Calibrating your HDTV (oodah lolly!)

Reading various tech and HD related websites, one thing I constantly see mentioned is the importance of calibrating your HDTV. The TVs on display at Best Buy/Circuit City/etc always have their brightness, contrast, and other settings skewed to make the picture "pop" in the bright, fluorescent environment, and the stock factory settings usually cater to this. Needless to say, this does not necessarily make for the best picture in a normal viewing environment like a living room.

I've read some people make claims like "Buying an HDTV and watching it with factory settings is like buying a Ferrari and only driving it in first gear." This is a downright stupid comparison, and given the subjectivity of picture quality, there's a chance that the improvements made by calibration might not be that noticeable to the average joe (i.e. us). I've seen special calibration discs on sale at Best Buy that walk you through the process, but I have never bothered with it because I've always been happy with how my TV looks and I don't want to go messing around with settings I don't understand. Also, it's 25 bucks. Screw that. Anyway, I came across an article on Gizmodo (a good site btw), about an easy way to do a basic calibration on your TV. To avoid repeating what he says, I'll let you read it straight from the source:

How to calibrate your new HDTV (and not lose your mind)

I looked through my DVDs to try to find one with the THX Optimizer tool. I tried Aliens, but I couldn't find the option in the menu. I did, however, have luck with Toy Story. I went to the audio/video setup and clicked on the THX logo and it launched. It was pretty straightforward and easy to use. I only ended up changing a couple of settings by one or two, so the difference is not really drastic in any way, but I do feel better knowing I'm not missing out on a better picture.

So, I figured I'd post this since I *think* you guys are probably in the same boat. You might not get a huge change either, and it might not be as thorough as using the special disc or getting a professional to do it (yeah people can actually be hired to do it) , but I'd say it's at least worth Netflixing a movie with the Optimizer tool and doing it for yourself. At least if you ever come across some electronics nerd (even more so than me) you can say you're cruising in like third or fourth gear.


**EDIT**: Scratch what I said about my settings not being changed much. I just checked it again, and there were a couple settings enabled to auto-adjust color/brightness. Make sure you pay attention to that part of the walkthrough. My contrast was actually way higher than it needed to be.





I hope you enjoyed my first post. I feel that random technology-related posts are something I can bring to the table.