is a great idea. You can buy a disc and play it on your DVD player today. But when you’ve finally saved up the clams and shell out for an HD DVD player, you just play the other side of the disc and get it in glorious HD!

I just see two problems.

One: the case looks like an HD DVD case, so the movie will probably end up in the HD DVD section. So it would be the coincidence of the century if someone bought this movie for use on a DVD player unless they knew exactly what they were doing. And this being such a new format, that’s unlikely as of yet.

Two: this disc is expensive! The MSRP is $39.99. That’s more than HD DVD pricing! The regular DVD will sell for $28.98. Come on folks! This is just getting crazy. Gouge. Gouge gouge. And then gouge some more. If you want people to actually buy your stuff, how about actually making it affordable, instead of pricing it in the stratosphere and then claiming that the experiment failed?

Well, hopefully some other studios will get the concept right.

Warner makes Rumor first hybrid

Projector Central takes a look at InFocus’ new IN76 DLP projector. This 1280 x 720 DLP projector has an attached MSRP of $2,999. It uses a six-segment four-times speed colour wheel, is 1000 ANSI lumens bright, and has a contrast ratio of 3000:1. But those 1000 lumens? They’re “video optimized”. So this projector is a lot brighter than that number may suggest.

The contrast is good for its class, but not the best. The IN76’s deinterlacer works pretty well for film based sources, but not so good on video sources. The sharpness is good for its price class, and colour is good too.

Surprisingly, these projectors come already calibrated to 65K, so no ISF calibration is required (at least with respect to the colour temperature!).

Conclusion?

though it is a strong contender that will hold its own in today’s market, if official street prices are maintained at $2,999 it would be difficult to characterize the IN76 as standing out above the crowd in the highly competitive 720p niche. Nevertheless, its impressive image, its sleek and beautiful casework design, and the distribution muscle of InFocus will work in tandem to ensure that the IN76 gets its fair share of the booming home theater market.

Review: InFocus Play Big IN76