Just thought I would share the data behind the excellent results Lyris had with my old TV yesterday. The difference is far greater than I expected. Seeing the difference in the image and knowing that the process will also help prolong the life of this TV it seems well worth the money.
I have a couple of before shots of Donpachi which I will retake with all the new settings applied. I'll get a few other pictures when I get a chance.
PRE-Calibration
Greyscale tracking before calibration was consistenly too blue-green. The level of blue is so high, and red so low, that they are both off the RGB Level Tracking chart. That resulted in everything on screen having a blueish wash over it. When the CRT was new, it was probably blue tinted to start with, but I imagine it's got worse over time. In fact, the colour temperature overall measured at something like 10,000K - which was probably not good for the tube. NTSC, PAL and HDTV video standards all use an overall colour temperature of about 6500K, equivalent to neutral sunlight.
Delta errors (dEs): for reference, an error of 3 or lower is generally at the level which won't result in a visible tint being recognized by the eye. Pre calibration, the Loewe CRT had errors of about 40-50.
Dynamic range was fine - you weren't losing much shadow detail to start with, and there were no blooming whites. I think you mentioned that you calibrated both of those by eye using Digital Video Essentials before, which would explain that. Those are two of the only controls that can be set properly with an eye and test pattern (Greyscale tracking obviously needs the meter).
As for colour, the hue and saturation of the outer colour points was not too bad. The colours of red and green are quite close to spec. Cyan and Magenta have huge errors, as the blue tint imposed on the picture by the inaccurate greyscale was distorting these quite visibly. Luminance levels were typically too low (coloured blocks = targets, black blocks = your screen) resulting in mildly washed out colour.
POST-Calibration
Visible greyscale tracking errors are now non-existent. All 10 measured points display with nearly perfect neutrality. Delta errors are all below 3 so will be invisible to the eye. Achieving flat greyscale tracking on a CRT is unusual, especially if it's had 8000 hours on it. Since it's from 2002, the TV "only" has 2-point greyscale control, that is, control over the low end (Dark areas) and high end (highlights). Some trade-offs were necessary; in the end I went for a couple of % too little red in the shadows to avoid huge errors elsewhere. Balancing the tiny remaining errors out basically results in them being invisible.
Gamma is tracking at a fairly flat 2.2. This is very good luminance distribution for everyday environments (rather than blacked-out, light treated home cinema rooms).
Colour gamut errors are all but gone now. Again, all of your delta errors are under the visible point of 3 (compared to cyan's 18 before). This is a damn good result considering that the CRT had no colour controls beyond simple Colour (which was largely a colour luminance control; not a saturation one) and Tint (which didn't do anything with RGB signals anyway). Most of the improvements here come from setting the basic Colour control to balance out remaining errors, and also greyscale calibration which removes the blue-green mist which was being added to everything before.
It conforms pretty closely to the EBU colour gamut. Although we were calibrating mainly for NTSC, I didn't attempt to hit the American standard def SMPTE-C gamut because it wasn't used in Japan, where almost all of your games were developed in the first place (in SD, Japan obviously used 60hz NTSC but with the EBU gamut). Also, since the gamut on CRT displays is defined by the physical phosphor material in the screen, it likely wouldn't have been possible anyway, although the difference is small. The world is now on one colour gamut standard for HD.
Geometry is also improved now too. It can never be perfect on a 32" consumer CRT, but you have more of a visible image now with less overscan, and also less of a pin-cushion effect. The biggest improvement is to greyscale of course, which leaves you with neutrally coloured images which are better than some uncalibrated pro CRT monitors. The apparent depth and lack of murky blue tint speaks for itself, as we saw! Now it's calibrated it'll also last longer.
We also investigated the different picture settings and found out which one was giving Interlaced and Progressive display output (and how the control differed with 50/60hz input). Leave it off for retro scanlines
I have a couple of before shots of Donpachi which I will retake with all the new settings applied. I'll get a few other pictures when I get a chance.
PRE-Calibration
Greyscale tracking before calibration was consistenly too blue-green. The level of blue is so high, and red so low, that they are both off the RGB Level Tracking chart. That resulted in everything on screen having a blueish wash over it. When the CRT was new, it was probably blue tinted to start with, but I imagine it's got worse over time. In fact, the colour temperature overall measured at something like 10,000K - which was probably not good for the tube. NTSC, PAL and HDTV video standards all use an overall colour temperature of about 6500K, equivalent to neutral sunlight.
Delta errors (dEs): for reference, an error of 3 or lower is generally at the level which won't result in a visible tint being recognized by the eye. Pre calibration, the Loewe CRT had errors of about 40-50.
Dynamic range was fine - you weren't losing much shadow detail to start with, and there were no blooming whites. I think you mentioned that you calibrated both of those by eye using Digital Video Essentials before, which would explain that. Those are two of the only controls that can be set properly with an eye and test pattern (Greyscale tracking obviously needs the meter).
As for colour, the hue and saturation of the outer colour points was not too bad. The colours of red and green are quite close to spec. Cyan and Magenta have huge errors, as the blue tint imposed on the picture by the inaccurate greyscale was distorting these quite visibly. Luminance levels were typically too low (coloured blocks = targets, black blocks = your screen) resulting in mildly washed out colour.
POST-Calibration
Visible greyscale tracking errors are now non-existent. All 10 measured points display with nearly perfect neutrality. Delta errors are all below 3 so will be invisible to the eye. Achieving flat greyscale tracking on a CRT is unusual, especially if it's had 8000 hours on it. Since it's from 2002, the TV "only" has 2-point greyscale control, that is, control over the low end (Dark areas) and high end (highlights). Some trade-offs were necessary; in the end I went for a couple of % too little red in the shadows to avoid huge errors elsewhere. Balancing the tiny remaining errors out basically results in them being invisible.
Gamma is tracking at a fairly flat 2.2. This is very good luminance distribution for everyday environments (rather than blacked-out, light treated home cinema rooms).
Colour gamut errors are all but gone now. Again, all of your delta errors are under the visible point of 3 (compared to cyan's 18 before). This is a damn good result considering that the CRT had no colour controls beyond simple Colour (which was largely a colour luminance control; not a saturation one) and Tint (which didn't do anything with RGB signals anyway). Most of the improvements here come from setting the basic Colour control to balance out remaining errors, and also greyscale calibration which removes the blue-green mist which was being added to everything before.
It conforms pretty closely to the EBU colour gamut. Although we were calibrating mainly for NTSC, I didn't attempt to hit the American standard def SMPTE-C gamut because it wasn't used in Japan, where almost all of your games were developed in the first place (in SD, Japan obviously used 60hz NTSC but with the EBU gamut). Also, since the gamut on CRT displays is defined by the physical phosphor material in the screen, it likely wouldn't have been possible anyway, although the difference is small. The world is now on one colour gamut standard for HD.
Geometry is also improved now too. It can never be perfect on a 32" consumer CRT, but you have more of a visible image now with less overscan, and also less of a pin-cushion effect. The biggest improvement is to greyscale of course, which leaves you with neutrally coloured images which are better than some uncalibrated pro CRT monitors. The apparent depth and lack of murky blue tint speaks for itself, as we saw! Now it's calibrated it'll also last longer.
We also investigated the different picture settings and found out which one was giving Interlaced and Progressive display output (and how the control differed with 50/60hz input). Leave it off for retro scanlines
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