Revolutionary New Way To Calibrate Your TV

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
Well, revolutionary to the consumer market anyway. Professional studios have been using LUTs (look up tables) for years.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1410156/the-official-panasonic-vt50-settings-thread/510#post_22401423

From the Lumagen site:
Beta 090412- NEW 125 point CMS added! That's a 5x5x5 matrix for color correction and calibration. A big upgrade from our previous 8 point matrix which allowed calibration from only the corners of the color cube. The new 125 point gamut has it's calibration points located at 0, 25, 50, 75,100% of video min/maximums. The older 8 point gamut was located at digital min/maximums which did not give quite as much precision. Previous calibration values in the CMS gamut menu are interpolated to the new gamut locations so the numbers displayed in the menu will be different. This doesn't change your previously performed calibration results. Instead, the changed values represent the same calibration but from the new gamut locations. You now have the option of calibrating with 8 or 125 points. If you perform an 8 point calibration you can change to the 125 point mode and keep the previously set 8 points. The other 117 points are interpolated from the original 8 when changing from 8 to 125 point mode. With this many points to adjust, auto calibration software from ChromaPure and SpectraCal really helps. They have both added support for our new 125 point gamut with excellent results. Note: We are in the process of updating the Configuration Utility to support backing up the new 125 point gamut data to a PC via rs232. This should be available by tomorrow.
Gamma correction: Range has been extended and can now be adjusted in steps of .01.
Test Patterns: Added 2.35 letterbox geometry overscan pattern.
Bugfixes,etc: Problems with Top/Btm 3D formats to Frame Packed and Frame Sequential output was fixed. An issue of using test patterns with certain settings not restoring the input aspect was fixed. Improvement to output setup menu allows multiple changes within the command to be performed more easily. Added sending 601/709 color information needed by Darbee Darblets with firmware before 2.8.2214. Other small fixes and improvements were also made.


It works. It works really well!!!
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
Upon first read I thought this was in a foreign language. :pat:
2nd read helped, reading slowly. :wink:

So, how does one get this new matrix CMS tool onto your TV?
 

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
Upon first read I thought this was in a foreign language. :pat:
2nd read helped, reading slowly. :wink:

So, how does one get this new matrix CMS tool onto your TV?

lolololol

The box operates HDMI in and out so it is placed between the content source and the TV.

There are four Lumagen Radiance products that work and they range from $1500 to $5000. The least expensive model processes exactly the same as the others. Then you need someone like me to first calibrate your TV in preparation and then run the LUT producing hardware/software specific for your TV. It takes a good meter, appropriate software, and a ton of knowledge not to mention a few hours. That's the part people like myself play. Your part is, ummmm, opening your wallet. :yum:
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
Oooooo :pat:
I thought it sounded like it was something we consumers could do. Makes sense that you would need a pro to make it work ..plus at that cost no homeowner would buy the box just for personal use.

Thanks to your help / guidance with my new TV folks still rave about the picture. I can't imagine it being any better, but I suspect that is because i don't know what I'm missing. :yum:
 

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
This calibration stuff is for a tiny teeny percent of television viewers. Most of them are pretty anal about their picture. In only a few more years we will have precalibrated displays coming from the factories if there is demand for that sort of product but until then my little side business will help take up the slack time. :)
 

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
A new, large step beyond and I just posted the following on an electronics site.

A while back I started this thread. In it, David Abrams said (my red coloring):

We have been creating custom LUTs for our clients for years and are very familiar with the CineSpace, TrueLight, and the Light Illusions products. While creating custom LUTs for products can be very impressive, providing significant improvements in image accuracy; it is important to note that they are only required when a product does not meet the desired system specification. For example, if your calibration target is Rec.709 with a gamma of 2.2 and your display meets those requirements a LUT is not needed.

A great deal of companies are capitalizing on the poor image processing and engineering going into today's displays. I am curious to see who will win as manufacturers are attempting to build sophisticated systems into their displays in an effort to make outboard LUT products obsolete. Perhaps the best approach would be to provide displays with improved hardware capable of ingesting a customized LUT to achieve the user's desired results. Cine-Tal had this functionality with their Cinemage display line and we found that it could work quite well.

David is correct in that no LUT is needed if the display meets the above requirements. The problem is that consumer level displays seldom do this. It used to be that TVs displayed color gamuts beyond Rec.709 but in the last few years this has seldom been the case. Traditional calibration techniques have resulted in the outer 709 points being as close as possible to correct but the inner points were far from it. Internal gamut processing has been fair at best and terrible at the worst.

Tuesday 630 CIE 01.jpg

Look Up Tables "teach" the display what to output for given inputs to the best of the display's ability. The above and below graphics are from a very inexpensive store brand LCD. The final picture is far beyond that which the display settings are capable.

Tuesday 630 CIE 02.jpg

The second graphic is the result of a 17 point cube display profile which is 4913 measurements. The LUT produced is 274,625 points of the 2 million or so available in 1080p resolution. All of the other points are interpolated by the processor. The difference in accuracy between 125 (5x5x5) and 4913 measured points is substantial as the non measured outputs are the result of interpolation between the "nearest neighbor" points and 4913 neighbors are much closer than 125.

As noted in the above referenced thread there are programs designed to do this but so far have been targeted to the post production, etc. professional market. As a disclaimer I have been non business associated with Steve Shaw, President of Light Illusion, the company producing LightSpace software which, among other duties, performs high level display profiling, LUT production, and processing specific to various LUT holding/processing equipment. For over a year and a half there has been a steady progression in the home market endeavor. By home market I refer not to an amateur calibrator as the software is not inexpensive, rather, the professional calibrator who can muster clients who demand the closest to perfection as present day technology has to offer and the introduction of picture quality as high as their clients' systems are capable. LightSpace, once only used with processors such as the Davio, is now able to load LUTs into both the Entertainment Experience eeColor Box and the Lumagen Radiance series video processors, greatly reducing the cost of bringing 3D LUTs into the home theater market.
 
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