LCD TV Calibration Guide

Ditching the old-fashioned bulky TV sets and buying a sleek new LCD TV has many obvious advantages. But once the TV set has been brought over to your house and placed in the spot you want, you may find that the picture quality is not quite what you expected. The reason for this is that when the LCD TVs are exhibited on the sales floors of stores, the adjustments are altered so as to provide maximum effect. The brightness and the contrast are usually tweaked to the maximum and image edge enhancement settings are also turned on.

As a result of these factory settings, the store owner aims to make the image on the TV pop out against the images of the other TV sets on the floor. The effect that these settings produce is not the ideal way to view the programs or movies that you will watch at home. Your viewing experience will get greatly enhanced, if you use the proper brightness, color and operating levels. This process is called calibration of LCD TV and this article should act as an LCD TV calibration guide, helping you carry out this process smoothly.

Why Should You Carry Out Calibration for LCD TV?

It is a known fact that sellers of LCD TVs and plasma TVs adjust the settings in order to bring out the strengths of that TV set or to hide its weaknesses. Since the signal for the store is the same for all the TV sets, then why does the picture quality look different on different TVs that are displayed there? This is done in order to entice you to look at the LCD TVs and the store conditions will differ drastically from your home, so there are bound to be some discrepancies. In order to rid yourself of this problem you must calibrate your TV, and the calibration recommendations given here will also help you go about this task efficiently.

How to Calibrate an LCD TV?

Before you begin the process of calibration of LCD TV, there are certain requirements that you must meet. There are three things that you will need.

• An LCD TV set
• A "daylight" light bulb that glows at about 6500 degrees Kelvin
• A DVD for home theater setup

Once you have these three essential items at your disposal, you should follow these alibration tips.

Step 1 - Room Lighting
Most people prefer to watch movies in complete darkness, in order to emulate the effect generated at cinemas. But this is not advisable when you're watching a movie at home on your LCD television set. It's advisable to keep a dim light on, and place it behind the TV set preferably. The effect generated by such a lighting system is the effect that filmmakers have in mind when they record a movie. You must also ensure that there is no reflection of any other source of light falling on your TV screen. In order to carry out an LCD TV calibration test, it is imperative that the light conditions are ideal.

Step 2 - Dim Your TVs Backlight
Every LCD TV has a bright fluorescent light that exists behind the LCD panel. This light is known as the backlight of your LCD TV. The purpose of this backlight is that, it helps dictate the brightness of the entire screen. Most LCD TVs today have a separate LCD backlight control option, that helps you decide the brightness of your screen. Any guide will tell you that you must lower this backlight to its minimum setting before you go ahead and adjust the brightness and color settings further.

Step 3 - Contrast and Brightness Settings
An LCD TVs brightness control is known as black level, and it decides how dark the black sections in the picture appear. You should play a DVD that has letter-boxing bars on the upper and lower parts of the screen to help you choose the right brightness. You should adjust the brightness control to maximum and then gradually lower it till the letterboxes appear as close to black as possible. This will help you find the appropriate level of brightness.

A high level of contrast will obscure fine details of the images and make you strain your eyes in dim lighting. For setting the contrast you must choose an image that contains something white in color, with a few details here and there. Turn the contrast all the way up and then lower it till you can see all the details against the white background.

Step 4 - Color Settings
The color settings, or the saturation has a very influential part to play in your viewing experience. Before you begin to adjust the color settings, you must locate the color-temperature control. Here you must select the warm or the low option, either of which will come closest to the PAL settings of 6500 degrees Kelvin. If the color does not look right to you, then select the medium option. It will also enhance your viewing experience if you turn off auto color, auto flesh tone, auto contrast and noise reduction.

Step 5 - Further Adjustments
It is also recommended that you set the tint setting on your LCD setting to the mid point. Another setting for you to keep in mind is the sharpness level. Artificial edges are added to objects on the screen due to this setting. Since many DVDs come equipped with high quality sharpness, it is advisable to turn your sharpness setting down to zero.

The guide given here is useful in many ways, but buying a home-theater setup DVD will help you achieve the best settings. These DVDs will guide you step-by-step and provide you with many calibration tips and recommendations too. Purchasing an LCD TV is a big investment and you must adjust the settings so as to obtain an optimum viewing experience.