HD70 Calibrating

[DIYHT1]

hi guys, wondering if someone could help in calibrating my pj, what affortable software is out there to calibrate? are they user friendly?

[solarscreen]

Here is my HD70 Quick Calibration and Overview

Go into the advanced menu and be sure Vivid Color is off, Brilliant Color is zero, and your Color Temp is set to 1 or 2. Now, go into the RGB menu and set the gain/bias to 5, 0, 6, -12, -14, -12. Go back out and set your color to -6 and tint to zero.

Now, get a Pixar DVD and use the THX Optimizer to set your brightness and contrast. Go back in and tweak the Brilliant Color to taste but try to keep it to 3 or less.

This should get things close to what you want. More minor tweaking will be necessary usually because of room color, screen, and bulb variations.

If people look sunburned, set your color temp to 1. If people look a little greenish, set your color temp to 2. If neither color temp is satisfactory, you will need a calibration disk like DVE or Avia to help you get a good result in your particular environment.

The HD70 is a 720p digital device. If you feed a 720p signal to it you can use NATIVE and it will display at the full 16:9 size it is capable of displaying.

All other HD and widescreen content will need to be displayed in 16x9 mode so the the PJ will scale it to full size.

4:3 content only displays in the center 66% of the screen. Most people leave it alone, but you could use your zoom to make it large but you will need a 4:3 screen to view it on. Most have a 16:9 screen so they don't fool with the zoom dial. For example, I have mine ceiling mounted and set for zoom and focus and will never touch it again. 4:3 is smaller but I don't look at much 4:3 if any.

The hd70 has a 30% image offset, meaning it throws an image above the height of the lens equal to 30% the height of the image thrown. If you are displaying a 92" 16:9 image the height of that image will be 45", so the offset will be about 14". If you set the PJ on a table, the image will start 14" higher than the height of the lens on your display wall and extend up the wall 45". If you mount the PJ high enough the image will appear on the ceiling so you mount it upside down and the image now displays down the wall. There is a menu setting that will flip the image to make it right side up even though it is mounted upside down.

The best distance for placing your HD70 from the screen is 12 to 14 feet. This will allow for a good sized screen and still give you good illumination.

[DIYHT1]

Thank you John, I appreciate the info.

[<^..^>Smokey Joe]

Calibration is not rocket science and anyone can do it, the catch is, and there is a catch, you have to spend some money to gather a few tools. The second catch is the learning curve. It is a craft no less.

DIY calibration is fun, however quite often you can spend quite a bit of money on the wrong tools and have to repurchase later the correct tools.

Actually for the first time it can/could pay to have a pro do it.
The cost is more or less offset by the fact the pro has (should have) decent tools and you most likely will learn more in one calibration being done for you than you could possibly learn in months of forum trolling.

After that you will/would have a better idea about correct tools required.

That aside, DIY calibration.

Firstly, using someone elses hard earned settings can lead to more issues than you are trying to fix. Variances in equipment of 10% is possible coupled with the different total equipment list(DVD player,PJ) will have settings completely different from one unit to another.

Cheap
Start with DVD calibration disks.

Options are DVE, AVIA and Getgray.(Check AVSforums for Getgray)

There is a free software available, HCFR (AVSforums), however you still need to get a probe and reference material. Get the wrong probe and you can be left wanting. Easy to use, if you know what the measurements mean, lacks real howto for the newbie.

The first of the payfor software options which is cost effective is CalMAN, here you can buy the software and probe as a package. They will also advise the best probe for your setup. Documentation is top notch, which is designed about the newbie calibrator. Also you have direct contact for help and advice from the creators through a website forum and direct email.
There is a demo version avaliable(check out the calibration thread in these forums).
Quite a few who frequent these forums use it.
I rate this quite highly as a cost effective option.

[DIYHT1]

Thanks Smokey, I'll keep on reading threads.

[Sonnie]

I'm not familiar with how all this works and what you need, but CalMAN is offering their software v3 download for free.