[thecapsaicinkid]

I'm using the THX optimiser on a 32" Panasonic PL1 but seem to be having a bit of trouble..

Brightness

Am I right in saying this will vary depending on the amount of light in the room because if I calibrate in a lit room then watch a film in the dark the black level is way off and I need to lower the brightness quite a bit. Problem is I usually game in a lit room and watch films in a dark room.

Contrast

The THX thingy shows a large white cube split into 8 shades of white with 4 distinct cubes. It tells me to adjust the contrast until I lose definition between the 4 shades... even at v high contrast i dont seem to lose much definition, only really noticeable going from minimum to absolute maximum. I also notice video games look washed out if I set the contrast based on films. Games tend to look better with a higher setting.

Sharpness

Everywhere advises to lower this right down or even to zero which looks fine for dvd's but makes regular digital tv look massively soft.



I'm coming to the conclusion I can only calibrate properly for one video source in one lighting condition... any advice whould be much apreciated.

Cheers

Dom.

[fatbob]

It's a shame the manufacturers are too short sighted to make tv's that allow for seperate settings for each input. It's a basic requirement, but very few CRT tv's let you do it.

You're right in saying that brightness settings will differ depending on whether you calibrate in a dark or a light room. The Video Essentials dvd advises that you should always calibrate brightness in the same light conditions that you intend to watch films in. The problems come when you find the settings that suit dvd's don't suit other sources or inputs. It's a common problem, and there's often no convenient way around it, other than to constantly change settings each time you play games.

The only way you might get around it is if your dvd player has it's own controls for contrast, brightness etc, and they allow for quite wide ranging changes. That way you could set the tv to whatever looks good for games, and then lower the dvd's onboard controls until the dvd settings are correct, but the chances are the dvd player won't allow contrast to go low enough to compensate for the tv's brighter settings.

There's a link here to a thread with some pointers to sharpness settings.

If any manufacturers are reading this, then please............GIVE US TV'S THAT ALLOW FOR SEPERATE SETTINGS ON EACH INPUT.

[Stone Free]

In DVE Joe Kane says that when adjusting sharpness that you are so used to the sharpening of TVs that at first you wont like it. But the sharpness control introduces detail that wasnt in the transmitted picture. Try leaving it for a month, and if you still havent got used to it then set it back.

[RohanM]

where can I find the THX optimiser? Have various DVDs it's meant to be on (e.g. Toy Story 1 & 2, Star Wars Ep i & II, etc) but cannot find it... what am I doing wrong???

Note, on Panasonic 36PD30, sharpness setting of one click above 'off' (it adjusts in pre-set chunks) is about right.

If, like the PD30, your telly lets you set colour/brightness/etc for each picture mode (e.g. normal/'dynamic'/'cinema'/ etc), you could potentially save different settings for daytime vs evening DVD viewing...

[deckard]

Originally Posted by speedsix

Contrast

The THX thingy shows a large white cube split into 8 shades of white with 4 distinct cubes. It tells me to adjust the contrast until I lose definition between the 4 shades... even at v high contrast i dont seem to lose much definition, only really noticeable going from minimum to absolute maximum. I also notice video games look washed out if I set the contrast based on films. Games tend to look better with a higher setting.

BE VERY CAREFUL!!! Excessive contrast setting will burn the phosphors on your screen, ie permanently knacker it! The THX optimiser only goes so far I'm afraid in terms of calibration. You should not lose definition between the boxes, you should still be able to see the different shades of white.

I use a TX32-PL1 too and my contrast setting is somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2. Too high a setting can cause blooming (whites stop becoming white, as mentioned above) and also geometry distortions (the power supply of the TV cannot maintain linearity at high contrast -> have a look at an image with vertical lines and move the contrast up and down and seen how they can warp, partic at the edges of the screen).

Contrast setting is a trade-off between adequate light output, abscence of blooming and reducing geometry distortions. The THX pattern isn't up to the task, get yourself a copy of Avia or Digital Video Essentials to set up your screen fully

[cerebros]

Originally Posted by fatbob

If any manufacturers are reading this, then please............GIVE US TV'S THAT ALLOW FOR SEPERATE SETTINGS ON EACH INPUT.

Actually, I'd say give us the option of having up to say 15 or 20 customisable user settings. That way, you can calibrate for different signal formats (NTSC, PAL, HDTV etc) rather than being stuck with one set of settings per input...

I can't see how hard it can be to provide this functionality, Surely it's only a case of storing some settings in non-volatile RAM, and you're hardly going to be talking about large quantities amounts of memory