Calibrating your television for the Xbox 360.
In another topic, someone was asking about setting up their Samsung LCD television (that they bought for X360) and seeing as I hadn't got around to it myself, I've now tested X360's video output, and created a few basic test patterns to help me set it up properly.
Hopefully this will be useful for basic users and more advanced ones, and should work on most display types. I have probably gone far too indepth, but I hope it helps.
It looks like the Xbox 360 uses "PC" video levels for everything; games, dvds and the dashboard. What this means is that full black is represented by 0,0,0 RGB, and White is 255,255,255. All other colours are made up from numbers within this. (eg full red is 255,0,0) Video, on the other hand, uses 16,16,16 for black, and 235,235,235 for white.
This means that the Xbox 360 output will be too bright when watching DVDs, so you will either have to put up with it, have a second setting for your television for DVDs, or use a separate player. (recommended)
It also means that if you have used something like "Digital Video Essentials" or "Avia: Guide to Home Theater" to set up your display that games will be too dark.
Before trying to calibrate your display, make sure you have any "dynamic contrast" or "auto picture" settings turned off. I would recommend leaving them off, but you can turn them back on once we're done if you must.
If you have a CRT I would set contrast to around the 50% mark before starting, on an LCD I'd put it down to around 75%. Don't worry; we'll be setting this properly later. Turn the "colour" control down to zero as well.
I would also recommend having the television on for at least and hour before-hand, to let it "warm up." Don't leave a static image on for an hour though; either use it, or leave a channel on.
Sharpness
The first mistake most people make with their television is that they turn up the sharpness control. Who wouldn't want the sharpest picture they can get? The problem is that, on a modern television, there should not even be a sharpness control. All this does is add false edges to objects, and destroy fine detail. It will also exaggerate any aliasing (jaggies) in the game.
You want this set to zero, or whatever the "neutral" position is. On my old Panasonic CRT, the television had to be set to "normal" mode and sharpness was in the middle, as it went from -3 to +3. (there are no numbers on Panasonic sets.
On most televisions, however, you want it at zero, or having the slider to the far left. This may look "blurry" or "soft" but it is how the image should be.
This is the sharpness pattern I have created, and while it may work, if you have Avia / DVE, use them to set it instead, they will be better for this.
The white lines should be just that; pure white lines. If you have the sharpness control set too high, you will start to see shadows or "halos" created.
Here is a close-up of how it should look:
And here is how it would look with the sharpness control set too high:
Contrast
This is another control that most people have set too high. The contrast control sets the white level of the display; basically how bright the light parts are.
If you have this set too low, whites will start looking like light grey, and if you have it set too high, it will not only be blindingly bright, but if you are using a CRT it will cause "blooming" and will distort the image.
The pattern I have created for this is a white "window" - this will help you set contrast better than a full white screen. With CRTs in particular, a full-white screen will be duller than a white-window, meaning that contrast will be set too high if it is set with this.
On a CRT watch the edges of the box and turn the contrast control up to its max. You should see the box increase in size, but you will also see red/blue appearing on its edges. What you want to do is turn the control right down until these colours disappear. It may not go entirely, but there will be a point where it is significantly less. This is the maximum point that contrast should be set on a CRT; it may still be too high, however.
You should set contrast so that it is comfortable to look at in a completely dark room. It should not hurt your eyes, or be extremely bright. Be sure not to lower it too much though, so that instead of white it becomes grey.
Brightness
What the brightness control does is set the "black level" of your display. If it is set too high, then black becomes dark grey, and if it is set too low, then shadow detail is lost.
A common misconception is that you should turn this control down until a full black screen looks completely black. Ideally this would be true, but no display is perfect, and if you do this, you will be swallowing up shadow details, making things harder to see in dark sections of games.
There are two patterns here; computer black, and video black. Computer black is what you want to use to set the brightness control for games and the dashboard. If you plan to use your X360 for DVDs, you may also want to use another preset on your television (if it lets you) for this. If not, remember the two values and change them depending on what you are using the machine for.
On most displays, the "computer black" image will probably just look solid black:
Something I must point out which is critical is to set this in whatever your normal viewing conditions are. The brighter the room is, the higher the brightness control will have to be. If you then use the television in the dark like this, things will probably look too bright.
If you have to make a compromise, set it when the room is at its brightest, that way you will always be able to see the shadow details, regardless of how bright/dark the room is. If you were to set it in the dark, you would lose a lot of detail if the room is bright.
There is an almost black square here on a full black background, the same size as the contrast window. This pattern may only work with component / vga, and lesser quality displays may not be able to display it, even with this connection.
You want to turn the brightness all the way up, until you can see the square in the middle. Then, what you want to do is keep turning it down a notch at a time until it is completely gone.
I can't stress this enough; once you think it's gone, hide the menus and get up close to double-check that it is not there. It will be very faint. I found it easiest to keep looking at one corner while adjusting the settings, without moving my eye from it, as it's very easy to "lose" when it's almost gone. Once it has disappeared completely turn your brightness up one notch. It should be very, very faint, but visible.
This is now your brightness control set properly.
The "video black" pattern is essentially the same, except rather than having a square of 1,1,1 it is 16,16,16.
With this pattern you want to do almost the same thing; turn down the brightness control until it has completely disappeared. Unlike the computer black, you should not turn it up one notch afterwards. This should be completely invisible.
Colour Temperature
Most newer televisions have this option, and most people don't really understand how it works. Televisions normally come out of the box with a "cool" temperature, giving everything a blue "tint." (note: the tint control is something completely different)
The way colour television basically works is like this: there are effectively two versions of the image transmitted. There is a greyscale image transmitted, and then the colour is overlaid on top.
Colour temperature sets what this greyscale image is like. If it is set too "cool" then, rather than being neutral grey, everything has a blue cast to it. If the television is set too warm, then everything has a reddish-orange colour cast.
D65 is what most stuff is filmed in, and what most monitors developers use will be calibrated to as well. So you will have to have your display as close to this "temperature" as possible to accurately reproduce whatever you are watching. Unfortunately it will not be possible to get this without paying for proper ISF Calibration (usually starting at £200) or buying expensive hardware, but having the colour temperature control set right is a good start. (ISF Calibrators do not use the user controls)
If the greyscale is not correct, then you can't hope to have the colours represented accurately, as they are overlaid onto it.
Now, unfortunately there is no easy way to do this by eye, and if your television has been set to "cool" for a while, you will think everything looks too red.
Without proper calibration equipment, you will basically have to guess at what is the correct setting. On many televisions it will be labelled as "warm," "neutral," or "6500k"
Most televisions do not have a smooth greyscale either; you will often find that some sets start getting a red cast as they get towards the darker end, and a slight blue cast on lighter colours, so I have created this pattern from 30% grey to 70% which is the range where most displays are pretty consistent.
What you want to do is try your television set in "normal" or "neutral," look at it for 20-30 seconds to let your eyes adjust to it, and then change to the others. Pick whichever looks the most "neutral" grey to you. I find it also helps to close your eyes for 10-15 seconds while changing, as your eye will naturally adjust to a temperature, even if it is wildly off.
As I said, there is no real way of getting this correct without expensive hardware, or paying for calibration, so make sure you just pick which looks the most neutral. I find it helps to be doing this in either a pitch-black room, or around mid-day in daylight. Do not have any artificial lights on, as they will influence what looks "neutral" to you.
Colour
Right now, this pattern should look completely grey, if you have followed my instructions.
Colour is another control that is very difficult to set correctly. DVE / Avia use special patterns with colour filters you hold in front of your television, which are excellent at setting it correctly. If you have one of these discs, I would recommend using their colour patterns for setting the colour control. They recommend setting it with the blue filter, but I would use red, as most sets emphasize reds, and if you set it with blue, skintones will never look natural.
This is a very basic pattern, and again, one you'll just have to "guess" at, basically.
It goes from 50% RGB to 100%, so you'll want to play around with the control again.
The colours on the right (red in particular) should look very strong, but should not be "screaming" at you. You should be able to tell if the control is set wrongly.
Unfortunately there's not much I can think of to help get this set correctly without using colour filters etc, so you will just have to do it by eye, and see what looks most natural to you.
Here is a zip file with the high-res images that I used to calibrate my display to the X360's output:
http://andrewfee.org/Calibration.zip
I just threw the files onto my digital camera and connected that up to the X360 to view them.
I'd appreciate any feedback on this, if it worked well for you, or if there are any improvements I could make to it.
Hopefully this will be useful for basic users and more advanced ones, and should work on most display types. I have probably gone far too indepth, but I hope it helps.
It looks like the Xbox 360 uses "PC" video levels for everything; games, dvds and the dashboard. What this means is that full black is represented by 0,0,0 RGB, and White is 255,255,255. All other colours are made up from numbers within this. (eg full red is 255,0,0) Video, on the other hand, uses 16,16,16 for black, and 235,235,235 for white.
This means that the Xbox 360 output will be too bright when watching DVDs, so you will either have to put up with it, have a second setting for your television for DVDs, or use a separate player. (recommended)
It also means that if you have used something like "Digital Video Essentials" or "Avia: Guide to Home Theater" to set up your display that games will be too dark.
Before trying to calibrate your display, make sure you have any "dynamic contrast" or "auto picture" settings turned off. I would recommend leaving them off, but you can turn them back on once we're done if you must.
If you have a CRT I would set contrast to around the 50% mark before starting, on an LCD I'd put it down to around 75%. Don't worry; we'll be setting this properly later. Turn the "colour" control down to zero as well.
I would also recommend having the television on for at least and hour before-hand, to let it "warm up." Don't leave a static image on for an hour though; either use it, or leave a channel on.
Sharpness
The first mistake most people make with their television is that they turn up the sharpness control. Who wouldn't want the sharpest picture they can get? The problem is that, on a modern television, there should not even be a sharpness control. All this does is add false edges to objects, and destroy fine detail. It will also exaggerate any aliasing (jaggies) in the game.
You want this set to zero, or whatever the "neutral" position is. On my old Panasonic CRT, the television had to be set to "normal" mode and sharpness was in the middle, as it went from -3 to +3. (there are no numbers on Panasonic sets.
On most televisions, however, you want it at zero, or having the slider to the far left. This may look "blurry" or "soft" but it is how the image should be.
This is the sharpness pattern I have created, and while it may work, if you have Avia / DVE, use them to set it instead, they will be better for this.
The white lines should be just that; pure white lines. If you have the sharpness control set too high, you will start to see shadows or "halos" created.
Here is a close-up of how it should look:
And here is how it would look with the sharpness control set too high:
Contrast
This is another control that most people have set too high. The contrast control sets the white level of the display; basically how bright the light parts are.
If you have this set too low, whites will start looking like light grey, and if you have it set too high, it will not only be blindingly bright, but if you are using a CRT it will cause "blooming" and will distort the image.
The pattern I have created for this is a white "window" - this will help you set contrast better than a full white screen. With CRTs in particular, a full-white screen will be duller than a white-window, meaning that contrast will be set too high if it is set with this.
On a CRT watch the edges of the box and turn the contrast control up to its max. You should see the box increase in size, but you will also see red/blue appearing on its edges. What you want to do is turn the control right down until these colours disappear. It may not go entirely, but there will be a point where it is significantly less. This is the maximum point that contrast should be set on a CRT; it may still be too high, however.
You should set contrast so that it is comfortable to look at in a completely dark room. It should not hurt your eyes, or be extremely bright. Be sure not to lower it too much though, so that instead of white it becomes grey.
Brightness
What the brightness control does is set the "black level" of your display. If it is set too high, then black becomes dark grey, and if it is set too low, then shadow detail is lost.
A common misconception is that you should turn this control down until a full black screen looks completely black. Ideally this would be true, but no display is perfect, and if you do this, you will be swallowing up shadow details, making things harder to see in dark sections of games.
There are two patterns here; computer black, and video black. Computer black is what you want to use to set the brightness control for games and the dashboard. If you plan to use your X360 for DVDs, you may also want to use another preset on your television (if it lets you) for this. If not, remember the two values and change them depending on what you are using the machine for.
On most displays, the "computer black" image will probably just look solid black:
Something I must point out which is critical is to set this in whatever your normal viewing conditions are. The brighter the room is, the higher the brightness control will have to be. If you then use the television in the dark like this, things will probably look too bright.
If you have to make a compromise, set it when the room is at its brightest, that way you will always be able to see the shadow details, regardless of how bright/dark the room is. If you were to set it in the dark, you would lose a lot of detail if the room is bright.
There is an almost black square here on a full black background, the same size as the contrast window. This pattern may only work with component / vga, and lesser quality displays may not be able to display it, even with this connection.
You want to turn the brightness all the way up, until you can see the square in the middle. Then, what you want to do is keep turning it down a notch at a time until it is completely gone.
I can't stress this enough; once you think it's gone, hide the menus and get up close to double-check that it is not there. It will be very faint. I found it easiest to keep looking at one corner while adjusting the settings, without moving my eye from it, as it's very easy to "lose" when it's almost gone. Once it has disappeared completely turn your brightness up one notch. It should be very, very faint, but visible.
This is now your brightness control set properly.
The "video black" pattern is essentially the same, except rather than having a square of 1,1,1 it is 16,16,16.
With this pattern you want to do almost the same thing; turn down the brightness control until it has completely disappeared. Unlike the computer black, you should not turn it up one notch afterwards. This should be completely invisible.
Colour Temperature
Most newer televisions have this option, and most people don't really understand how it works. Televisions normally come out of the box with a "cool" temperature, giving everything a blue "tint." (note: the tint control is something completely different)
The way colour television basically works is like this: there are effectively two versions of the image transmitted. There is a greyscale image transmitted, and then the colour is overlaid on top.
Colour temperature sets what this greyscale image is like. If it is set too "cool" then, rather than being neutral grey, everything has a blue cast to it. If the television is set too warm, then everything has a reddish-orange colour cast.
D65 is what most stuff is filmed in, and what most monitors developers use will be calibrated to as well. So you will have to have your display as close to this "temperature" as possible to accurately reproduce whatever you are watching. Unfortunately it will not be possible to get this without paying for proper ISF Calibration (usually starting at £200) or buying expensive hardware, but having the colour temperature control set right is a good start. (ISF Calibrators do not use the user controls)
If the greyscale is not correct, then you can't hope to have the colours represented accurately, as they are overlaid onto it.
Now, unfortunately there is no easy way to do this by eye, and if your television has been set to "cool" for a while, you will think everything looks too red.
Without proper calibration equipment, you will basically have to guess at what is the correct setting. On many televisions it will be labelled as "warm," "neutral," or "6500k"
Most televisions do not have a smooth greyscale either; you will often find that some sets start getting a red cast as they get towards the darker end, and a slight blue cast on lighter colours, so I have created this pattern from 30% grey to 70% which is the range where most displays are pretty consistent.
What you want to do is try your television set in "normal" or "neutral," look at it for 20-30 seconds to let your eyes adjust to it, and then change to the others. Pick whichever looks the most "neutral" grey to you. I find it also helps to close your eyes for 10-15 seconds while changing, as your eye will naturally adjust to a temperature, even if it is wildly off.
As I said, there is no real way of getting this correct without expensive hardware, or paying for calibration, so make sure you just pick which looks the most neutral. I find it helps to be doing this in either a pitch-black room, or around mid-day in daylight. Do not have any artificial lights on, as they will influence what looks "neutral" to you.
Colour
Right now, this pattern should look completely grey, if you have followed my instructions.
Colour is another control that is very difficult to set correctly. DVE / Avia use special patterns with colour filters you hold in front of your television, which are excellent at setting it correctly. If you have one of these discs, I would recommend using their colour patterns for setting the colour control. They recommend setting it with the blue filter, but I would use red, as most sets emphasize reds, and if you set it with blue, skintones will never look natural.
This is a very basic pattern, and again, one you'll just have to "guess" at, basically.
It goes from 50% RGB to 100%, so you'll want to play around with the control again.
The colours on the right (red in particular) should look very strong, but should not be "screaming" at you. You should be able to tell if the control is set wrongly.
Unfortunately there's not much I can think of to help get this set correctly without using colour filters etc, so you will just have to do it by eye, and see what looks most natural to you.
Here is a zip file with the high-res images that I used to calibrate my display to the X360's output:
http://andrewfee.org/Calibration.zip
I just threw the files onto my digital camera and connected that up to the X360 to view them.
I'd appreciate any feedback on this, if it worked well for you, or if there are any improvements I could make to it.
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