Joe Kane Productions premiere TV calibration Blu-ray disc, DVE HD Basics, has everything you need to properly adjust the image and sound on your HDTV. It receives the TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award thanks to its easy-to-follow instructions and extensive video and audio calibration tools.
One of the most important features found in any TV calibration disc is its ease of use. If the disc doesn’t have proper video tutorials and instructions, users can easily get lost with the variety of test patterns and sound signals, making it difficult to properly calibrate their television.
Fortunately, DVE HD Basics helps you ease into TV calibration with easy-to-understand tutorials and printed instructions that cover a wide range of related topics, including connecting your HDTV to multiple devices, such as Blu-ray players, gaming consoles, surround sound systems, etc. Making sure your connections are in working order ensures your image and sound quality aren’t hurt by loose or wrong connections.
The Blu-ray disc’s navigational menus are laid out nicely, making it easy to get to different features, tutorials and TV calibration tools.
An addition to the disc, you'll get a set of red, green and blue filters, which you hold up to your eyes while calibrating the HDTV. These filters work together with the disc's test patterns, making it easier to tweak color, contrast and brightness, and more. Most TV calibration discs ship with at least a blue filter, but this one goes above and beyond the average.
Joe Kane is synonymous with TV calibration, and his company’s discs are filled with extensive and comprehensive sets of video and audio calibration tools. Video tools include:
- Color Bars: test patterns that are used to adjust the TV’s color and luminosity (brightness) properly. Once you bring your HDTV home, you’ll definitely notice that "out of the box" your picture looks different from the store's calibrated display model Colors may be off, with reds that look somewhat orange, blues that look green and so on.
- A set of PLUGE Patterns (Picture line-up generation equipment): helps you calibrate the contrast and blacks, consist of a set of black-to-gray-to-white bars that help ensure the blacks look accurate. If your settings are too bright, they'll appear flat, and details are lost when blacks are too dark.
- Overscan: ensures you’re seeing the whole picture. For years, the picture on your standard definition TV was usually cut off on the top, bottom and sides. But with HDTV technology, you’re seeing more of the “raw” picture fed into your television. This calibration tool will make sure the image is properly displayed on the screen.
- Geometry: helps to ensure that shapes on the HDTV look accurate, so the roundness of a basketball, the straight lines of a home, etc., look correct and not distorted.
- Pixel Phase: uses an alternating pattern of black and white pixels on a gray background, which helps you make sure pixels are displaying properly. If they are not, parts of the image won’t look right.
- Reference for Maximum Ambient Light: helps you calibrate your HDTV under the specific lighting conditions where your television resides. The ambient lighting of a room, whether it's dimly lit or full of light, can affect the picture. This TV calibration tool will help you to get the best image, regardless of the lighting.
- Test Patterns: a host of test patterns mastered in both 1080p and 720p, so no matter the resolution of your HDTV, you’ll be able to accurately calibrate it.
Joe Kane Productions also includes a great set of audio calibration tools, such as:
Audio Test Signals: help fully calibrate the sound on your television. Test signals includes pink noise, which has every audio frequency found in the aural spectrum, to balance the full frequency of your HDTV or surround sound system.
- 440Hz Calibration Tone: A specific tone that allows you to adjust the sound levels in the speakers of a multi-channel surround sound system, such as 5.1 or 7.1, or in the speakers of an HDTV.
- Subwoofer Phase Check: adjusts the lows and sounds emitted by the subwoofer speaker.
- Frequency Sweep: ideal for a multi-channel surround sound system. This 15Hz to 22Hz signal will test how the sound is moving from speaker to speaker.
- Other Sound Tools: give you the best results from your HDTV’s built-in speakers or surround sound system.
The DVE HD Basics TV calibration Blu-ray disc also includes several videos, such as " HD In Detail," which covers HDTV technology; "Setting Up My HDTV," the instructional video for calibrating an HDTV; and a variety of video clips which are professionally photographed or created on a computer. These all serve to let you see how your HDTV appears. Demo clips are in 1080p and 720p high definition.
As if that’s not enough, there’s also audio commentary from Joe Kane himself, along with Allen Daviau, a major Hollywood cinematographer, who shot "ET," "The Color Purple" and other legendary films. You can glean information on TV calibration from these experts in the field.
DVE HD Basics is mastered in HD (both 1080p and 720p) and ships on a Blu-ray disc. This is ideal for HDTVs, but not standard definition televisions (SDTVs). You may find some SD DVDs claiming they’ll calibrate HDTVs, but they won’t.
There are many differences between HD and SD video, including resolution; in fact, 1080p is nearly four times the quality of 480i standard definition. Other differences include how color is processed, the aspect ratio (HD is 16 x 9 widescreen while SD is 4 x 3 fullscreen) and more.
Sound is also more robust in high definition compared to standard definition, which is another area where Blu-ray is superior to DVDs. If you’re trying to calibrate the sound or picture of an HDTV with a standard definition TV calibration disc, or vice-versa, the end results won’t be good at all.
If you have an SDTV, Joe Kane Productions has the perfect disc for calibration – the Digital Video Essentials NTSC Home Theater Setup. It has all the test patterns, tutorials, sound tools and video clips needed to get your SDTV looking and sounding its best.
There are several help options to get you through using the DVE HD Basics TV calibration Blu-ray disc, including the above-mentioned tutorials and instructions. Joe Kane Productions’ website has a tremendous amount of information to help you further.
Become a TV calibration expert with the Glossary page, which defines all the technical terminology you’re going to run into while using the DVE HD Basics TV calibration disc. The definitions are a click away.
The Resources page has all the information you’ll ever want on the various video and television formats through the years, including HDTV, SDTV and others. You may still own a TV that has technology listed on this page.
If the disc fails or has any problems, you can email Joe Kane Productions directly for a replacement. The user forum is still listed as “being updated,” but we’re hoping it will be live soon. They also offer seminars and classes for everyone from beginners to home theater installers.
One of the standout features on the DVE HD Basics Blu-ray disc is its ease of use. The instructions walk you through calibrating your HDTV’s picture and sound, step-by-step, to get the best possible experience. The extensive set of tools, along with an excellent website, make this a terrific TV calibration disc.
