Thunder
Active Member
I havnt had my CRT installed to long and had had quite a bit of work alraedy done to it in relation to callibration, but there were one or two things that were not quite right. One of the main issues that annoyed me (being a perfectionist) was that in certain film material I was able to see blue flashes in the image. These seemed to occur when watching dark and highly contrasted scenes. PAL material in particular was week in comparison to NTSC but I had been informed that this was due to the Lumagen not being to hot on PAL stuff. Also I use the S-vid input on the Luma for playing X-box games as well as very occasionaly watching a bit of freeview, the images from these inputs were quite ropy and I had also had cable trouble. I had had words with several people about some of these little niggles and had been given conflicting advice, from its your eyes to some very complex explanations due to colour lag and the way my scaler handles the signal 
This all left me quite frustrated and I had just become resigned to living with it as it was until I had learned enough about video to try and sort it myself (I will admit although I know a fair bit about audio, I am lacking in my knowledge of video and in particular CRT PJs) After having been in contact with Gordon (from Convergent AV) on several occasions with questions about my scaler and other things and having read some great reports on what he does I decided to set him a challenge. I said to him did he reckon he could get anymore performance out of my system considering it had already been worked on and he said that he would give it a go Gordon arrived like clockwork dead on his appt time on Saturday, not bad considering I was his first stop from Glasgow He started by doing an initial assesment of my system and after only five minutes he said "I reckon we can make this better" First of all he sorted out the geometry which was out I actually felt quite embaressed that I hadnt noticed but just hadnt bothered to check something so simple. Next he sorted out the image blanking to make sure I was seeing as much of the pic as possible. Gordon then set up his instruments and software and got into the real technical stuff. This involved setting the colour intensity for red green and blue so that it matched as closely as possible the defined RGB response curves for both NTSC and PAL material. This involves running a test pattern and disconnecting all but the tube of the desired colour for callibration. Gordons instrument then takes readings every few seconds of the screen as we work our way through the frequency response curve. He then uses independent controls on the Lumagen to flatten out the resonse as much as poss to make sure the colour balance is as accurate as possible at all frequencies (pretty intense stuff) The same is then done for the grey scale i.e the light and shade in the picture. This ensures that white scenes arnt to bright and that dark scenes arnt to dark and that maximum detail can be seen in both Gordon said that CRTs are a little difficult to set up accurately throughout the frequency range as due to the fact that they are analogue devices the dont have a uniform response, but he still ironed it out as much as possible He did the sme thing for both NTSC and PAL and all inputs This all actually reminded me of TMREQ i.e irioning out all the response curves except with video as opposed to audio of course.
Well now to the results. All that I can is Im very impressed, overall I was quite stunned by the overall image quality before despite all the niggles but Gordon has taken it to another level Every piece of detail is now visible in dark sequences, but what is also quite impressive is that watching a film that has a backdrop of snow or very bright scenes you can see much more texture and detail within the white rather than it just being plain bright white. Also I might have thought PAL was weak before but now it looks great 
In the opening scene fron Vanhelsing with Mr Hyde which is very dark, before it was hard to make out fine detail but now you can see every little thing and the variation in his skin tones etc etc. I could go on forever (I already have gone on for quite a bit) All that I can say is that I can only highly recommend Gordons callibration system, it quite frankly produces stunning results
Just as a note this thread is in no way intended to critisize the skill of anybody else who has worked on my system
This all left me quite frustrated and I had just become resigned to living with it as it was until I had learned enough about video to try and sort it myself (I will admit although I know a fair bit about audio, I am lacking in my knowledge of video and in particular CRT PJs) After having been in contact with Gordon (from Convergent AV) on several occasions with questions about my scaler and other things and having read some great reports on what he does I decided to set him a challenge. I said to him did he reckon he could get anymore performance out of my system considering it had already been worked on and he said that he would give it a go Gordon arrived like clockwork dead on his appt time on Saturday, not bad considering I was his first stop from Glasgow He started by doing an initial assesment of my system and after only five minutes he said "I reckon we can make this better" First of all he sorted out the geometry which was out I actually felt quite embaressed that I hadnt noticed but just hadnt bothered to check something so simple. Next he sorted out the image blanking to make sure I was seeing as much of the pic as possible. Gordon then set up his instruments and software and got into the real technical stuff. This involved setting the colour intensity for red green and blue so that it matched as closely as possible the defined RGB response curves for both NTSC and PAL material. This involves running a test pattern and disconnecting all but the tube of the desired colour for callibration. Gordons instrument then takes readings every few seconds of the screen as we work our way through the frequency response curve. He then uses independent controls on the Lumagen to flatten out the resonse as much as poss to make sure the colour balance is as accurate as possible at all frequencies (pretty intense stuff) The same is then done for the grey scale i.e the light and shade in the picture. This ensures that white scenes arnt to bright and that dark scenes arnt to dark and that maximum detail can be seen in both Gordon said that CRTs are a little difficult to set up accurately throughout the frequency range as due to the fact that they are analogue devices the dont have a uniform response, but he still ironed it out as much as possible He did the sme thing for both NTSC and PAL and all inputs This all actually reminded me of TMREQ i.e irioning out all the response curves except with video as opposed to audio of course.Well now to the results. All that I can is Im very impressed, overall I was quite stunned by the overall image quality before despite all the niggles but Gordon has taken it to another level
Every piece of detail is now visible in dark sequences, but what is also quite impressive is that watching a film that has a backdrop of snow or very bright scenes you can see much more texture and detail within the white rather than it just being plain bright white. Also I might have thought PAL was weak before but now it looks great 
In the opening scene fron Vanhelsing with Mr Hyde which is very dark, before it was hard to make out fine detail but now you can see every little thing and the variation in his skin tones etc etc. I could go on forever (I already have gone on for quite a bit) All that I can say is that I can only highly recommend Gordons callibration system, it quite frankly produces stunning results Just as a note this thread is in no way intended to critisize the skill of anybody else who has worked on my system
