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>> Have you been watching an HDTV that looks like this, when it could look like that? Get the most out of you HDTV's picture and your movies as they were meant to be seen. PC Mags HDTV maven [assumed spelling] Robert Heritt [assumed spelling] is here to walk us through calibrating our HDTV's and it's cheap on this episode of System. This episode of System is brought to you by Netflix and Godaddy.
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>> Welcome to System. I'm Patrick Norton [assumed spelling] as promised joining us is Mr. Robert Heritt HDTV maven from Pcmag.com. Hey, I buy a HDTV, I'm excited, I get it home, I put it up on the stand, I connect my blue ray player and I see something wrong.
>> Things just don't look quite right?
>> Well they look right according to the factory right.
>> Well it could be. You might need to make a few adjustments to get the best picture quality.
>> So does the factory calibrate it or does the factory calibrate HDTV for something other than the perfect movie experience?
>> The way manufactures go about it is, in order to save cost, save on cost of manufacturing, they will, they will essentially bend the parts.
>> Right.
>> That they need for a particular series, maybe there's going to be 100000 models or 100000 units.
>> Right.
>> Within that particular model and then they go head and they'll calibrate one of the TV's and then apply the settings across the board.
>> So if that panels a little one way or the other they all go one way or the other.
>> They, they try to shoot for that happy median and hope that you know, it's good average among all of them but because of just the way parts can be there's a little bit of variance that goes into every TV even within that same model series. So from TV to TV you're going to have a little bit of difference.
>> But even if there's not that much variance on the parts they're actually tuning it to look good on the shelf and not necessarily to look good playing, I don't know name a movie you like Apocalypse Now.
>> Yeah or Wall E, I like Wall E.
>> I do too.
>> But you're right the, Ok there's, now a day's things have changed in the last couple of years. Now when you turn on a new TV because of energy star concerns and energy savings in general they no longer default to that simple, super bright store mode they call torch mode, some people call it.
>> Right. That was just like having a flashlight pointed in your face.
>> It's designed to make that picture pop. To make it look as edgy and hard and grab your attention while you're shopping in a store.
>> Right.
>> Now a day's TV's will pop up a menu asking hey are you setting us up for a store or are you setting us up for your home. And when you default to that home setting it enables a mode that's not quit as horrific as the torch mode but.
[ Laughing ]
At the same point, it's not as optimized as it could be.
>> I'm a typical end user. Am I really going to notice a calibrated TV verses an uncalibrated TV? I mean we got a pretty extreme example here like the six year old running amuck, or my fifteen month old.
>> In a good viewing environment especially where the eye is most sensitive to detail namely a dark room, if the TV's not set up right you're fatiguing you eyes, you're fatiguing your viewing experience. It won't be as color accurate as you need it to be, or to just be faithful to what the director or the person who edited the material when they were looking at it on calibrated studio monitors and said, you know what I want exactly these levels for this particular shot things like that. If you want to see it that way, then yeah you have to go and you have to make some adjustments to get it to that standard.
>> How much, is it expensive am I going to need a lot of equipment?
>> Depending on what you want to do, you can do a lot of, you can do some of it yourself. And that can cost zero on up to say about fifteen bucks for the right tools. Now if you want to pay somebody to come in, they will be able to do a lot more provided they have the right equipment to do it and go far beyond what a basic set up would be. They can really dig in to some of the more arcane settings in the TV and really optimize the picture across you know the full detail spectrum and go into some other aspects of the picture quality as well, like maybe video processing. There is a chance because the way TV's are now a days that it could have been set up at the factory incorrect and it turns out oh they messed up this one particular setting and it's causing say half detail to go away. Well if you don't have the right test pattern to know what to look for you would never know what's going on to begin with.
>> So if I want to find test patterns a good place to start the THX optimizer and I can find that probably on a Pixar disc correct?
>> Oh most defiantly. And they have usually the latest patterns. Pixar really tied closely with what THX does in terms of their optimizer program. Any DVD pretty much has on the back the THX logo should have that optimizer program available within the menu system.
>> Want to walk us through that?
>> Sure.
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So where do you find the THX optimizer?
>> On any DVD that has that THX logo on the back. You just go into your set up menu on that DVD in this case.
>> Now, in the Pixar ones they have something they, theirs better right?
>> They, they have to go one-step further. So if you do have a Pixar movie disc, their optimizer they'll have a second, an advanced optimizer that I think is more useful and it incorporates more features. But it is a little bit more advanced and they have documentation on the Pixar web site and the THX web site if you're interested in that. But this is the regular optimizer that I'm going to show that's available on every product, every DVD that has that logo on the back.
>> We're going to skip the audio test for now.
>> For now, get into video, and the neat thing about the THX set up disc is that it actually goes through the order of the settings it wants you to adjust in the order that you should go through them.
>> Because you can't really adjust color until your contrast is adjusted.
>> You should get your, in essences, you should get your contrast and you brightness set up right and then get into color and tint.
>> Got it.
>> And then check sharpness.
>> It's all about the sharpness. It's all about the sharpness.
>> Keep it low.
[ Laughing ]
>> Not too low.
>> Don't even get started
[ Laughing ]
>> Now in this case we're going to jump into the contrast set up and this is going to adjust peak brightness. Basically the brightest details in the picture you're essentially altering that by adjusting the contrast setting. So we're going to bring up this test pattern, in this case it's a rectangle with eight shades or actually four different shades of white. And you should see, you can see it across the top and across the bottom.
>> Now you can do something really cruel if you go into vivid mode here right?
>> Definitely. Well you have, figuring out which mode to use on the TV too can be a challenge and you know, I'll just say the quick short cut is to go with something called cinema or movie mode.
>> Ok.
>> That usually gets you in the ballpark.
>> Now.
>> Is the reset stuff worth anything?
>> You know if anybody has messed with the TV at all that's always the first thing I'll do.
>> Got it.
>> Even if I, even if the person tells me they haven't done anything, chances are something's been tweaked in that TV that will drive you nuts if you just don't go in and hit the reset button right off the top. Get everything back to factory defaults and start from there. And in this case here we are on the contrast patterns, so I'm going to come up to contrast. Now this happens to be a pretty good LG TV, so the one thing I noticed is that on most TV's if you turn contrast all the way up what it will do is it eliminates peak white detail, so that instead of having you know, eight steps as we're seeing here in this pattern it would turn into one solid block of white. Or say if you were looking at a cloud in a regular video scene.
>> It would be a giant, white, fiery, single color.
>> A cotton ball rather than some fine detail inside or different, different shades of white, so if you take contrast up as high, you want to take it up as high as you can, but yet at the same point you don't want any of those squares to disappear nor do you want extraneous colors to appear like particularly red will appear usually your contrast if yours is taken up to high. And generally speaking I will never take any control to 100% I will back it down 5 or 10%.
>> Why?
>> It's just in case you need some wiggle room later on, it's good to have it there and you know what maybe five years down the road you want to redo things it's good to have that little extra room left over where you didn't just run it full out the whole time.
>> So you can go one louder.
>> But if you want to brighten the picture up the key is to get that contrast as high as possible. That makes it bright.
>> What comes next?
>> Brightness.
[ Laughing ]
Which you would think it has something to do with overall brightness of the picture but no, brightness is a terrible [inaudible] to control and.
>> What does brightness actually do?
>> It controls black level.
>> And essentially how bright is black.
>> Ok.
>> Or dark is black?
>> I bet we're missing a bunch of black.
>> Yeah.
>> Squares on the right side.
>> Let me just go ahead and crank this up and we'll see.
>> Gray.
[ Laughing ]
>> See the logo in the middle there up here as I really drive this high. At the top I believe we have ten step shades of gray. You can see a drop shadow behind the THX logo. The key to this pattern is, well in some players, if you can see this whole pattern the way I have it right now, you're getting full output through your player you're seeing full range of detail and everything like that. That's, this makes it very easy to adjust. You simply dial it down until that drop shadow where the THX logo is, is the same color as the background of the TV.
>> Oh really? So basically you want the drop shadow to disappear.
>> Yeah. And if you don't, if you can't see that drop shadow you then go by the bar at the top in essentially 7 steps. You should be able to see 7 and then the 8th one should vanish into the background.
>> Oh weird.
>> And ideally you would do this under typical room lighting.
>> Ok.
>> So if you watch TV in a brightly lit room you want to make sure you're not sitting in a cave [inaudible].
>> Or under a five hundred watt light.
>> Exactly.
[ Laughing ]
The same point is if you sit in a dark room most of the time don't do this in the middle of the day.
>> Got it.
>> Because the settings will be different because your eyes proceeding that detail differently. And the key is brightness make as dark as possible. Lower it as much as possible without losing the darkest details in the picture.
>> Got it. What comes up next?
>> Next, let's just hit the button and see what happens. I say it's going to be color and tint. Color and tints challenging.
>> Is it subjective?
>> No, not at all. There's actually a level for it and it's based upon, well it'll start with color and we'll go ahead and do that.
>> Wait, wait this says we'll need equipment the THX blue filter glasses.
>> Yes. Now let me see I think I do have a blue filter.
>> These I don't remember these coming in any of the Pixar discs.
>> You can actually buy this though. This is a filter card it actually has red, green and blue and when you look through one of these color filters, you can actually put this over the camera if you want let everyone else see but. Now this is an interesting test pattern that they've done, essentially the word color is in blue and white and when you adjust the color setting on your TV, which is a saturation level setting, what you're trying to do and you need a blue filter, like you're wearing, so sexy.
>> Thank you.
>> Now when you wear the blue filter though it will filter the white light to be just blue and then the blue of course is going to come through it, but you want to make sure those intensity levels are equal. So say the C and the O are in color or the L and the O, you want those to be equal levels so when you adjust color up and down, let me bring up the color setting real quick, by adjusting color up and down, you see if I take it low you notice probably intensity of.
>> Where did the C the L and the R go?
>> Exactly. So by looking through the color filter you balance out basically.
>> So basically I.
>> [inaudible]
>> I want the C the O the L the O and the R to all basically to see the same level of brightness.
>> They should all kind of, and it helps to kind of squint sometimes too. If, it's great because I wear glasses I'll take my glasses off and do this and it makes in my opinion easier to see when things are just balanced just right.
>> That's really trippy.
>> So you go up and down till that's set. And as you can see with tint you have cyan and magenta and it's essentially the same thing again and yet you still use the blue filters, but you use instead of the color setting you use the tint setting. Which adjusts.
>> What if I have like a different tint setting for each different color available for the screen?
>> That's something different.
>> Ok.
>> Yeah, that, that's nice [inaudible]. That's different
>> Does it make it harder to set up something like this?
>> Yeah in that case you would want a color analyzer. That's where you really want to hire a calibrator at that point. Or if you know what you're doing and you have the right equipment of course you can do it yourself. That's more advanced
>> That's what I call you.
[ Laughing ]
>> Now the same rules apply. I find that generally the color setting might be off a little bit. The tint is usually spot on or it's one or two notches off and it looks.
>> That's just pretty nailed right there.
>> Is it?
>> I think so.
>> But essentially you're doing the same thing, looking at the T and the I and the N and the T in tint and their in magenta and cyan. You're essentially driving that controller up and down until things look just right.
[ Period of silence ]
What am I doing? There we go. The next item on this is just a general performance test. This is, I find this pattern is Ok to do your sharpness set up or to check it to make sure it's not too high or too low. Yeah, that's it, so let me bring up this pattern real quick. This is just a resolution chart with color bars, a gray scale, just kind of all in one compassing test pattern that you can look at. The idea here is if, if you take sharpness high on a TV.
>> Is the top of the pattern missing?
>> It might be scaled of the edge of the screen because of the player set up or something like that. I'd have to check. But I don't find a lot of use for this particular pattern, there's probably better things to do. I was hoping that when I crank the sharpness all the way up you'd see something called ringing, oh actually can along the horizontal bars.
>> Yeah I just caught that.
>> You're getting an additional white edge added to or a white line added around the edges of objects. That's called ringing and essentially that's something we're trying to avoid.
>> Ok. I love this test more than you do because I have some family members who keep, who get fed up with the pillar bars in a four by three screen and they stretch the screen out and they don't understand why everybody looks wrong.
>> Just like history channel HD I've noticed.
>> Oh.
>> No it's true. I don't think they have any HD content it's all stretch out, everything. Why don't we show what actually happens, you should be seeing a circle.
[ Laughing ]
Now this is it does two parts. This is the four by three aspect ratio, that means the video is four by three, more of a square shape like a traditional TV. So when I run this on the sixteen by nineteen it should be stretched horizontally a little bit which it is so I can then say just to check it real quick I going to go in to this TV's controls, this happens to have very good aspect ratio patterns. Once I selected four by three, that should be roughly a circle. I could actually take a cloth tape measurer or something and check that real quick.
>> I'm good, because the pillar bars up here now and we can actually.
>> Yeah.
>> See what it's supposed to look like.
>> So now we'll jump into, this TV also has a, it will detect the aspect ratio as well so that might be useful for checking that out to make sure it works. But now we're going to 16 by 9, which is where most of us live with our wide screen TV's so.
>> Hopefully.
>> And I'm pretty sure I need to go back real quick and get this on a 4 by 3 [inaudible] view.
[ Laughing ]
You know what? I'm just going to let it, there's that set by program thing I was talking about so, And now the challenge. Will it show me a circle? That's really the key here. Uh, tada [assumed spelling].
>> It's a circle.
>> It's pretty well formed and you have the, the outline boxes there show roughly say 5 and 10% of the picture of those lines, those definitely should be visible on any kind of TV.
>> Right.
>> The more the merrier. If your TV has a setting A that should be a circle. That means we have a 16 by 9 formatted video on a 16 by 9 TV, that's how it should look. At the same point for picture size settings you always want to go with something like a pixel-by-pixel mode or a dot-by-dot mode if possible.
>> Got it.
>> Just to get all that video information on the screen. Final test.
[ Laughing ]
Well with any of the THX movies whatever movie it is that you're looking at, they'll do a final test that is a sequence in the movie that they thought was particularly challenging and it's.
>> The part where we go ooh and aw.
>> Yes, your work is going to appreciate itself.
>> Ooh.
[ Laughing ]
Aw.
>> Like a round buttons light and dark detail.
>> Is this the blue ray version of this?
>> No. Just DVD.
>> Oh.
>> But it is being up converted.
>> It also occurs to me that I'm running this on a much lower resolution television at home.
>> This is good up conversion though.
>> Yeah it is.
>> Good stuff.
>> Wow. Actually it's amazing me how much detail is in there.
>> Especially movies you're most familiar with. You'll get the best bang for the buck out of a test like this because you've seen that content over and over repeatedly and then you'll know when it doesn't look right.
>> Right.
>> To your eye. And with color and tint set right we can detail your brightness and contrast set right, that should be one of the better experiences you've had watching that movie. Should be.
>> I like that thought.
>> So next step up for the THX optimizer is something like a dedicated disc like HQ, is it HQV?
>> That's good for video processing testing another good one is from the Joe Kain [assumed spelling] folks they have their HD basics disc, it's available on blue ray, they are, there's also standard def version of that disc as well but that incorporates more guidance, more set up, more information period but it also includes some very specific test patterns for just really, if you really want to get into it and you want a dedicated piece of material to work with.
>> Are they really that much different from the basic test that are in the THX optimizer?
>> I find certain parts of the patterns that are provided on a dedicated disc like the HD basics disc, especially with color and tent I like the patterns that are available on Joe Kain's disc more that I do looking at the words color then tint on the THX disc.
>> Can you show us a couple of those?
>> Sure.
>> Cool.
[ Music ]
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[ Music ]
>> Alright Joe Kain's digital video essentials HD basics. This is one of your favorite discs.
>> Yeah, one of the best 15-dollar purchases you can make on Amazon or wherever you want to buy your discs.
>> What test are we looking at here?
>> Remember the black or the brightness set up?
>> Sure.
>> For the THX disc. This is exactly what that is this is optimized for. Essentially we're getting light shades of gray with what they call a below black line on the extreme left and right. And the trick to this pattern is lower the brightness until that below black level disappears into the background, yet you can still barely and I don't know if the camera will pick this up or not.
>> Oh, oh, oh it just kind of disappeared there.
>> You still got those two lines.
>> I can kind of see it though,
>> Yeah it's real subtle so. But essentially again it really would depend on room lighting conditions. You want to do it in the same kind of environment that you typically watch TV in.
>> [inaudible] television lights.
>> Exactly.
[ Laughing ]
But there it is for that and you wouldn't really do your contrast set up. Instead you would go to, do a little pop up on here, of course it's the blue ray, so it's always. Another, I love gray scales ramps like this, but this isn't exactly a ramp but a step levels and this shows me the extreme peak white detail, extreme dark detail, the markers giving an indication as to what should be seen and what not.
>> So for the black are those two suppose to be 2 colors or 1 color like it is now?
>> There's actually two steps there.
>> Ok.
>> But those should fade together into 1.
>> Got it.
>> On the black side. Now on the white side on the peak white detail.
>> Is that what the little buttons are above those?
>> Exactly. Now for peak white detail, here let me actually get, I'm going to adjust scan so you can see the whole picture. You can almost see the peak bright on the next to the brightest peak white it's almost a little pink. And that indicates.
>> Oh I see it.
>> That the contrast is up a little too high, so again this is another reason I like the blue ray test patterns a little bit better for that very reason, so 90 might be a little hot. Look at that, I brought it down to like 85 and it looks more neutral to me.
>> Got it.
>> Shades of gray, I mean the shades of gray should all be the same color there are just different intensities. So if you're seeing lots of shifting between each step that could be emblematic of other problems that would require the talents of a pro calibrator to come in and try to adjust that if possible.
But that's something you really, this is one of the most important aspects is just having, not only be able to see the full detail but then it'll have each of these shades be consistent in terms of its color.
>> So any other test patterns you want to show us on this disc?
>> Actually one quick one is the [inaudible] pattern which you have color bars woops, come back color bars. This is very similar to the color and tint set up that we did before. You can use this in the same way in essence we're looking at the blue and the white on the outside.
>> So do I use the blue glasses or something else?
>> Yes. You can use the other tints for different things but blue is the key for doing your color and tint set up. I just find that having that hard line between the blue and the white and the magenta and the cyan when they're bumped up together like that I find it easier to visualize the right setting.
>> Got it.
>> Now we've been talking about the using the, use of blue filters though but some new TVs incorporate what they call blue mode. Which I find it is more accurate than any color filter because even between different color filters there's going to be variance. So the best color filter of all is the one is the one that would be built into a television. Some of the brand new Samsung TVs incorporate a blue only mode. You would turn that on and just simply look at the TV without the glasses. That's a far better way of doing it if it's available to you. But again, for color always the blue and the white the outside, for tint you go back to the middle there with the cyan and magenta bars.
>> Got it.
>> And you basically you're looking for the same thing as you ramp it up and down you're going to see those shifts and you want to make them equal in intensity.
>> Got it. What is that?
>> Pixel block and phase test. This disc the Joe Kain disc, HD basics contains 720P and 1080P test material. So this is a quick test to go hey I had a 1080p blue ray player, I bought a 1080p television, these patterns are 1 and 2 pixels in detail. So if you're able to resolve those patterns you're achieving at least full resolution input in to the TV and the TV's displaying full resolution.
>> Basically I'm just looking for the little black and white spots. Very fine checkerboard [inaudible] on those eight sections.
>> Totally. If any of those look flat or are missing then you would know something is probably a miss.
>> Interesting. So you love over scan right?
>> Yeah, yeah, yep.
[ Laughing ]
[Inaudible] I truly hate is when the TV is stretching the picture beyond the video picture beyond the border of the TV itself.
>> So in this case on a 1080p screen we should see that one border of white around the entire screen.
>> Right. There's actually on each edge, centered on each edge is a pixel bar graph it goes all the way down to a single pixel and they're pretty hard to see but you'll see these little black lines going basically do, do, do, do, do, do, do. And although I've since learned that the markers on this are inaccurate in terms of being 5 and 10% it's more like 10 and 20% but.
[ Laughing ]
But, but you get the idea. If this TV, most TV's are not set this way at the factory you have to actually go in, most are set for say 16 by 9 mode, let me put it into that.
>> But you're looking per pixel mode.
>> See in this case we put it into the 16 by 9 mode and it's stretching the picture of the border of the screen by about 5%, about 4%in this case.
>> Which in theory movies and television are designed to sort of lose that last 5% there should be nothing important going on there.
>> Exactly. But there is video information there. Any 1080i broadcast, 720p broadcast it's like you know what? Why am I wasting a single pixel you are technically softening the picture and you're not getting the full detail as possible.
>> So I'm digging around my television, what am I looking for? Is, am to, to turn off over scan.
>> It's going to be some kind of picture setting and it's going to be related to the size of the picture. And let's see, in this case LG calls theirs just simply aspect ration. And you can have it set by their program but both Samsung and LG call theirs just scan where they do that 1 to 1 pixel mapping mode.
>> Got it.
>> And that is always the way to go. And this also, this pattern also happens to be pretty useful for, because it's got those black, thin black lines. It's a good, it's a good screen to look at in terms of your sharpness setting. Now sharpness is really a type of edge enhancement, that's all it means, it's going to add, it can add detail, that's not part of the video.
>> What works in edge enhancement?
>> Edge enhancement in this case is if you look at the black lines when I crank up the sharpness you'll see a white outline applied to those black lines to make them pop a little bit more. And you can see this getting pretty heinous now.
[ Laughing ]
Now that's not part of the picture, that wasn't originally in the video, I've just simply added a lot of white lines around every black line to quote unquote enhance it. Now.
>> It makes it a lot sharper.
>> Yeah. Now there is no white outline but it's also called ringing when you see those white outlines around that. Now you want to turn it down, but not so, you want to turn it down to the point you don't see any ringing, yet you don't want to go any lower than that.
>> Ok.
>> You want to make it as high as possible but not introducing ringing.
[ Music ]
>> So you're probably wondering just like I am, when is it time to call in a professional, I mean what does a professional calibrator do at this point?
>> If you want the best possible image quality, you're going to need somebody to show up with the right equipment, being a good color analyzer, a good source devices, something I really didn't show here, we're using like DVD players and blue ray players. Those are decent source devices. This is an example of a calibrated source device. We send this in ever year to get it worked over and checked and make sure what comes out of it is exactly what it should be. And the input selection. We were covering just say HDMI, this thing's like RF and S video and other input types where say I was doing a DVR set up, I would actually take this device use it as a source material for recording on and so on.
>> So well let's talk a little bit more about sort of the different source inputs, I got a question about that in a second.
>> Yeah.
>> But what does the calibrator do and how do I find a professional calibrator?
>> What they will do when they show up is take a look at all of the TV settings and this includes everything from the gray scale. Remember we were looking at those charts that show the different levels of white, different shades of gray? It's important to have those all be same color for an accurate picture quality and the only way to do that is to measure each level and then be able to make those individual adjustments and that requires a little more knowledge digging deeper into the TV settings.
>> So if I'm looking at that, if I'm, I spent a lot of money on a television I probably should automatically spend the extra cash to get it properly calibrated.
>> If you can afford to do it, yeah. Treat yourself to it say after its initial break in, say after 100 or 200 hours of use, maybe treat yourself to a good setup. Have somebody go through all of it. I'm often surprised at how many TV ship with software the firmware in the TV's.
>> Right.
>> That might not be correct. Some manufactures actually provide the updates on the websites, some you might have to you know.
>> That's assuming they actually provide a way for the end user to use it. I mean it's frustrating right, if you know there's better firmware for your television but you can't actually get it in there without spending money. Something we should point out is there's not a whole lot of point to this if you're using like an old DVD through I think called the yellow cable. The positive cable.
>> That's another thing. Having a professional take a look at everything,
>> Right.
>> You could use a could be using a composite video cable, which is the lowest form of scum in the whole video food chain. All the way on up, you know you have your composite video cables, high video ability. [Inaudible] then you move up into the digital formats.
>> Right.
>> Like DVI and HDMI which are now the, pretty much the standard.
>> So I set up, basically you can configure this for the HDMI output from a blue ray player.
>> Right.
>> What about you know if I have other HDMI inputs, do I set them all using that blue ray player, what about component inputs, what if we got something like a Apple TV or a Windows Media extender. How do I calibrate those particular input channels? Because is it the input channel or is it the screen itself and what's the screen itself? Almost like my television has different settings for every single input.
>> Exactly.
>> Which is.
>> Well that's an ideal set up, a lot of TV's will have whatever setting you make applied across the board to every input on the TV. Likewise different inputs respond different, differently because of the electronics inside. There's a little bit of variance again that could be happening. So while you would say in this case we were using that DVD player into one particular input, you could do that setup and then say unplug that and then plug in your cable box or whatever and then that would be your calibrated set up for there, use that as a consistent source device. I personally would like to take like a calibrated source device like the signal generator we showed, use that to calibrate the inputs that will be used, then hook up the source devices then recheck everything again to see that, make sure that, that source device isn't doing something funny anyway.
>> Well how do you, if you got like an Apple TV, it's not like it's got the tools built into it.
>> No.
>> What do you do?
>> You would need a way to get those tools into that setup in some way either in a coded file, which you could hunt around on the web, or something basically that you could put in there that would give you that similar black level contrast, tint color set up that you could then look at on your TV itself. Now game consoles are easy. Most game consoles now have disc players in them and you can always use a disc for that type of device.
>> Just play it right through there.
>> That's a good question though, for something like a product like a Apple TV product it would be worthwhile for somebody to create a file you could download into there in some way.
>> Joe, Joe are you listening? Hook us up Joe. At the iTunes store, it's cheap.
>> Or if you own the disc, it's not legal but if you rip it at least not here in the United States.
[ Laughing ]
If you rip it and then you code it and like.
>> Just don't compress it.
>> Or, [inaudible] ultraviolet.
>> Alter the color qualities or things like that as well you have to be careful if you are going to do that yourself.
>> Joe talks a lot about how a lot of the stuff he shot is basically just a test in challenging coders more so than the actual television scaling equipment. Speaking of which is video scaling or the tools that the, setting up the tools inside the television you know they go from 720p to 1080p or 1080i or I mean is that like the biggest challenge in certifying and setting up a television?
>> I mean ideally with whatever your source device is you would want its output to match the capabilities of the connection.
>> Right.
>> Hopefully it's the best connection you've got available and then to the format of the TV itself and the resolution of the TV itself.
>> Right.
>> 1080p source device through say an HDMI cable which is compatible with 1080p into a 1080p display set up to display that and that's the ideal the 1 to 1. All TV's will accept any particular video signal.
>> Right.
>> Internally reformat it to fit but to get the best quality, you know good stuff in, good stuff out.
>> Is it worth experimenting if maybe you got kind of a janking [assumed spelling] DVD player, you might want to try having the DVD player upscale then check it against the head of the television upscale and vice versa?
>> That's a good idea actually. That gets back more into the video processing capabilities of a device or in essence maybe the DVD player does a better job if up converting that video then the TV would.
>> I love it.
>> Or vice versa. So in the best case scenario you would check both ways, take the one that does the better job and then stick with that.
>> Any last thoughts before we go?
>> Just remember the basics. For contrast, you want it as high as possible and for brightness, you want that as low as possible for the best picture quality but don't take it to the points where you're losing any detail on either end of the two.
>> Dude, thanks so much for your time.
>> My pleasure.
>> Ladies and gentlemen for the best HDTV reviews on the internet go look for Robert Heritts work at Pcmag.com. That's it for this addition of System. Do yourself a favor if you have, if you got the blue ray player, you got the HDTV, even if you're running an upscale DVD player with the HDTV, take the time to calibrate it, it's going to look amazing.
>> Hey everybody we're conducting a survey asking our marketing department is to get some additional information about you our viewers, we would love your feedback. So if you got a few minutes to spare, please do us a favor go to Revision3.com/Systemsurvey. As thanks for taking the survey, it's going to take a few minutes if you could spare them it would be awesome, as thanks we're going to show you a sneak peak in an upcoming film that nobody's seen yet. Thank you so much for helping us out.
>> As always you got comments, questions suggestions, hatreds, loves, fears, loathings email them to us system@revision3.com. If you're into the forum thing Revision3.com/forums, look for the System section and if you haven't seen it we did a whole month of home theater mayhem last summer. You can check out that if all the older episodes of System at revision3.com/system. Until next week I'm Patrick Norton, have a great time calibrating.
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