# Musing about video processing



## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

Everything in the video chain upscales the video whether it is a $49 DVD player, an AVR, or a stand alone video processor. 
What's up with that ??
I know would rather have my TV upscale the video instead of a cheap DVD player and I think I want it to upscale the signal period.

So I have been wondering if there are a lot of TVs out there that have poor video processing ?
What TVs benefit from having a different device do the upscale vs doing it themselves ?

I also see a lot of buzz in regards to display calibration.
On my television the 'standard - warm' preset nails it. 
Human flesh tones (regardless of race) are very natural and the rest of the colors are life like and brilliant.
Leaving the adjustments alone is the best path to an excellent picture.

What TV are known to need additional calibration beyond the three or four presets that most TVs have ??

How many here actually use a calibration device or professional to set up the display ?


----------



## glaufman (Nov 25, 2007)

chashint said:


> Everything in the video chain upscales the video whether it is a $49 DVD player, an AVR, or a stand alone video processor.
> What's up with that ??
> 
> I know would rather have my TV upscale the video instead of a cheap DVD player and I think I want it to upscale the signal period.


MFRs put into their devices whatever they can afford at a price point that they think will sell more devices, regardless of whether or not the it will make the picture look better, and they don't know whether or not you have another device in your chain that can do a better job. Can you turn off the upscaling in your player? 


> So I have been wondering if there are a lot of TVs out there that have poor video processing ?
> What TVs benefit from having a different device do the upscale vs doing it themselves ?


Much fewer than just a few years ago, but I bet they're still out there. Most TVs from the most popular 4 or 5 MFRs do a pretty good job with their processsing. The cheapest, non-name-ist, most private label TVs are the most likely to benefit from not having to process the video.


> I also see a lot of buzz in regards to display calibration.
> On my television the 'standard - warm' preset nails it.
> Human flesh tones (regardless of race) are very natural and the rest of the colors are life like and brilliant.
> Leaving the adjustments alone is the best path to an excellent picture.


There's the old reference vs preference discussion. A picture that looks great to you might be far off from "reference" which is what the creative intent was when authoring the disk. It becomes a personal choice for which one you want. I used my TV for about 6 mos before calibrating it. I loved the picture, until I finally got aronud to it. I have the equipment, so why not? I do believe it looks better now, perhaps that's expectation bias, but when I switch between my manual grayscale settings and the original ones, I can see the difference on the screen as I make the change. There's one thing about the picture now that I'm still not completely satisfied with, but I believe that's because I'm not quite done with experimenting with a few different settings to see what difference they make in real world material, i.e. balancing compromises. A few years ago I would've been adamant that 99% of all TVs out there desperately needed a calibration, up to and including at least a grayscale cal. Every new set I looked at looked blue to me. These days I believe the big boys are doing less blueshift at he factory so more sets are looking pretty good out of the box, especially if you know what presets to use. That being said, I still believe that every set can be helped towards reference by a calibration by someone knowledgeable and experienced. It can be learned, and easily, and there are those on here who can help. If you have the time to learn and go the cheap route, you can record the settings you start off with so you can always go back to them if you decide you'd rather watch the look you like to watch (preference) as opposed to reference.

So there are a few choices you'll want to make... the first will be, what's more valuable to you, time/money? If money, will you feel bad if a pro comes in and you don't like the results and you set it back to factory, but you're out the money? Same question for your time.
Then there's how much time/money are you willing to invest in the experiment?
A good calibration disk, used poperly by you, can get you 75% of the way to reference for under $50 in just a few minutes, not including learning time. Meters of the sort you'll want to do grayscale and color work are significantly more.

What tv do you have?


----------



## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

I have a Samsung HLR 5677w DLP.
The TV is a little over 5 years old and its up conversion is top notch, even the old VHS was watchable before it was retired.

I know that every product needs to have bullet points on the spec sheet, but surely TVs can convert 480p to 720p or 1080p better than a $50 DVD player.
As far as AVRs go I would much rather have the money put into the audio components instead of a video up converter.

I just saw my first straight out of the box LCD TV this past weekend.
It was a Samsung LN46C630K1F.
I like the TV and it looks like it has a lot of potential.
The picture is very bright and the colors are very intense.
My buddy is coming from a 20" CRT and he is a bit overwhelmed with the size increase and the intensity of the picture.

My TV does not have the potential to produce the brightness or the color saturation that the LN46C630 can produce. 
It is going to take more setup than selecting normal and warm to get the picture under control.
So now I at least understand all the talk about having to calibrate (or at least do some serious by eye adjustments) instead of picking a preset like I did on my TV.

Are the calibrated setting really all that much different from TV to TV ?
Wouldn't all LN46C630 TVs be closely grouped so a 'reference' preset could be available that would be very close to a calibrated display ?


----------



## nholmes1 (Oct 7, 2010)

Every TV is different as each of the various components are within a tolerance level, factor in there are hundreds if not thousands of components that can have a 5-10% variance and you can see how different TVs from the same manufacturer model can be different.

Yes every TV should be calibrated, but no you don't have to do so, as glaufman said it is personal preference more than anything.


----------



## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

I have been in electrical engineering >25 years, while the things I work on and with are in a different category than TVs and audio equipment, I would still find it odd if there was a 5% - 10% variance between TVs of the same model.


----------



## nholmes1 (Oct 7, 2010)

Out of the same production batch that difference is probably closer to 1-5% but I have setup enough systems and calibrated them myself with proper equipment and have seen the difference. The higher the level of TV the smaller the difference.


----------



## koyaan (Mar 2, 2010)

I guess if every thing in your video chain is brand new, where the processing takes place may not make a big diffrence.
I've got an older Sony display ( no 1080p) and noticed a big diffrence when I hooked up my Oppo BDP 83SE to do the conversion to 1080i rather than having the TV do it. 
I suspect that as in most things there are advances it the technology and the newer or higher quality piece of gear is most likely to give you the best result.lddude:


----------



## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

That's good to know about the upconversion koyaan.
I really only know about my own TV and since its five years old I just figured it was probably average at best.

In the TV food chain where is the 46" Samsung LN46C630 that my buddy got considered to be ?
I know where it is in the Samsung product line up, but are there TV's with equal or better PQ for say 30% less ? Since there are only a few panel vendors are all the 1080p 120Hz TVs about the same ?

Oh yeah, the Patroits - Jets game was on and I watched 30 -40 minutes of it on the LN46C630.
I really looked for motion blur, but I saw no issues with that.
On the forums I still see lots of references to motion blur on the LCD TVs (mostly from the plasma crowd).
Is motion blur on 1080p 120Hz TVs now conquered across the board, or does this model of TV displaying this particular broadcast just not have motion blur (that I could see) ?


----------

