Theoretical TV issue

vyle

People who are into TVs and technology often deride shops for not "calibrating" the TVs that are on display properly. By this, they mean ISF calibration, which is the best way to bring out the very best in a TV.

To become ISF trained costs upwards of £1000 and requires lots of equipment, but the TVs will look amazing when calibrated correctly.

Now, to get your TV ISF calibrated would cost a few hundred pounds for an engineer visit (I've seen some charge around £500 an hour for work).

If you bought a TV from a shop based on the picture you saw IN the shop (expensively calibrated picture) and got it home to find a far inferior picture, only to learn that to get the quality seen in the shop would cost you a few hundred pounds more, what would you do?

unholyangel

vyle wrote: »

(I've seen some charge around £500 an hour for work).

Enquire as to where i can earn the qualifications to do this?

vyle

unholyangel wrote: »

Enquire as to where i can earn the qualifications to do this?

Well aside from that :P

Foggster

I always think the ones in the big stores like Currys and Comet had shoddy pictures.

xocbc

When I worked for PC World, TVs came out of the box and onto display. No calibration. Same in Currys.

Shoddy picture was a combination of none of the TVs being adjusted in any way, and poor signal boosters/splitters etc

To go back to the original question, if the picture quality in a shop ws professionally calibrated and in order to replicate that picture quality at home required a large outlay on calibration, and you were not told so by way of a notice in the shop, or by the salesman, it must be verging on misleading advertising.

Jakg

I doubt this will happen, tbh - I don't know of any stores that calibrate TV's on display (most go into "shop mode" though, which just turns the brightness to max and then set the colour vibrance to "uber" which makes it eye-catching if very unrealistic).

Even so... I thought that calibration results would vary on a panel-by-panel basis so if they were calibrated well (and a well calibrated TV for a bright shop envionment is not the same as a dark film watchers lair...) then the TV you got at home would never look exactly the same.

Either way never heard of it being done.

Esqui

TVs go on display as they come, and they get played around with. We normally run a HD feed from a computer or normal TV.

moonrakerz

unholyangel wrote: »

Enquire as to where i can earn the qualifications to do this?

I think the same people that were doing HIP training courses do this.................:D

vyle

The reason I ask is because a lot of more techy people on forums and techie customers go "oooh it doesn't look very good, cos it's not been calibrated right DEERRRP"

When in fact, no, it's not been calibrated at all.

What they usually assume to be the settings being poorly set up is a bad signal cable/booster/splitter. There are people who expect TVs to be professionally calibrated for display, but have no idea of the time and financial outlay the shops would need in order to do so, or how it would mislead customers who are looking to buy a TV thinking the picture they'd see is what they'd get.

Seriously... imagine if a shop trained their staff to be ISF engineers. How many would actually stay WITH the shop being paid just over £6 an hour when they could be self employed and raking it in.

Jakg

Call my stupid... but why do you need to be "ISF trained" to calibrate a display?

You can get clip-on spiders that calibrate PC monitors for £100... that with a display to suggest values to input would be easy for even the most stupid of operators...

Of course why you'd want to do this I have no idea - most people think a professionally calibrated screen looks rubbish compared to a Samsung on uber-vibrance / brightness, in the same way most people will prefer a louder (poorer) source over a properly calibrated source for audio in blind tests...

vyle

Jakg wrote: »

Call my stupid... but why do you need to be "ISF trained" to calibrate a display?

You can get clip-on spiders that calibrate PC monitors for £100... that with a display to suggest values to input would be easy for even the most stupid of operators...

Of course why you'd want to do this I have no idea - most people think a professionally calibrated screen looks rubbish compared to a Samsung on uber-vibrance / brightness, in the same way most people will prefer a louder (poorer) source over a properly calibrated source for audio in blind tests...

Well, mainly because the people who say it's not "properly" calibrated would likely expect it to be done by a professional engineer "properly". Some people can be quite snobbish about any auto calibrators and so on.

But then perhaps those same people are misusing "calibrated" and just mean "turned on and plugged into a good source."