The Perfect Picture

The Perfect Picture

A pale-skinned actress running through a drab green meadow is not the director’s fault. LCD and Plasma TVs and Projectors have to be calibrated so that you can enjoy films. We show how easy it is with the Burosch test DVD.

BY MARKUS HERMANNSDORFER AND ANAND TULIANI

Your LCD TV will display high-quality image with precise brightness, contrast and colors only if it is calibrated. The “Display Basic Adjustment Test DVD” by Burosch, which is well-known for TV technology helps in doing so. You can download the ISO image of this DVD from download.chip.asia (85 MB). The test comprises five test images that are displayed one after the other. This test is suitable for all display devices, from common age-old TVs to full HD LCD and Plasma TVs, as long as you restrict to basic settings such as color and contrast. Only video enthusiasts who want to calibrate their Blu-ray players and HD 1080p screens should download the recent DIVAS test sequence which is an AVCHD file that is suited for Blu-ray players. This test is a high-quality version of the Display Basic Adjustment test with more tests.

Preparation: everything to default values

Once you’ve downloaded the ISO file, burn it onto a blank DVD using Nero or a free burning application such as CD Burner XP.

Note: Even though the image is small enough to be written to a CD, you will have to burn it to a DVD because DVD players will be unable to locate the MPEG-2 file on the CD and hence will not be able to play the disc. You can try using Nero to burn this file as a mini-DVD (cDVD) on a blank CD. However there are very few DVD players that support this uncommon format.

When the disc is ready, set up the desired lighting condition. Never light up your living room brightly while watching a film, switch off the lights while calibrating your television. Reset the brightness, contrast and gamma factory default values. If there are additional image enhancement parameters such as DNR, noise suppression or contrast enhancement, deactivate them. This not only applies for the television but also for the video source. From this point on you can start calibrating your television or projector.

This is how it works: obtaining the optimum image

Insert the ready-to-use test DVD in your DVD player and hit the play button. Five different test images will be displayed one after the other in the same order as shown in the screenshots—the first one for calibrating the brightness, then contrast, and so on. If you don’t follow this order you might end up with faulty picture quality.

For calibrating the brightness and contrast, first set the parameter to the lowest value and then increase the value till you arrive at the optimum image quality. In the case of color, first set the value to the middle position and then correct it by increasing or decreasing it. Newly purchased projectors and televisions are set to factory default settings, which display over-saturated colors to attract the attention of buyers.

However, the image sharpness is correctly set in most LCD and plasma televisions right from the beginning itself. You only need to tweak it a bit if the fourth test image appears a little washed out.

The last image is the final check. Here, check whether the adjustments you made have resulted in good overall image quality. You can even check the audio channels of your surround sound speaker setup by referring to the loudspeaker symbols circling the screen. Once everything is perfectly set, you only need a packet of popcorn and Coke for that perfect home-theater feel.