The Perfect Picture

Well done for taking the decision to spend some time to learn about picture quality in greater detail! Having read this special report from Televisions.com, your understanding of picture quality will be noticeably enhanced, and you will see just what the deciding factors are that differentiate between the various televisions and projectors.

In addition, you will become familiar with test imagery and their true purpose to greatly improve the resulting rendered image quality. To help you get the most from your own TV, we will also walk you through most of the major settings of some popular TV test software.

When wandering through the showroom or exhibition hall, observe all the televisions and projectors that are on display. You will notice that they all give exceptional brightness, contrast, sharpness and color saturation. They display brightly colored pictures with an incredible clarity, and details are crystal clear as never seen before in either the theater or at home.

Unfortunately, this is only a "show" you are being subjected to. Intentionally, the setup parameters in the showroom are over-tuned to create a false impression of reality. In general, the sharpness setting is too dramatic, the contrast too high and the color setting is just too gaudy, such that the resulting picture has little in common with realism or color authenticity.

Movie producers have an exact understanding how they wish their product to appear on the big screen, at the theatre, or at home in order that the mood portrayed in the film really is conveyed to the audience. When filming for a scene, the camera crew goes to great lengths to avoid external influences which might affect the cameraman's objective when it comes to color authenticity and lighting accuracy - even if the effect applies only to nuances.

A television that takes the delicate skin hues, for example, and renders them candy-colored pink, or transforms the white point of the subtle light emitted from a candle to a neon beam destroys all the effort placed into making the movie. Even the best of films will lose their fascination along with their underlying message. Both these qualities are extremely important if the viewer's attention is to be kept on the movie as the plot unfolds.

But just how should the perfect picture appear? The simple answer: Just as in the film studio. Luckily, standards do exist that affect the way in which movie material is reproduced on studio monitoring equipment so that movies shot in different studios have the same characteristics. Without these standards, movie production involving several independent organizations will be nigh on impossible.

These studio monitor standards are largely based on cathode ray tube (CRT) characteristics, which is one reason why even today, good picture authenticity is possible on these devices. Other technologies have to reproduce these CRT characteristics as closely as possible, which, more often than not, necessitates a great deal of color correction with its associated light loss since unwanted light components have to be filtered out. Hence, an LCD television that does not allow the physical color temperature of its backlight to be corrected is of little use for video playback.

In the ideal world, the television or projector manufacturer will have equipped the TV with presets that deliver an authentic and realistic picture that closely corresponds to the relevant valid standards applying to movie and television production. However, very few manufacturers achieve this goal as the majority place focus on whizzy electronics that "improve" the picture by introducing greater contrast, more intensive colors, enhanced clarity and reduced noise.

As is so often the case, the picture being reproduced in the sales room delivers a good first impression, but it suffers from the lack of neutrality. Without this neutral preset, the picture-quality interested customer is presented with a long-winded, if not impossible, task. (Calibration Pitfalls)

All standards serve as a communications basis. Video standards have been in existence for a comparatively long time, and if everyone abided by them, then all cameras, studio monitors, theater projectors and televisions would speak the same language.

The purpose of this guide is to explain the "rules of play" that govern video signal processing, so that film material is correctly played back on your equipment at home. Additionally, we will help you to understand proper test and set up procedures using the leading software available.

Digital Video Essentials (Combination Disk with PAL DVD and HD DVD).

The first disk with test utilities for HDTV signals has arrived. With the help of English menu control, the HD DVD called "DVE (Digital Video Essentials) High Definition" provides hundreds of HDTV test pictures to enable comprehensive system checking, and helps you setup the ideal parameters for HDTV viewing in the home-theater. Also included are numerous audio test signals recorded in Dolby TrueHD.

The disk, produced by the US video expert Joe Kane, is comprehensively used by AV T.O.P. Messtechnik GmbH, our Germany-based testing facility, and is available from specialty stores (current ordering information can be viewed online at http://www.videoessentials.com/). The flip side of the disk contains the earlier DVD version of Digital Video Essentials for PAL systems.

Retail Price: around 18 GBP

Additional Info: www.videoessentials.com