Best Buy just got caught using the oldest TV salesman trick in the book: put two identical televisions side-by-side, but hook one of them up using different cables to give it bad reception. Then tout the other set’s superior picture as the result of an expensive “calibration” service the customer doesn’t really need.
It’s especially perfidious in an age when many modern sets can’t be calibrated the way old rear-projection monsters could be.
When challenged, the store’s staff said that the process now involves changing color balance settings on the on-screen menu, just like any idiot can do.
Best Buy Sneaky Sneaky Calibration Tricks Make a Comeback [Consumerist]
And it’s not just a cable; the component (three connectors) is analog whereas the HDMI (single connector) is digital. The ripoff factor is high with this one.
woah… not so fast there cowboy…
It could be they are driving both monitors from one player, and they don’t have an HDMI or component splitter, so they do it the cheap way: Run one from component and the other from HDMI.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
1) If that is the case, the player is probably not outputting 1080p to HDMI. Most players can do HD and SD output at the same time, but all HD outputs have to be the same. Both are probably getting 720p or 1080i.
2) Those don’t look like low-grade component cables. The connectors look like Monster Cable! The HDMI cable appears to be a generic one that came with the player or something. (We all know name-brand premium cable is a waste of $$$ anyway, but Monster isn’t going to be worse than no-name)
3) Component analog is NOT necessarily lower quality than HDMI digital. Here’s the technical facts: 1080p requires 165MHz video bandwidth, 1080i/720p half that. Analog VGA cables can easily do 1920×1200, which is slightly higher. VGA cables use three mini-coax cables internally, just like component. So component can do 1080p! (even if most sources and TVs don’t support it) FYI, most serious videophiles that use high-end Barco/Runco 3-CRT projectors run analog component or RGB from the scaler. That’s all those old beasts can take!
4) My 720p LCoS JVC set is calibrated. I’ve compared 720p Component to 720p HDMI. No difference at all. Your results may vary if your set has crap component inputs, but most don’t.
5) Last, but certainly not least: Look at the photo carefully. The “non-calibrated” set is obviously too bright, but it’s not the only thing not calibrated. The bottom sign is also rather out of focus.
Reputable companies like Datacolor that sell calibration probes for monitors (which really _are_ necessary if you do any kind of graphics work), also sell calibration equipment for TVs. I wonder how they work (excuse me but I don’t have a TV).
On a monitor the probe generates a color profile which is applied by the OS to the graphics card output to change it. On a TV you can only act on the signal, so are those things going on the cable ? Or is there some kind of protocol on those fancy new TVs with USB input and all those gimmicks ?
Dargaud, color calibration for print is nothing whatsoever like what TV installers do with LCD and plasma displays: they just dick around with contrast and brightness and such, eyeballing the results.
Thanks for the info, WEIGHTEDCOMPANIONCUBE! It’s a good point that if they wanted to make the “uncalibrated” set look bad, all they need to do is screw around with the selfsame menu settings that calibration would “fix”
Didn’t they also get caught putting a standard broadcast next to an HD broadcast to (i.e. regular ESPN next to ESPNHD) to show what calibration could do?
Dargaud – if you can get into the service settings for your TV (in some cases there’s IS a service-only USB or serial port somewhere) you can adjust the way it calculates the actual LCD/DLP/CRT drive signals from the input signal.
ISF certified calibration techs do just that. You can do it to a monitor too, and it doesn’t require a trained tech. Usually there are RGB settings in the user menu. If you can get them right, you don’t have to correct on the OS end so much, and you’ll get a wider gamut.