Setting My Contrast Once and for All

[nothing.sound]

Ok I have always felt a little unsure if I have my contrast set right. I have been a constant tweaker of my settings for as long as I can remember but I'm trying to get my t.v. set straight once and for all. Ideally an ISF calibration would be a dream but just out of the financial question right now.

Anyways I have the DVE Blu ray and find it works very well. However it says to se the brightness first which I can get right on. Than too set the picture. My problem is that if I turn it all the way up it does not bloom, probably from somethiing clipping it. And obviously if I turn it all the way down than the picture losses it's punch.

The disc uses a reverse gray ramp to adjust this but I find that no matter where I go it kind of stays the same detail wise. I do lose a black bar when I go one way(can't remember if it's lower or higher right now) but if I adjust the brightness I could get it back.

So basically what I'm saying is that I could really put the picture anywhere depending on the brightness. The logical thing to go by would be the brightness pattern (meaning get the brightness right than adjust the picture just before the black bars merge into eachother.) However when I do this the picture or contrast is down to 22 out of 100 and like I said before the image is a little flat. Is this the correct image though? I mean my t.v.'s blacks aren't great it 's a 52kdlv4100 sony lcd.

Any thoughts would be greatlly appreciated.

One more thing is that the t.v. has a white blance option where you can adjust the red, green and blue in both dark and light scenes. On the AVS forums almost everyones adjustments are different. So should this only be tinkered with, by a calibrator or the specials color meters. Thanks again.