Why choose to have Your Projector or TV Professionally Calibrated?

Writing an article on calibration is quite a challenge, as when you’re talking about a visual medium, (in this case TV or Projector calibration), no amount of verbiage is going to come close to seeing in person a TV or projector that’s been calibrated. It’s certainly one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words!

I suppose it’s no different in the audio world…. There are a lot of different terms to describe the performance of speakers, but there’s no substitute for actually listening to them yourself. At the end of the day though, the goal is to have a music experience which is as close as possible to the actual performance.

Being as close to the actual performance is similar to what we’re striving for with TV or projector calibration. In this case, it’s viewing movies exactly how they were intended, every detail, and every colour, reproduced exactly the same way as the movie was mastered. This is made easier by a set of standards that are used to master the movies we watch.

I'm assuming most of our readers are using a bluray player for serious movie watching, so this article will focus on the HD Standard for colour, which is commonly referred to as Rec. 709. Your TV / Projector and any other components within the ‘video chain’ (bluray player, receiver, etc.) will influence how close your TV or Projector comes to displaying movies in Rec. 709.

Diagram 1 illustrates the CIE 1931 colour space. The Rec. 709 standard lies within the larger ‘horse shoe’ of colour and is represented by the squares: primary colours (red, green and blue), secondary colours (cyan, yellow and magenta) and white point.

Diagram 1 - illustrates the CIE 1931 colour space.

If all the video equipment within your ‘video chain’ (TV/Projector, bluray player, receiver, scaler, etc.) achieves the Rec. 709 standard, colour will be accurate and movies will be displayed exactly the same way the movie makers mastered them. Of course, there’s always some variance to account for the display type (Plasma, LED, Projector, etc.), but regardless of the type and quality of your display, you are as close as possible to viewing movies how they were intended, with your chosen equipment.

Now let’s take a look at how a good quality 2013 model plasma and bluray player combination perform when trying to achieve the Rec. 709 standard.
Perhaps the best way to show this is by looking at Diagram 2. This is the same as Diagram 1, with the inclusion of some measurements taken prior to calibration (represented by the coloured circles). Notice how the white point is shifted towards blue? In addition to giving white a bluish tint, it’s also distorting cyan and magenta, which are now also too blue. You may also notice that some of the primary colours are over-saturated.

Diagram 2

Now have a look at Diagram 3. While Diagram 2 showed the saturation and hue of colour, Diagram 3 shows the ‘brightness’ of colours. One way to explain this is by imagining how a piece of coloured cellophane changes when illuminated. In the case of Diagram 3, blue is too bright and the other primary and secondary colours are not bright enough.

Diagram 3

Now, you might be wondering why does all this matter, because your uncalibrated Plasma, or LED TV or Projector looks pretty good, right? I’m not going to disagree with you, I am sure it does, otherwise you wouldn’t have bought it. What I will tell you though, is that it’s not going to look anywhere near as good as its calibrated counterpart.

So what’s does a TV or projector look like after calibration? Once your video equipment conforms to the Rec. 709 standard, you are going to be rewarded with a far more immersive movie watching experience. All of the effort that was put onto mastering movies is going to be on show (and trust me, you will be re-watching some of your movies!). Colours will look natural, fine detail that was previously obscured is going to evident and the image will take on a more three dimensional sense of depth.

Continue to Part Two - Professional TV / Projector Calibration: A Walkthrough

About the Author

Tony O'Brien is the owner of Adelaide based 'Clarity Audio & Video Calibration', providing calibration services to home theatre owners and video production companies for film and TV. He is an ISF Certified calibrator.
For more information visit http://www.claritycalibration.com.au