The art of calibration

You just spent your hard-earned money on a new home theatre projector or a new OLED television. So, why is the grass blue? In a home cinema, picture quality is everything. Calibrating contrast, brightness, colour and sharpness is not most people’s idea of a good night in – get someone to visit any picture menu during a movie and you’re bound to get a barrage of groans.

But while not most of people’s favourite activity, calibrating your television or home theatre projector properly is rather important. A correctly calibrated TV or home theatre projector will create a much more natural image that is more pleasing to the eye, and may — depending on its light output afterward — draw less power and even last longer. 

Here’s the deal: Before shooting a movie, cameras are checked for the correct white balance. But any of that is not going to provide a great picture on your end unless you also adjust your display. This also matters for gamma and colour display. Unless you calibrate your display, you don’t know if you see the images truly. Simple as that.

And to add another wrinkle, today’s high dynamic range and wide colour gamut displays require additional, specialized calibration.

From the early days of television, the video industry has agreed upon standards for how video signals should be formed on one hand and how electronic displays should render those signals into visible images on the other. Without conformance to those video standards, we wouldn’t be able to produce images with the same visual and emotional impact on to your television or projector screen. Imagine the frustration and chaos a lack of those standards would create.

When it comes to audio, for any good AV receiver it’s fairly easy: most of them come with calibration features (albeit not all of them created equal, but that is a different story). There is no such luck with home theatre projectors though. As a matter of fact, most home theatre projectors don’t have any calibration features of any kind (JVC being the big exception). And while the Spears & Munsil blu-ray discs are great, they still rely on the accuracy of your eye.

As far as televisions are concerned, we need to point out that there is a difference between ‘set-up’ and ‘calibration’. Often those two concepts are used interchangeably, but there is a very distinct difference. ‘Setup’ is what you can do with the basic TV controls using just your eyes. While you may believe that it does the trick for you, there is nothing scientific or ‘conform to standards’ about that.

Adjusting a displays colour temperature correctly isn’t something you can really do with your eye. Sure, you can think you picked the correct temperature just by looking at it, but it’s nearly impossible to do correctly.

‘Calibration’ on the other hand goes a fair bit further than a simple setup. It requires specialized test equipment and a good amount of know-how.

So where are we going with all this? The Rapallo installation services portfolio keeps on growing and improving. While our team does a fair amount of installations, there is also the calibration side to be considered. And if we are going to do it, we want to do it well. Our team recently acquired the Spectracal C6 colorimeter and the Calman software to take our video calibration service to the next level.

‘Sure’, we hear you think, ‘Good for you. So?’.

But here’s why this is something to be excited about: The SpectraCal C6 Colorimeter is one of the most advanced light measurement devices available. It’s not a device you just throw in your supermarket trolley for a few bucks like the above-mentioned Spears & Munsil blu-rays.

As a matter of fact, it’s a pretty professional device. Companies like Technicolor, Walt Disney Pictures, Dolby, Apple, JVC and Panasonic use CalMAN calibration software and solutions and that should tell you something.

Every C6 colorimeter sold is first certified in SpectraCal’s calibration lab with a Konica Minolta CS-2000 and comes with a NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) certificate of accuracy.

And this should matter to you, because the simple fact that you invested in a home theatre projector or new television tells us that you care about the image you are watching.

Good display calibration uses specialized calibration software to measure a display’s performance with a colour meter and either adjust the display controls and/or create calibration data to correct the display’s luminance and colour performance.

During display calibration, adjustments are made to things like dynamic range, gamma, white balance and gamut. The end-result is a realistic image that looks as it was meant to be by the maker.

Is this service worth it for you? It depends. You may be happy with the out of the box settings on your television. Most home theatre projectors are already a bit more hard-case when it comes to set-up.

Of course, you could buy a cheap colour meter yourself for less than a professional calibration, but we don’t really recommend it. Even if the device is accurate, the learning curve is pretty steep.

Another shortcut to calibration is copying someone else’s settings from the web. But this is nowhere near as useful as it sounds. Every display is different, so one person’s settings aren’t going to be the correct settings for your device. Sometimes the difference might just be a few clicks in either direction.

On a final note, we want to make sure that you have realistic expectations before picking up the phone to book your television calibration.

Some of us turn the sharpness control very high. But it adds an artificial edge to everything. It masks real detail and when you take it away, the image will initially appear soft and will take some getting used to, even though it’s actually showing more fine detail.

So, if you are interested in calibrating your display or monitor, please contact us. We are ready to match the best calibration solutions to your unique display application.

Source: Spectracal Technical paper by Tom Schulte

Photo from Toms Hardware