Replace 35" TV with something bigger

Sean, I've been trying for a month to calibrate the tv properly. I bought the Sony DVP-S9000ES with the special Men in Black package. The thing was supposed to come with the Avia disc included as well as the MIB DVD and an SACD sampler. Get this, none of it was in there. The box was sealed when I bought it, and I trust my dealer. I've been at war with Sony for the past month to get the disc. Anyway, I will prevail.

Most decent Audio / Video stores will carry one of the two discs mentioned. If they don't have either, they can typically order it. You might also try something like Amazon, etc... on the web.

As mentioned, the Video Essentials DVD is easier to use while Avia can get much more involved and goes into greater depth. I think that for most practical purposes, Video Essentials is what i would use 90% of the time simply for ease of use. Avia can get to be a bit of a pain with all of the calibrations that they expect you to do.

I do have to make mention of a few "caveats" here though. Some TV's only have calibrations for ALL sources or inputs while some can be adjusted based on which input you select. If you have the "one size fits all" type of tv, adjusting it for best color and resolution with your dvd may make watching broadcast, cable, satellite, vcr, etc... hard to do. Once the TV is "dialed in" to that one format, it can really show just how out of whack some of the signals being broadcast truly are.

Another "quick" suggestion is to kind of "log" where each adjustment is once your finally happy with the settings. Most tv's return to the factory defaults ( which typically look like junk ) if you lose power. This means resetting the tv step by step all over again. As such, having ballpark adjustments to go by at a glance can really make life easier. Sean
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Hey "Swampy", do you feel that using Video Essentials made a worthwhile change to your video performance ? Would you buy and use it again knowing what you know now ? I don't want some of these folks to buy this thing if i'm the only one that thinks it's a good investment. Sean
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Thanks, I must be spending too much time at indecent A/V store's. I will go out and try to find a decent one today. :)
Chris