 Professional television calibration takes what we, at TweakTV, are suggesting as a starting point to the highest level of system performance and accuracy. It is essentially a fine tuning of your entire video system by a qualified trained technician with reference level test equipment. What we are providing with the User menu settings for digital cable and/or Satelllite via the HDMI inputs of HDTVs is just a basic start in what we refer to as “System Calibration”. A full professional system calibration includes setting up all the video sources including the cable box and/or satellite receiver, DVD player, and calibrating each input on the TV with a variety of sophisticated TV test equipment.
Professional calibration came into being as a service to consumers when the Imaging Science Foundation was formed, and the first training seminar was conducted in early 1994. It came out of the work done by Joe Kane, Kevin Miller, Stuart Kobak, and Joel Silver at “The Perfect Vision” magazine in the early 1990s. We were the first magazine to implement television calibration as part of both the software and hardware review procedure of the magazine after finding out that other journalists were making incorrect conclusions in both hardware and software reviews, as their sets were not calibrated properly.
Professional calibration consists of calibrating the television based on the system standards that the NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) was designed around. This full system procedure entails setting the TV up with test patterns that tell professional technicians where the optimum settings for Contrast, Brightness, Color, Tint, and Sharpness should be for a given TV, and the source being used. A more complex part of the process is the “Grayscale” or “White Balance” calibration, which requires calibrating the actual color of gray from just above black to peak white. This is the final step in accurate color reproduction from a television, which requires extremely sophisticated test equipment, and a highly trained technician to do the job properly. Keep in mind that Professional Calibration is the calibration of your entire system. The TweakTV information includes only the User menu settings for the digital (HDMI) cable or satellite input/source. Professional full system calibration entails user menu, as well as, service menu adjustments. The service menu is where the more advanced tweaks are performed. It also provides grayscale calibration, and other sophisticated procedures like Color Management calibration, a high level adjustment to the primary and secondary colors available in some HDTVs. Professional system calibration means all the inputs and their various sources are setup individually, and the source components like DVD players and cable boxes are also setup correctly for a given TV. Finally, full documentation of where all the picture settings are set in the TV’s User menu, and pre and post calibration analysis reports are given to every client. 
So why is professional calibration necessary you ask? For a variety of marketing reasons, television manufacturers set their TVs incorrectly from the factory. Since they can’t anticipate which sets will end up on brightly lit showroom floors, and which ones will ultimately be in people’s homes, they set them up for the competitive sales floor environment. This means typically blasting Contrast to 100%, setting color and sharpness much too high, and skewing the grayscale to blue, because blue whites appear to be brighter. The harsh and bright environment of an average sales floor is nothing like the typical home environment where lighting is more controlled and less harsh. So if you are interested in getting the best picture and performance out of your HDTV and your entire A/V system or home theater, professional calibration is a service you should definitely consider. Some of the picture improvements you can expect from Professional calibration include more natural looking flesh tones, and colors that are much more realistic. Images will appear smoother with fewer artifacts, and will look less edgy or unnaturally sharp. There will be more detail in dark scenes as a result of getting black level exactly correct for all your sources. Movies on DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray, and HD cable or Satellite channels will be much more accurately reproduced, which means you will be seeing more of what the director of the film intended it to look like. TweakTV has chosen the best professional calibrators around the country. You can trust that our calibrators have the best test equipment, and the most experience calibrating a wide variety of different brands and models of HDTVs. They are all respected professionals in the field of calibration. If you found that TweakTV’s quick User menu calibration settings improved your cable or satellite picture, and you are interested in taking you’re A/V system performance to its ultimate performance potential, then click on this link (Calibrate My TV), fill in your information, and we will have one of our professional calibrators contact you directly.
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