Monitor Calibration Device - I want to borrow one

kry10

kry10

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I doubt this, but, might as well ask.

I am based in Manchester and am considering buying a monitor calibration device, but, due to the very high price of them, I don't want to fork out and then find out it's results are negligible and not really beneficial.

So, does anyone in Manchester have one they can loan me or pop to my house with one and run it on my system ?

Or, does anyone have any suggestions about this subject ?
 
Results will depend on your screen, how accurate, or not, it is now, and what condition the screen is in. Also, if it's a cheap, old screen, it may not calibrate well at all.

I'm sure someone close by can help, but you really need to calibrate regularly or there's no point... as screens drift as they age.
 
What make/model screen do you have?
 
kry10 said:
I doubt this, but, might as well ask.

I am based in Manchester and am considering buying a monitor calibration device, but, due to the very high price of them, I don't want to fork out and then find out it's results are negligible and not really beneficial.

So, does anyone in Manchester have one they can loan me or pop to my house with one and run it on my system ?

Or, does anyone have any suggestions about this subject ?
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These can often be picked up in the classifieds for very little money. Used one's go on eBay quite regularly for peanuts as well.
 
Already tried ebay, amazon, gumtree.

All of them are too expensive, I only want to test one before buying one.
 
Something to consider when borrowing one...

The software that comes with my Spyder pro is licensed, it may be that other color cal hardware comes with similar software. So you may find that by wanting to borrow one you are asking people to break a software licence agreement...
 
You can get a brand new i1 Display Pro for £150!!
 
bailout said:
You can get a Colorhug for £62. I have never tried one but the write ups appear good. No license issues for the software either.

http://www.hughski.com/
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Looks awful, and software only runs in a Linux distro. Not very useful for most people.

The Spyder 4 Elite is only around £85 new. Well worth buying.
 
Well, my wonderful missus is buying me a Spyder 4 Elite, yay, very happy.
 
When you're done with your monitors you can download ColorHCFR (free) and do your TV.
 
munkee said:
When you're done with your monitors you can download ColorHCFR (free) and do your TV.
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A standalone TV? No it can't. A TV driven by a home theatre PC or any other computer.. yes, of course, but so will any calibrator software.
 
Pookeyhead said:
A standalone TV? No it can't. A TV driven by a home theatre PC or any other computer.. yes, of course, but so will any calibrator software.
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Sure it can. You just need a test pattern and a bit of nouse. They're still shown on the BBC occasionally. But my preference is to play a series of patterns back from a USB stick.
 
No.. it can't :) Not a stand alone TV. Think about it. Yes, you can make manual adjustments to your screen while a colourimeter is attached to it, but at best you'll only be able to adjust white balance and brightness. A colorimeter for a computer based system programs the video card's, or monitor's LUT for gamma and gain as well, and these are things that are rarely found on a TV's OSD. It would require every aspect of what is adjustable to obtain a perfect image being available in the TV's adjustment menus. I've only ever seen a handful of TVs that offer that. I'm not saying it's not interesting, or worth doing. It will be beter than doing nothing, sure... but there's no guarantee it will be truly accurate.
 
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You can calibrate contrast, brightness and colour. This is not theory. I know this because I've actually done it.
 
Yes, you can adjust it, but gamma is really the most important thing for accurate calibration and most TVs don't allow for that to be adjusted, and depending on how the TVs back light works, merely reducing or increasing brightness may also adversely effect the contrast ratio.

You can make adjustments manually while a device is attached, yes, but don't be thinking it's calibrated to any particularly high standards. Using the TV's OSD controls you're just making very linear adjustments to colour, saturation, brightness, and fairly global contrast changes.

Like I said.. better than nothing perhaps, but a think "calibration" is a misnomer in this case.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Yes, you can adjust it, but gamma is really the most important thing for accurate calibration and most TVs don't allow for that to be adjusted, and depending on how the TVs back light works, merely reducing or increasing brightness may also adversely effect the contrast ratio.
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If people are discerning enough to buy a £100 calibration device, they may well be discerning enough to buy a TV that can be calibrated. The last TV I picked up was a 50" Panny plasma at £549 delivered and that has full ICC controls in the menu (yes, it is calibrated, and yes, I used HCFR). It may not be LUT mapped, but you can get a decent shade of white from about 10% with my sensor (i1D2 - it doesn't read accurately at low intensities) and push the primary colours to their rightful place on the gamut diagram. It's much better than it was on any of the presets and now isn't far from the pro-calibrated Pioneer in the living room (in fact, if the Pio died, I'd have no problems replacing it with the Panny).

And backlights... what... people actually buy TVs with backlights in if they are interested in picture quality and black levels ;) :nuts:
 
arad85 said:
And backlights... what... people actually buy TVs with backlights in if they are interested in picture quality and black levels ;) :nuts:
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All LCD panels have a back light.. how else do you see it? :) I'm not referring to silly ambient lights, I'm talking about the actual screen's illumination. Most people still use LCD TVs, not plasma.
 
I knew it was a comedic response, hopefully it should arrive tomorrow, the spyder 4 pro I mean, lol.
 
kry10 said:
I knew it was a comedic response, hopefully it should arrive tomorrow, the spyder 4 pro I mean, lol.
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But would you be prepared to loan it out - hypothetically speaking?
 
I don't know, I know it was a big thing to ask someone to loan me one, but, I should have stated that what I actually wanted was someone to pop to mine with one, I shouldn't have been so presumptious expecting someone to be so generous to actually trust a complete stranger with something so expensive.

Anyways, it's all got sorted in the end.
 
Ah, yes I did, forgot, slept since then
 
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