The fact remains that some people, no matter how important they are, decided what the standard is. It was not handed down from heaven, nor is it a basic tenet of physical science. It is a man made construct only. So yes in a sense you are right. Calibration is an attempt to recreate what looked good years ago on different technology in a different environment.
I'm glad that you agree on me on what calibration is. I do however disagree with you that Rec709 calibration is not
"a basic tenet of physical science". It is exactly that. A
tenet is one of the principles on which a belief or theory is based, but I'm not going into a discussion on how science works in the modern world.
My comment on the thread was all about calibration. Everyone has the right to watch the images as they like. I'm talking about means to watch the images as they were
intended when they were created by the film-maker. Without having a calibrated Rec709 preset, which the Panasonic's was not, you cannot do that. Not to offer the option to show the images as they are intended while going the trouble of creating "
pleasing" preset is bad engineering at best.
This is the same in Hi-Fi. You can buy an amplifier with tone control, graphic equaliser, the lot, and change the tonality of the music you listen to as you please. Many do, but that is not Hi-Fi, i.e.
High Fidelity to the original, where the acronym is derived from. Even those amplifiers often have a tone-defeat option that allows you to have a flat 20-20kHz bandwidth. That is the Rec709 setting on a HD display device. Correctly calibrated Rec709 preset makes the TV or projector Hi-Fi.
Like boy racers do with their car audio, anyone can mess with their TV settings and watch a distorted image that matches their taste. It is a free world after all.