Coming Soon: Self-Calibrating Home Theaters
Next-gen technologies are making it a cinch to fine-tune and even auto-calibrate your home theater components for optimal playback.
As consumers, we’ve learned to put up with certain imperfections from our entertainment systems: letterboxed movies that bring up black bars on the TV screen, displays that are set too bright for our living rooms, and cryptic on-screen configuration guides that only an electrical engineer could figure out. The wide variety of media—high-def DVDs, standard DVDs, cable TV programming, video games, Internet programming—we can now access through our entertainment systems only makes these prickly A/V problems more noticeable and annoying. “The goal of home entertainment is total immersion,” says Craig Eggers, senior manager of consumer electronics partner marketing at Dolby Laboratories.
“But when you’re constantly reaching for the remote to [do things like] adjust the volume, the experience is lost.”
A handful of innovate manufacturers have put their foot down when it comes to complicated setup routines, the constant clicking of the remote and consumers’ resignation to simply “put up with it,” by developing technologies that enable TVs to set themselves perfectly for the viewing environment.
A Period of Adjustment
One of the consumer electronics industry’s dirtiest secrets has to do with the default settings of TVs sold at your favorite retail stores. To make their displays stand out under banks of harsh flourescent lighting, most manufacturers calibrate their TVs at the factory to produce extremely bright pictures. “We call this the ‘torch mode,’” says Brooks Flynn, product planner for flat TVs at Philips Electronics. “While these oversaturated images might really pop at the store, they’ll look horrible at your house,” adds Sam Miller, chief product officer at Syntax-Brillian, a manufacturer of Olevia LCD TVs. The preset store levels can always be adjusted once you get your set home by accessing the unit’s on-screen calibration menu—if you don’t mind guessing your way through the process. Syntax-Brillian has simplified that tedious recalibration process to a single press of a button. “The first time you plug in the TV at home, a prompt appears on the screen asking you to select show or home mode,” he explains. “You select home mode, and the TV makes all the appropriate adjustments.”
Philips has incorporated a similar auto calibration technology into its line of LCD and plasma TVs that are 42 inches and larger. Called Settings Assistant, the on-screen wizard presents a series of split screens. Just as you would during an exam at your optometrist, you choose which side of the screen looks better, the left or the right. You enter each selection by pressing a button on your remote. Based on your preferences, the TV recalibrates itself. The setting may not be perfect, admits Philips’ Flynn, “but it serves as a good starting point.” Once the basic parameters are set, consumers can go into the menu and fine-tune as they like.
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[Link: electronichouse.com]
