How to Calibrate a TV

We’ll show you how to calibrate a TV so you can get your LCD or Plasma HDTV tuned to its optimal settings and thus allowing you to attain maximum enjoyment from your television.

Most TV’s are calibrated to catch your attention while on the showroom floor, but we’ll show you how to change your display settings to achieve the optimum levels for use at home.

Adjust your lighting. Watching your TV in complete darkness could result in eyestrain. To reduce eyestrain place a dim, diffused light behind your TV.

Let your TV warm up. Allow your TV at least 30 minutes to warm up before going ahead with calibrating it.

Adjust brightness. Start out with a DVD that has good contrast (deep blacks and bright whites) and detail in the shadows. Lower the brightness setting on your TV to its lowest mark. Next, gradually increase the brightness until details show up in the shadowed areas while making sure your blacks remain black.

Adjust contrast. To adjust your contrast use the same process of lowering the setting all the way. Next, increase the contrast until your whites are bright while making sure they don’t bleed into neighboring colors.

Adjust sharpness. Turn your sharpness settings up all the way up to experience its effects. You should notice what is known as the “halo” effect, which can be spotted by edging and distorted borders around objects. Decrease the levels gradually until the halo effect disappears.

Tune color. Turn your color mode to “Standard” you don’t want to adjust your settings while in “movie” or “sports” mode. Pick a scene in your DVD with human skin tones. Tweak your color settings with the goal of achieving the most nature looking skin tones.

Use a calibration DVD. The cheapest way to do it yourself is to eyeball it. The results may not be perfect, but you can generally get good results this way. For a more thorough calibration use a calibration DVD Tool. The THX Optimizer is a very common and cheap option that is included on many DVD releases. Look here for more information on calibrating with the THX Optimizer.