[cbemoore]

I'm about to take delivery of my new TV, so I've been busy reading and learning about how to calibrate it once it arrives. But there is one thing that confuses me.

A number of posts mention that each HDMI source should be calibrated separately, and if you change a source (eg you buy a new blu-ray player) you will need to recalibrate.

Now I can understand this for analogue sources, but why does this apply to HDMI? Surely HDMI video is digital, and any blu-ray player *should* output exactly the same video stream?

If I buy 2 different CD transports, I'd expect them to output exactly the same PCM audio stream when playing a CD (with the obvious exception of jitter). So why is HDMI video different?

Chris

[andy1249]

Once the screen is calibrated you leave it as is , HDMI sources should be passing the video untouched , but a lot of blu ray players have calibration controls.

The general consensus is that you should leave these at settings that pass the data untouched.
Check out the many blu ray player reviews on here for details on this.

[Avi]

Originally Posted by cbemoore

I'm about to take delivery of my new TV, so I've been busy reading and learning about how to calibrate it once it arrives. But there is one thing that confuses me.

A number of posts mention that each HDMI source should be calibrated separately, and if you change a source (eg you buy a new blu-ray player) you will need to recalibrate.

Now I can understand this for analogue sources, but why does this apply to HDMI? Surely HDMI video is digital, and any blu-ray player *should* output exactly the same video stream?

If I buy 2 different CD transports, I'd expect them to output exactly the same PCM audio stream when playing a CD (with the obvious exception of jitter). So why is HDMI video different?

Chris

I guess it depends what you mean by calibration. On the players I've used configured in the same way I haven't found it necessary to change basic black, contrast etc calibration. I think the important point is ensuring each device is configured the same i.e. colourspace (YCbCr 4:2:2, YCbCr 4:4:4, RGB, HDMI black level (PC/Video), Superwhite etc if you change players . Different players may provide options for the user to determine these output settings whilst others don't or use different defaults. This may cause calibration issues depending on the display or display settings etc.

AVI

[cbemoore]

That makes sense to me - thanks for the comments! I'll post here to let everyone know how my calibration goes....

[KMO]

I agree with all the above.

But you should be also be aware that TVs sometimes have multiple sets of calibration settings, depending on the input and/or type. And whether it does or not isn't always obvious. If you set everything up on one particular source, the settings may not get applied to other material.

For example, my Panasonic V10 has six sets of greyscale settings - Warm/Normal/Cool for HD resolutions and the same again for SD resolutions, but these apply to all inputs. It has many sets of screen size/position settings - one for apparently every combination of input and resolution.

This flexibility proved useful when dealing with the various issues with SD geometry (gratuitous plug for my new guide ). But it can be annoying having to manually replicate settings on every input.