Calibration Under Warranty?
Dear Gary: After reading some of the reviews such as Gary Merson’s Toshiba TW56x81 and Zenith IQE64W10W, it seems to me that there is an awful lot of tweaking that must be done to get the best possible picture. How does the average consumer know if he’s getting the most from his television? Is it possible to get the best picture right out of the box via the user friendly controls provided or must a qualified technician always come to one’s home to make further adjustments inside the set? Is this covered under the warranty?
Ernie Butkovich, eandmbutkovich@netscape.net
Video Technical Editor Greg Rogers Comments:
There are several factors involved in your question. Sadly, consumer pricing doesn’t seem to permit manufacturer’s to optimize the calibration adjustments of most televisions. In some cases, mechanical shock and vibration during shipping will cause errors in geometry or convergence, even if they are optimized prior to shipping. And sometimes manufacturers choose to use factory default settings that make their products standout in a showroom, rather than selecting the settings that would provide the most accurate picture in a home theatre. You can deal with inaccuracies at two levels. First, invest in a DVD that will allow you to accurately calibrate the user controls of your display. There are two excellent choices available—AVIA Guide To Home Theater and Video Essentials. Either one will allow you to properly adjust the user controls of your display. You can also use additional test patterns on these DVDs to see how well the geometry, convergence, and resolution performs. You can also visually check the color temperature uniformity of the gray scale. You may be satisfied with the performance you have, or you can decide to bring in a trained calibration technician to make additional service level adjustments. Manufacturers consider most of the calibration variances you will see to be within shipping tolerances, so they normally won’t cover the cost of optimizing calibration under warranty.
You can E-mail Widescreen Review @ mailto:editorgary@widescreenreview.com