Calibration

[Lee Christie]

Hi, I'm not new to the forum but this is a n00b question so I put it here.

How do I calibrate my display so the "black bars" look black, not grey*** (I can fix that by turning the gamma down a bit but then everyone's faces look purple), and how do I reduce image noise, (most of my Blu-rays look speckley up close**, and turning on "noise reduction" in my NVIDIA control panel does nothing - makes it neither better nor worse)?

I'm using CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra*, graphic card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GTX, monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 245B.

Thanks.

* I cannot disable Hardware Acceleration in CyberLink for Blu-rays, my graphics card seems to force itself to override any of CyberLink's video settings.

** EDIT: "dithered" is what i meant to say, you know like you get in GIF images, my the colors don't blend togethor properly, like this:


(but not that extreme, it's not that bad)

*** EDIT: also, i read the posts about black bars, everyone just says "they're normal, calibrate your display so they look black and turn the lights off", but how do you make them look black?