About DLP, Plasma
& LCD

There are 3 ways to “calibrate” a TV

1) You take the TV out of the box, put batteries in remote; adjust the TV controls (Brightness, Contrast, Color, Tint, and Sharpness) by eye. This is about the same as telling time without a reference (sundial, clock, GPS, etc.)

2) You can adjust the TV controls with Industry Standard test patterns found on AVIA, Digital Video Essentials, and Sound and Vision DVD’s. You now have a reference, but are limited by adjustments available from remote control.

3) ISF Calibration by a trained technician. He uses the television service menus to adjust TV controls, the industry standard DVD’s to adjust regular TV images to maximum resolution of 480P. He also uses a High-Definition test pattern generator to adjust the maximum resolution to limit of the TV. With these calibration procedures, the quality of the TV picture is only limited by the TV and technicians experience. Almost everyone has an opinion of what is a perfect picture, despite lacking a reliable reference for the original image. Ultimately the only perfect picture is an accurate picture, and the only way to achieve accuracy is through professional calibration.

ISF - Image Science Foundation, did research to find a repeatable way to make TV pictures accurate. It’s all based on standard’s developed in the 1950’s, and then defined in the 70’s.

You should be able to see 10 distinct levels of white with this test pattern. If on the right side (white) you can’t see a difference in 80, 90 and 100 blocks of white, you will damage your TV over long periods of time. A plasma TV will be damaged in less that 6 months. This damage is known as ‘burn-in’ and is permanent. The damage is the same as you see on the older ATM machines, where you can still read the words on the screen even though the screen has changed.

By simply adjusting the brightness and contrast with a reference DVD and this test pattern, you can prolong the life (and quality of picture) of your TV.
The other end of the video scale is black. If you can’t see a difference in the 30, 20, and 10 blocks of black, then your picture will not have any details in shadows and dark scenes. This is another step in making sure that your picture is adjusted to that ‘reference’ that we wrote about earlier. However, black is a moving target. The regular TV standard of black is not really black. To be able to transmit images with less effort, the NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) decided that 7 ½ % above true black, or 0, was good enough. So TV shows are recorded with black as 7 ½ instead of 0. Even DVD’s are done this way, and only a few DVD players will actual reproduce real black (0%). Only HDTV uses 0% black as black. There are test patterns to show this difference and adjusting the contrast with these patterns will allow you to get the most out of your TV.