Calibration

TV and film video production follows industry standards for color and detail. Display calibration ensures an accurate representation of video content.

Why calibrate?

Today's televisions and projectors can produce some of the most exquisite imagery. However, variances in manufacturing and the myriad of picture adjustment options mean that even the best models from top manufacturers leave room for improvement.

Klein K10-A Colorimeter

Klein Instruments K10-A Colorimeter

Ideally, you want your TV or projector to match a professional monitor's calibrated color and detail performance in a video grading suite environment. Any uncalibrated video display device (LCD, OLED, plasma, projector) isn't showing you the intended vision of the content's creator. And no consumer display produces accurate imagery right out of the box!

There are several benefits of having your production monitor, TV,  or projector calibrated by a professional:

Accurate Color

A display's depiction of color should accurately represent the information in a video signal. Finding and properly adjusting the appropriate picture settings to exact broadcast and film production standards will result in faithful video reproduction.

Many professional video monitors and LG consumer displays feature direct lookup table (LUT) programming for ultimate color and detail accuracy for SDR, HDR, and Dolby Vision video content. We offer reference-grade LUT programming services for these display devices and stand-alone LUT boxes.

Which picture setup is correct?

Which picture setup is correct?
Image credit: Samsung

Revealing Picture Detail

An improperly configured television or projector often sacrifices bright and dark details that should otherwise be visible to the audience.

Is your display sacrificing detail?

Is your display sacrificing detail?

Consistent Color Mixing

Almost all televisions and projectors generate a color by mixing red, green, and blue (the primary colors in additive color mixing.) With these display systems, the color white is the three primaries combined. Shades of gray are created by collectively reducing the brightness of the primaries until there is no light (aka black.) The signals in our video sources are often encoded as high-resolution grayscale pictures with relatively low-resolution color information combined to save bandwidth. Fine-tuning a display's depiction of the color of gray dark-to-bright (aka grayscale) is a critical aspect of the calibration service. An inaccurate grayscale will negatively influence all colors as they appear on-screen.

Additive color mixing

Minimizing Artificial Enhancements

Most televisions and projectors are factory-configured to produce as bright of a picture as possible regardless of color or detail accuracy. Many LCDs also enable a motion resolution enhancement that unnaturally smooths movies' appearance (aka soap opera effect.) Professional video calibration minimizes these unwanted artifacts, creating a more eye-pleasing picture!

VideoForge PRO HDR video signal generator

VideoForge PRO HDR video signal generator

Efficiency

While we strive for optimal picture performance, a side-effect of professional video calibration is often a display device that consumes less electricity.

Heron Fidelity uses Calman Ultimate calibration software from Portrait Displays

Contact

Robert, a THX/ISF-trained calibrator in the Northern California/Bay Area, is available for worldwide project requests. Contact Heron Fidelity for appointments or inquiries.