Complete It Presentation has a Certified ISF Calibrator on Staff, we are listed on
www.imagingscience.com web site.
You just spent your hard-earned money on a new home theater video display.
Don't panic, there is an easy solution. If you have your display professionally calibrated, to industry standards, you can enjoy the full quality capabilities of your new (or older) TV, monitor, or video projector.
When TV programming is produced, or a film is converted to video or DVD, the process is precisely controlled to industry standards
(NTSC, ATSC, and SMPTE) by monitoring the programming on correctly calibrated displays. A great deal of effort and expense is
invested to be sure that the picture light levels and image colors are processed properly at every step of the way. You can
accurately reproduce the full, original quality of those video programs in your home only if your video display is calibrated to the
same industry standards.
Your display, the final step in that precisely calibrated distribution system, can do full justice to that high quality video signal. It can give you picture quality approaching, or even exceeding, that of the local cinema theater. But, more often, a mis-calibrated
video display mangles the picture miserably. Remember how different all those TVs looked at the store, even though they were all receiving the same program? The difference wasn't so much the different quality of the various models as it was the non-standard adjustment of each display. Calibration is one of the most effective and least expensive improvements you can make to your video
display.
You will see a significant difference immediately.
A properly calibrated home theater display:
- Displays a sharper focused, full resolution image.
- Shows full detail in both the darkest and brightest parts of all scenes.
- Is properly matched to the video system and the viewing environment.
- Maintains the same accurate color balance in both picture lowlights and highlights.
- Produces a full range of accurate colors, including flesh tones, grass, sky, and sports jerseys.
- Produces a "film look" comparable to 35mm pictures or cinema theaters.
- Displays film qualities as the cinematographer intended.
- Minimizes picture artifacts (distortions).
- Is easier on your eyes.
- Lasts up to twice as long as a display with factory default settings.
Factory Calibration
The manufacturer doesn't calibrate the display at the factory for the best possible picture in your home because they want the
display to look as appealing as possible (brightest) next to competing displays on a dealer's showroom floor. Since a showroom floor
often has a high ambient light level, the manufacturer usually sets the brightness, contrast, and service controls for the highest
"apparent" light output.
Even if the manufacturer had spent more time setting each adjustment 'just right' on every display, according to industry standards,
that would greatly increase what you had to pay for your display, and many of the adjustments would still have been incorrect after
it was installed in your home, due to the effects of shipping, initial aging of your display, and the lighting effects of your
particular viewing environment.
Solutions: "So how can I get my video display looking the best it can?"
How do you ever get to see the deep, fully-detailed dark grays and vivid blacks; bright picture highlights with no out-of-focus
blooming; and most stunning, those gorgeous accurate colors the cinematographers and videographers wanted you to see?
We will precisely calibrate your display's user controls (brightness, contrast, color, hue, sharpness) and service controls
(white balance, SVM, color decoder, focus, geometry, etc.) to industry standards, using a suite of precision calibration tools.
Video display calibration is recommended by: Home Theater Magazine, Audio Video Interiors, Widescreen Review, Stereophile's Guide to
Home Theater, and Sound & Vision magazines for the best picture a display can make!
What kind of problems can the ISF calibration correct?
Contrast- The factory sets contrast way too high to promote in-store sales. This clips off white picture detail and increases
your risk for burn-in on Plasma and CRT displays. Excessive contrast also contributes to eye strain during evening viewing.
Brightness- Brightness set too high causes the picture to look washed out and have no shadow depth or detail. Setting it too
low crushes black detail and causes dark muddy images. ISFÂ calibration finds the best possible setting.
Color- Turning color down to set the correct amount of red causes blue and green to look pale. Equal amounts of the primary
colors greatly improves the picture.
Tint- Adjusts the picture towards green or red but the colors still look off balance until the color decoder is set properly.
Grayscale- This adjustment requires equal amounts of red, green and blue to achieve neutral whites, grays and blacks.
Manufacturers add extra blue at this stage to create the illusion of more contrast. Calibration restores the balance.
Color Decoder- Picture in your mind that red, green and blue all have separate Color and Tint controls and the factory turned
only the red color control way up. This is known as Red Push and is a common technique with manufacturers to hide all the extra blue
the Grayscale error added to the picture. Calibration restores equal amounts of Color and Tint to all the primary and secondary
colors.
Color Management- Newer digital displays offer the ability to re-align the primary and secondary colors to SMPTE CIE standards
and create a more accurate image. This menu structure allows the display to generate the best possible color.
Sharpness- The factory sets sharpness way too high adding a false border artifact around the edge of every line. This is also
known as edge enhancement. Sharpness should really be labeled "noise" since that is all it actually adds to the picture. Calibration
finds the optimum balance between a soft picture and excessive noise for each source in your system.
Centering- Often the news crawls are cut off from the bottom of your picture. Calibration centers the picture for equal
spacing on all sides and minimum overscan.
Focus- Rear projection displays have focus controls that are not adjusted as tightly as possible on the assembly line. Digital
displays rarely have focus problems.
Convergence- Rear projection needs to have red and blue aligned with green to achieve a sharp image free of colored borders on
edges. Digital displays with 3 chip designs need small adjustments.
How much does ISF calibration cost? $497 + GST
What is included for that price?
All of the procedures listed above for two inputs and two scan rates if your display is capable. A before and after ISF calibration
report is standard for all customers.
All pricing for special requests and out of area travel is not included in the above pricing and will be discussed during
consultation.
