Professional calibration and moving.

[nhaase]

I've had my TV for about 7 months now, and want to have it professionally calibrated. I've heard pretty much everyone say it is worth it, but I'm in a conundrum here:

I will probably be moving out of my apartment this summer, so I will at least be waiting until I get into my new place before doing this. However, there's no lock that I'll be in that place more than one year. So, my question is, will moving the TV from one house/apartment to another mess up the picture calibration? I could see that it might, but I figured the best way to know would be to float this topic on these forums.

If it could mess up the calibration (which we know isn't cheap) then I will hold off and just get DVE and live with that until I've settled somewhere. I just want to make sure that when I spend $300 it won't all go down the crapper when I move again. Like I said, I won't do it until after I've moved this summer, but I might have to move again in the summer of '08.

Thanks in advance for all replies.

[JTK]

Lots of myths surrounding this.

No, you shouldn't have to have your TV recalibrated with each move unless someone tries to play basketball with it.

[clyon]

1 thing that is taken into consideration in calibration is the lighting in the room.

A pro will go into the service menu, besides the normal set-up menu, so there No way you can mess with that set-up easly.

Just get a calibration dvd, tv's now days have so may things in the set-up menu you don't need to hire someone. Unless you have a front projector, those can be very hard to calibrate.

P.S.
'The AVIA Guide to Home Theater' is one of the best calibration dvd's you can get

[nhaase]

Originally Posted by clyon

1 thing that is taken into consideration in calibration is the lighting in the room.

A pro will go into the service menu, besides the normal set-up menu, so there No way you can mess with that set-up easly.

Just get a calibration dvd, tv's now days have so may things in the set-up menu you don't need to hire someone. Unless you have a front projector, those can be very hard to calibrate.

P.S.
'The AVIA Guide to Home Theater' is one of the best calibration dvd's you can get

Yea, the lighting in the room is why I'm waiting until I move. I don't want to have a wall of windows in my new place, which I don't have now, because then everything goes to hell w/ the calibration.

As for your comment to just get a DVD, is this just your opinion, or what? I'm not insinuating anything, just asking if you've compared the two methods or anything like that. In other threads on here people have raved about the results of calibration. I know some of that can be perception, wanting to justify spending the money for it, but with so many people speaking in its favor, it's hard to believe they're all tricking themselves.

[clyon]

Since your going to be moving again in a year, if I am read that right, wait until you get in a place where you going to be in for a few years.
I don't know what tv you have, some have lots of setting to tweek, some not that much.
Calibirations DVD's are not that much, $35-40. Best to start with that & then if your not happy then you can go for the Pro's (a good one). You don't just get a dvd, you also get color filters, Green, Blue & red to adjust the colors.
Just don't jump the shark unless you have too.

The starting price for a good pro to have the tv calbrated is $300 & can go up from there. I have read where people had someone fly in to the town where they live just to calibrate there tv, so they say.

You can always resell the dvd in the end.

[nhaase]

Yea, I'm waiting for my finals to get done, then I'm getting the calibration DVD. That should work for me, and if after I move the picture seems to have changed, I'll know to save my money. Thanks for the info.

[Blu Tiger]

Getting my tv calibrated was worth it. I've heard using a disc to do it can be good, but the tech that did mine could access a menu on my tv that I can't so there are limits to using a disc to calibrate it.

[Matt X]

hey, question about this that just popped into my head...
if one's TV's warranty has expired, and one wants to take the chance, is there a way to cheaply access the "pro" menus? I'm wondering if I might be able to cheaply buy any equipment necessary to do that kind of calibration and save myself close to $300. As you can tell, I have no idea if this is possible/not possible. I'm assuming NOT (there's prob. some proprietary equipment each manufacturer only issues to service guys), but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[WriteSimply]

All you need for the pro menus is the code. It's usually a bunch of buttons on the remote you have to punch in sequence.

The rest of the stuff may or may not require tweaking the IC boards of the TV/projector. For CRT/CRT RPTVs, that may involve some physical tweaking. I don't think it's the same with DLP/LCD/Plasma sets.

If you can find the code and the service manual for it, post it here for posterity.


fuad

[hasaanchop]

Originally Posted by clyon

1 thing that is taken into consideration in calibration is the lighting in the room.

A pro will go into the service menu, besides the normal set-up menu, so there No way you can mess with that set-up easly.

Just get a calibration dvd, tv's now days have so may things in the set-up menu you don't need to hire someone. Unless you have a front projector, those can be very hard to calibrate.

P.S.
'The AVIA Guide to Home Theater' is one of the best calibration dvd's you can get

Wrong wrong wrong. The benefits of a calibrationist that actually knows what the hell they're doing is worth gold. You can't fix red push by getting into a user menu. You need a color decoder calibration. You can't adjust baseline CRT voltage with a user menu. You don't adjust grayscale with a user menu. Go to www.cir-engineering.com, look under the CRT section, and you'll see the wealth of adjustments that go into a serious calibration. The bonus with Craig is, that once you get the initial cal, a follow-up visit, if even necessary, is almost nothing. I've moved after a cal before, took my time with it and didn't race to my new house. For the most part it was fine. Just my $.02.