Monitor Calibration - Bringing New Light To PC Gaming

If you are an avid PC gamer, you've probably invested a lot into owning a PC system you’re proud of with quality components and a beautiful display to bring your games to life. With all the great games released in the last year to catch up on and more coming out, is your PC ready?

If your PC display has not been properly color calibrated, you are letting a key visual component slip. Display calibration is important for one clear reason: you want to optimize your display to produce the best colors and black levels possible with no compromise.

Leaving your display uncalibrated is like going to the movie theater or art museum with sunglasses on. What's the point of pushing millions of pixels onscreen if each one are rendered incorrectly? Take it from the game developers we’ve worked with: having a properly color calibrated display is essential to experiencing the game as the creators intended.ready?

click to see uncalibrated vs. calibrated display

Ensure your monitor is displaying content accurately with the CalPC monitor calibration solution to bring your PC gaming experience to the next visual tier! Optimizing your display towards visual perfection enhances everything you do onscreen whether it’s playing games, watching movies, or editing content with crisp, accurate colors and deep shadow details.

Like wiping the dust off an old arcade gem, the results of the CalPC solution will make you want to replay all of your PC games again in this new light. Once you see the results, you’ll never want to go back!

Some Quick Photos From NAB 2012

We had a great show at NAB 2012 showing off the new CalMAN Studio and SpectraCal ColorBox. More information to come!

 

Our NAB booth

 

CalMAN Studio in action

 

Christie booth nearby

Available Now: Consumer Calibration Rentals!

Interested in calibrating your TV? Read all the benefits & industry endorsements? Rent a calibration kit today!

We're excited now to offer full calibration packages to give you everything you need to discover how easy it actually is to make a real difference in the quality of your viewing experience. Our award-winning CalMAN software will walk you through the entire process step-by-step with full instructions and show you real-time information at each step with precise hardware measurements to help you hone in on visual perfection. Trust in our award-winning CalMAN DIY software, owned by thousands of users worldwide, to get the job done right.

Once you've seen a fully calibrated display, you won't want to go back to how things were! 

IT'S EASY: Get the same equipment as a professional – at a price less than enthusiast gear!

Saving You Time: The VideoEq Pro Story

“Time is money” for everyone, but this truth seems particularly sharpened for the AV integrator/installer. The difference between making money on a job or paying for the ‘fun’ of doing it can be as simple as one thing that just took longer than you planned.

Experienced installers, who would rather make money than lose it, do everything they can to reduce job variables, to bring under control as many unknown elements as possible before they even get in the truck for the drive to the site.

Given the number of things that can go wrong, from HDMI cables that almost but don’t quite carry the signal, to equipment that almost but doesn’t quite hit its spec, you wouldn’t think that so many jobs would make it to the last step, making sure the display delivers an acceptable image, before bogging down and turning from money-making to money-losing. But – maybe because it is the last step – that’s often where it happens.

Maybe the flat panel controls don’t do what they say they’re supposed to do. Trying to white balance, there’s just not enough control on the red. Trying to adjust the color gamut, everything you touch creates some side effect, and trying to fix that side effect makes everything else worse.

More than one installer will still be telling the story weeks later over drinks, not quite able to shake the nightmare: “I was two hours into trying to set the CMS, and I was just digging myself a deeper hole. Finally I hit factory reset and left it the way I found it. Green was way out in left field, but anything I did to try to fix it only made it worse.”

That’s exactly the point at which a more experienced installer might have pulled out a VideoEq. And he would have told a different story later: “I just put a VideoEq in front of each projector, hit the AutoCal button in CalMAN, and I was out of there ten minutes later with a perfect match and dead flat DeltaE charts to print on the report for the client.”

We get more and more letters like a nice one an old friend forwarded from a customer last week; “Watched several movies and concerts over the weekend and I have to say you guys really nailed the color. It's really good now. Please let <name here> know he did a wonderful job. Thanks.”

Know what he did to generate that letter? He put a VideoEq in front of the projector and let the VideoEq solve his problem, quickly and accurately.

The VideoEq not only provides precise control over every aspect of the video, from gamma to gamut, it also ensures that the controls remain independent of each other. Have you seen the demo where the VideoEq changes the color of a lemon in the picture from yellow to purple, without affecting the color of the orange sitting right next to it?

Even better, the VideoEq not only provides the control, independent control, but it also provides interfaces that CalMAN knows by heart. In fact, CalMAN’s AutoCal routines were developed on the VideoEq. Sure, CalMAN’s AutoCal works on dozens of other devices by now, but none have been so thoroughly studied and optimized as the VideoEq’s. With the VideoEq in the chain, getting a spot-on calibration not only becomes possible, it becomes fast.

In fact, we’re starting to hear more and more people say, “Unless it’s something I know by heart, I don’t even try to calibrate it. Pick the closest preset, set Brightness and Contrast, and do the rest in the VideoEq. Takes ten minutes and does a dead-on job. Why burn my time? Let the VideoEq take care of it.”

“The client doesn’t mind the extra line item?”

“These are people who want a quality system. They like knowing I gave them an extra box in the system to make the colors right.”

If you haven’t yet experienced this yourself, you owe it to yourself to call 877-886-5112 today to evaluate the VideoEq.

I’ve you’ve seen what the VideoEq can do, you do always keep one in your toolkit, just for those jobs that threaten to spin out of control and burn up your potential profit at the last minute, don’t you?

And if you’ve experienced how the VideoEq can pull your chestnuts out of the fire – well, why expose your chestnuts to the flames at all? Why didn’t you add a VideoEq to the configuration when you were designing the system in the first place?

Because you like experimenting at the site in front of the client, not knowing how it’s going to come out? Because pushing one button and getting exactly the result you want is just too easy? Because not knowing how long it’s going to end up taking makes it more thrilling?

Click this link to apply for a free VideoEq evaluation. See what it can do for your business. See what it can do for your time!

3D TV Display Technology Shoot-Out

Being a trusted source of reliable information is gratifying to us at SpectraCal, and it’s a confidence we do our best to continue to merit.  We spend a great deal of time and invest significant resources here in checking claims and delving into the technical details of current issues in image fidelity. 

Our engineers Darrell and Chris spend much of their time in a research lab with prototype displays before manufacturers release them, investigating the issues they pose to the state of the art of colorimetry. 

The #1 most 'Frequently Asked Question' category for the past year has involved 3D, with questions such as: How do I calibrate a 3D system? What are the 3D-specific setup issues?  How do I test for them?

The Joe Kane 3D test patterns for the AV Foundry Video Forge HDMI digital pattern generator have been invaluable in helping manufacturers as well as system integrators understand and rectify the problems with 3D signals.  Recently we’ve also introduced our own 3D test patterns as well, which are now included with every VideoForge.  

In coming months, you’ll see more articles in this newsletter on issues in 3D setup and calibration. Our investigations have definitely turned up way more problems than solutions, so you’ll see limited, carefully qualified conclusions, hedged around with enumeration of lots of exception cases. But we think you’ll find them all the more valuable for that. Please don’t hesitate to write in with your 3D questions. Let us know what practical problems you’re seeing in the field.  

One asset in making sure we always provide the best and clearest technical briefings to our community is a wide circle of friends. After we run tests in our labs, we always check with everyone else we know in a variety of industries to compare notes on what they are seeing. 

One of the most valued contributors to the industry’s understanding of display technology issues is Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies. Among his other great values to the industry – such as an unmatchable resume and impeccable methodological rigor – is a fearless impartiality.  Ray always reports exactly what he finds, no matter whom it might offend.  

So we were both pleased and avidly interested when Dr. Soneira recently published an in-depth comparison of 3D display technologies. We think both you and your customers will benefit from reading this report.

Click here to read the full article. 

SpectraCal Software Supports DataColor Spyder4 With Enhancements!

Software developer SpectraCal, Inc. announced support throughout its video calibration software line for the new Datacolor Spyder4.  CalMAN and CalPC version 4.6, announced by SpectraCal today, will support Spyder4 hardware whether purchased from SpectraCal, Datacolor, or any Datacolor reseller. 

Those who buy from SpectraCal will receive a bonus:  SpectraCal’s version of the meter, dubbed the Spyder4 Enhanced, contain additional calibration matrixes to improve calibration of LED displays, projectors, and other display technologies important to home users.

“We enhance each meter individually in our NIST-traceable calibration lab,” explained SpectraCal Marketing Manager Alex Nguyen.

Nguyen explained that the added precision will only benefit users of SpectraCal software; other users will see no change.

Innovations in the Spyder4 include double-shielded filters.  According to Datacolor, these improvements greatly improve long-term stability and improve meter accuracy, on average, by 26% compared to the Spyder3.  

“We’re very impressed with the repeatability of the Spyder4,” said Darrell Bird, director of the calibration lab at SpectraCal.  “It’s a major improvement,” Bird said.

“Datacolor is excited to see SpectraCal supporting our renowned line of colorimeters with their great software,” said Brian Levey, Datacolor’s Global Vice President of Sales. 

CalMAN is the top selling software for calibrating home theaters and other video displays.  CalPC is SpectraCal’s comprehensive solution for calibrating computer monitors.

To help launch the new bundles, SpectraCal is offering significant discounts during the month of March.  For example, CalMAN with a Spyder4, normally $299, is on sale for $229 in March.

For more information, please go to www.spectracal.com

Home Theater Forum Interviews CTO Derek Smith

Great interview from Home Theater Forum with CTO Derek Smith!

SpectraCal Spotlight: David Abrams

The SpectraCal Spotlight is a new monthly column focused on asking questions of AV professionals. Learn about these experts, their business, and perspective on the AV industry. Read what is possible and hopefully gain some useful insight.

January's spotlight is on David Abrams, President of the company Avical. Click to read the full Q&A.