Video Calibration and COVID-19

[mechman]

In light of the current situation, I think it's safe to say that there isn't a lot of calibrations going on at the moment. I did a few this spring after the hockey season ended. But I'm unwilling to do anything more until there's a handle on this virus situation.

So what's someone like me to do? Well luckily AV Pro came out with webinar series on various calibration and integration topics to keep one informed on the latest and greatest in the industry. I've only participated in 3 of their webinars: Calibration of an LG OLED C9, Murideo SEVEN Generator Training and calibrating a JVC Projector. Jason Dustal, an ISF trainer and one of my instructors in Tampa when I took the level III training, was the calibrator/instructor on all three webinars.

The LG OLED calibration was nice to see as the last one I did was an LG OLED from the previous year (E8). My numbers lined up fairly close (slightly better and slightly worse) to Jason's. It was a nice reaffirmation that I'm still doing things correctly.

The Murideo SEVEN Training was regarding Murideo's forthcoming pattern generator. And while it was an informative and interesting webinar, I don't see myself jumping on that technology quite yet. It does offer some interesting new things in Dolby Audio testing; A/V Sync, Audio Latency, Video Latency testing; amongst other things.

The JVC calibration was of a DLA-RS600 projector which is from 2015/16 and has since been discontinued by JVC. I have had zero exposure to JVC projectors and it was nice to see that an ISF instructor went into it like I would have - needing help from others and just looking around trying to find things hidden in menus.

I hope that they continue these webinars in the coming months!

 

[mechman]

So while I've had the above going on, I decided that I would like to have a decent sized monitor down in my office that would be easy to look at changes in calibration software, changes in firmware to my gear or to just stay up on things. I started out with my TCL 32D100 from my garage and I quickly realized that it wouldn't cut the mustard as I wanted something that at least could do HDR and WCG. So after a short search I settled on a TCL 43S525. It got decent ratings on RTINGS and did not even put a dent in the bank like the Sony 900H I was contemplating for a short while would have.

It's a pretty decent display so far in that it offers WCG, HDR and Dolby Vision all for less than $300. I also did some initial readings on it and I'll be posting those when I get on my calibration laptop. I've had it running non stop in my office while I'm awake just to try and get some hours on it before I attempt calibrating it. RTINGS got very good results on theirs and I'd expect I would as well.

While I did have the 32D100 hooked up in the office I did do some initial readings on it. Those were to be as expected and with little means of adjusting settings on it I decided to hook up my EEColor 3D LUT box to it and see what I could achieve with that. It was nothing more than a quick test as I really didn't want to run the hours long matrices to get 'better' results.

 

[mechman]

TCL 32D100 Pre Calibration readings

As I stated in the previous post, I then decided to see how the EEColor 3D LUT box could improve things. I did what is called a Lightning LUT which takes about 6 minutes. You can run longer ones that take hours to complete but I didn't want to do that.

As you can see in the charts, there was a significant improvement to the grayscale as well as the gamut and EOTF. Was it perfect? No, but it was quite the improvement!

 

[mechman]

TCL 43S525 HDR Out of the Box Readings

Grayscale

EOTF

BT709 Sweeps

P3 Sweeps

BT2020 Sweeps

P3 Coverage

BT2020 Coverage

 

[mechman]

If anyone is reading this, I am waiting until I have quite a few more hours on the 43S525 before I attempt to calibrate it. It looks great out of the box though.

 

[mechman]

I've been running the TCL 43S525 now for 4-5 hours a day since I've gotten it. Last night I figured I would mess around with the picture settings while taking measurements just to see if things do actually adjust as they should. I learned first that they do not - the white balance adjustments either have no effect or mess up the value 1 setting off. For instance, adjusting the white balance at 40% does nothing for 40% but does for 30%. The second thing I learned, more like reaffirmed, is that you must take reviews with a grain of salt. In this case I used RTINGS.com to find a nice display for my office that wouldn't break the bank and would also calibrate nicely. I relied heavily on this review and at this point it seems to have been a mistake. While this is what I would consider a 'get what you pay for' display, RTINGS made it out to be more than that and didn't even mention some of the shortcomings that I'm finding initially. Out of the box and quite a few hours into it, this display shows issues with luminance/gamma. The grayscale luminance values are much higher than they should be across the board for what's measured at 100%. I'll expand upon this further in the coming days as I delve deeper into this display.

The moral of this is that you need to take most every review with a grain of salt. Including those at what you may think are from a respected site. Also keep in mind that I'm not saying to not use RTINGS, just to keep it in perspective. For all I know TCL panels could vary quite a bit from batch to the next or from even one size to the next. The only thing I can say with certainity is that my 43S525 is nowhere near as robust as RTINGS 55S525 at this time.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Hey Steve.

A while back I picked up a Spyder5 Pro on eBay to use for the AutoCal on my JVC projector. Not knowing much about its capabilities, and not having a Windows laptop to experiment, what else will I be able to use it for, once I have picked up a Windows laptop to run the software?

Perhaps I should start a new thread and have you answer this question there?

 

[mechman]

Hey Steve.

A while back I picked up a Spyder5 Pro on eBay to use for the AutoCal on my JVC projector. Not knowing much about its capabilities, and not having a Windows laptop to experiment, what else will I be able to use it for, once I have picked up a Windows laptop to run the software?

Perhaps I should start a new thread and have you answer this question there?

Check if HCFR is compatible with it. If it is I'd use that. Back in the day the Spyders used to lose their accuracy fairly quickly - the filters would degrade quickly. I'm unfamiliar with the Spyder5 Pro though.

 

[mechman]

Today's webinar is supposed to be about Light Illusion software. But a little bird has told me that it will be about their new version coming out - ColourSpace. Tomorrow evening there will be a webinar with Gregg Lowen on calibrating a JVC projector.

 

[mechman]

Ok everything I said regarding reviews and in particular RTINGS above in post 6... I take it back. I messed around with it some more and ended up doing a factory reset on the display (TCL 43s525). After that I got excellent results. I'd highly recommend this display as it calibrates somewhat simply and gives great results for a sub $300 display.

I'll post some charts tomorrow.

 

[mechman]

TCL 43S525 LED Display

Pre-Calibration

Post Calibration