So you’ve got a new TV and you want to get it calibrated. You’ve read all the articles that say it’s smart money spent to make your new set as good as it can be. You may have even visited the ISF website and found a recommended guy in your area. But the guy you called wants $400 and you heard that Sparky down at the Geek Squad is now offering “ISF” calibrations for $300. A chance to save a buck? Let’s take a closer look.
The annual flat panel shootout at Value Electronics in Scarsdale, New York on June 26thand June 27th was more ambitious than ever before. This year, I was ably assisted by two other calibrators, D-Nice of AVS Forum fame, and Edward Johnson from North Jersey. We calibrated, measured, and tabulated data on eight of the industry's leading Flat panel TVs: Four of the top plasma panels, the Samsung PN50B860, the Pioneer KRP500M, the Panasonic TC-50V10, and the LGPS60, and four of the top LCD panels, the Samsung UN55B8000, LG55LH90, the Toshiba 55SV670U, and the Sony KDL-52XBR9. We measured Black level, Contrast Ratio, Grayscale tracking, Gamma, and Color space on all the panels and tabulated the results. Rather than give the test results first, we thought it would be fun and interesting to have the audience cast their votes based on both viewing test patterns related to each parameter, and also reference Blu-ray movie material like "The Dark Knight", and others.
Of all of the major players in LCD flat panel television (Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Mitsubishi, Vizio, LG, and Sharp) Sharp gets the award for the most calibration unfriendly LCD flat panel currently on the market.
It is fitting that my first blog topic should be about one of the calibration community's most controversial topics of late: Pioneer's attempt to keep professionals from being able to calibrate their latest regular line plasma panels, the 20 series (PDP-5020FD
and PDP-6020FD).
On April 19th I published a short piece on a rather serious issue I encountered in the field while calibrating the very popular Pioneer PDP-5080 720p resolution plasma panel. You may recall that when I completed the grayscale calibration in the service menu, and exited the service menu to take measurements to check the accuracy of the grayscale, I found that it hadn't retained the calibration settings at all. Quite by chance, I found that if you turn off the Pure Cinema, then the calibrated grayscale returned.
Should I buy a plasma or an LCD flat panel HDTV? That is the question for many would-be HDTV buyers in today's flat panel dominated HDTV world. Plasma panels, or PDPs as they are referred to, are still considered by most display experts, me included, all things considered, to produce better pictures then LCD flat panel HDTVs. That, of course, is a generalization. Let's define it for the purposes of determining what is better for a particular application. Strictly speaking, if picture quality is the primary priority, then the best plasmas will outperform the best LCD panels. This is due mainly to the fact that the better plasma panels have superior black level performance, which in turn gives them greater contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is the single most important component of a video picture to the human eye. We refer to this as the "Snap" or "Pop" of the picture. Additionally, better black level performance also equates to deeper more saturated color.
I recently did my first professional calibration for a TweakTV customer who lives in Queens, New York. The set was the very popular Pioneer PDP-5080HD 720p resolution regular line model. I have done hundreds and hundreds of Pioneers over the years whether the regular line, the professional line or the highly acclaimed Elite series.
This winter has been a busy one for the TweakTV team. We have
calibrated more than a handful of Samsung, LG, Sony, Sharp and
Panasonic HDTV's
over the past month. It looks like the cold winter months is turning
us into some serious HDTV viewers. We are glad to help you all in need
with our personal, in home calibrations. As you may know, from these
professional calibrations we get FREE suggested settings for you. Here
are two highly requested Vizio's.
Blogs 
The annual flat panel shootout at Value Electronics in Scarsdale, New York on June 26th
On April 19th I published a short piece on a rather serious issue I encountered in the field while calibrating the very popular 
Should I buy a plasma or an LCD flat panel HDTV? That is the question for many would-be HDTV buyers in today's flat panel dominated HDTV world. Plasma panels, or PDPs as they are referred to, are still considered by most display experts, me included, all things considered, to produce better pictures then LCD flat panel HDTVs. That, of course, is a generalization. Let's define it for the purposes of determining what is better for a particular application. Strictly speaking, if picture quality is the primary priority, then the best plasmas will outperform the best LCD panels. This is due mainly to the fact that the better plasma panels have superior black level performance, which in turn gives them greater contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is the single most important component of a video picture to the human eye. We refer to this as the "Snap" or "Pop" of the picture. Additionally, better black level performance also equates to deeper more saturated color. 
I recently did my first professional calibration for a TweakTV customer who lives in Queens, New York. The set was the very popular Pioneer PDP-5080HD 720p resolution regular line model. I have done hundreds and hundreds of Pioneers over the years whether the regular line, the professional line or the highly acclaimed Elite series. 
