Where to find THX Optimizer blue filter glasses?

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magu

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Topic # 86774 13-Jul-2011 13:17

I'm trying to find someone who has a these blue-filter glasses used in conjunction with the THX Optimizer available on some DVDs/Blu-rays, but so far my searches returned nothing.

Does anyone have one they could sell/lend/rent or know where I can find them cheap (they're $1.99 US)?

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Reply # 492975 13-Jul-2011 17:15

Forget that. Buy a meter.

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Reply # 493120 13-Jul-2011 22:53

fahrenheit: Forget that. Buy a meter.

For ONE calibration? Not very helpful.

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Reply # 493144 13-Jul-2011 23:59

magu:
fahrenheit: Forget that. Buy a meter.

For ONE calibration? Not very helpful.

If you have a tv that allows you to adjust grayscale (cuts and gains), then sure, why not?
People pay professionals hundreds of dollars to do ONE calibration.

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Reply # 493173 14-Jul-2011 06:36

I got some direct from the THX web site. Think they cost $10 but now I have them so can use them whenever. I did look around locally but had no luck hunting some down.

http://www.costore.com/thx/productenlarged.asp?peid=87&pid=930793

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Reply # 493197 14-Jul-2011 08:25

I guess I won't be buying from the THX store:

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Reply # 493198 14-Jul-2011 08:25

fahrenheit:
magu:
fahrenheit: Forget that. Buy a meter.

For ONE calibration? Not very helpful.

If you have a tv that allows you to adjust grayscale (cuts and gains), then sure, why not?
People pay professionals hundreds of dollars to do ONE calibration.

What would YOU recommend as a meter that is simple enough to use like the THX Optimizer + glasses?

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Doc Emmet Brown

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Reply # 493231 14-Jul-2011 10:16

magu:
fahrenheit:
magu:
fahrenheit: Forget that. Buy a meter.

For ONE calibration? Not very helpful.

If you have a tv that allows you to adjust grayscale (cuts and gains), then sure, why not?
People pay professionals hundreds of dollars to do ONE calibration.

What would YOU recommend as a meter that is simple enough to use like the THX Optimizer + glasses?

There is nothing as simple as putting on some tinted glasses and playing with the colour setting but the initial effort required pays off once you get your head around what everything does and where everything is meant to be.

As I mentioned before, its important that your display allows you to adjust grayscale (this is usually in the advanced setup menu and is either a full 10 point grayscale adjustment (0, 10, 20% etc) or R/G/B white balance +/- slider).
Without those controls you have to use the service menu which is a difficult and dangerous workaround.
Calibrating grayscale is arguably the most important element to calibrating displays and it cannot be done without a meter.

The X-rite Eye-One Display LT is what I have currently and has not disappointed. The software (Color HCFR for doing the readings and AVSHD for the test patterns) are both free and The Grayscale & Color Guide for Dummies tells you the steps and theory.

Of course there is a point of diminishing returns when your display itself can be the limiting factor and getting into more serious tweaking can be a slippery slope (the more you know....), but generally, even the best consumer displays are a million miles from acceptable standards out of the box and can benefit greatly from proper calibration.

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Reply # 493236 14-Jul-2011 10:26

Thanks for the tips. The panel I bought does have a lot of settings that can be adjusted (Samsung PS51D550 plasma).

Just finding it a bit hard to justify that much money on a meter that I'll use once or twice in the next 2-3 years (brand new TV).

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Reply # 493251 14-Jul-2011 11:05

magu: Thanks for the tips. The panel I bought does have a lot of settings that can be adjusted (Samsung PS51D550 plasma).

Just finding it a bit hard to justify that much money on a meter that I'll use once or twice in the next 2-3 years (brand new TV).

The Samsungs are very good in regards to giving end users easily accessible adjustment settings.
You'll probably find it has a full colour management system (CMS) which allows adjusting red, green and blue independently. The 'Colour' slider on the TV simply adjusts all three values at once.

The problem with the blue filter method is that it is designed to correct the blue channel only and assumes that red and green are correct. Unfortunately this is never the case. With too much green, people will look sickly and with too much red, people will look sunburnt.

Just out of interest, how many hours have you clocked up on the TV? I'd give it a couple of hundred hours before making any calibration attempts. Plasmas being phosphor based displays do shift over time, so you would have to recalibrate more than once in that 2-3 year period anyways.

The meters shift too unfortunately and need to be treated with the utmost care. I keep mine in a ziplock bag with a silica gel pack, inside another ziplock bag, inside a black toilet bag, inside a cupboard that gets no direct sunlight and stays relatively cool all year long.

I am considering replacing it soon with X-rites latest (Display i1 Pro) but that is a huge investment comparatively and is a lot more restrictive in terms of software that can be used with it and what displays it can be used to calibrate. The LT is quite a lot more flexible and I've used it for my plasma, LCD, LED laptop and a couple of CRT monitors.

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Reply # 493253 14-Jul-2011 11:09

fahrenheit:
magu: Thanks for the tips. The panel I bought does have a lot of settings that can be adjusted (Samsung PS51D550 plasma).

Just finding it a bit hard to justify that much money on a meter that I'll use once or twice in the next 2-3 years (brand new TV).

The Samsungs are very good in regards to giving end users easily accessible adjustment settings.
You'll probably find it has a full colour management system (CMS) which allows adjusting red, green and blue independently. The 'Colour' slider on the TV simply adjusts all three values at once.

The problem with the blue filter method is that it is designed to correct the blue channel only and assumes that red and green are correct. Unfortunately this is never the case. With too much green, people will look sickly and with too much red, people will look sunburnt.

Just out of interest, how many hours have you clocked up on the TV? I'd give it a couple of hundred hours before making any calibration attempts. Plasmas being phosphor based displays do shift over time, so you would have to recalibrate more than once in that 2-3 year period anyways.

The meters shift too unfortunately and need to be treated with the utmost care. I keep mine in a ziplock bag with a silica gel pack, inside another ziplock bag, inside a black toilet bag, inside a cupboard that gets no direct sunlight and stays relatively cool all year long.

I am considering replacing it soon with X-rites latest (Display i1 Pro) but that is a huge investment comparatively and is a lot more restrictive in terms of software that can be used with it and what displays it can be used to calibrate. The LT is quite a lot more flexible and I've used it for my plasma, LCD, LED laptop and a couple of CRT monitors.

I've got this set about 4 weeks ago, and used it daily for about 3-4 hours at least on a variety of sources.

If you're looking to sell your meter, let me know! :)

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Reply # 493257 14-Jul-2011 11:20

magu:

I've got this set about 4 weeks ago, and used it daily for about 3-4 hours at least on a variety of sources.

If you're looking to sell your meter, let me know! :)

Give it a few more weeks. They tend to bed-in after the first 200 hours or so and then change very little after that.

I'm going to need my LT to do my PC monitors unfortunately. The newer (more expensive) meter is locked out from doing anything other than HDTVs

Just a thought, I bought my LT from the UK when the pound was a bit higher than it is now, but with the US dollar now as low as it is, you might find even with exhorbitant shipping fees that you can still find it much cheaper than from the UK.

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Reply # 496568 22-Jul-2011 10:28

fahrenheit: I would say colour meters that is filter based, like any of the affordable consumer grade types as you use will struggle with absolute accuracy, especially with LED source. However colour meters they are still better than looking through filters/glasses and definately the next best step.

Colour meters that start to work correctly, and are NIST grade are about $15,000 nz,
a spectrometer of NIST grade is similar $15,000, but the best of those is roughly $30,000nz, depending on the exchange and taxes incurred etc.

The i1pro is the most affordable and relatively accurate spectrometer available to the general masses, these days about $1500~$2500 and dispite the arguments about performance that many bandy about without understanding(I call them the copy and paste plageriser brigade).

I use a i1pro spectrometer and a Chroma5 colourmeter, where the C5 is regarded as one of the best affordable colourmeters in the market, which I have also had calibrated against the $30000 spectrometer in the states.
The Chroma5 is roughly $1200~$1500nz depending on all the exchange drama again.

This leads us to the $200~$500nzd general consumer grade colourmeters, most are ok, for what they are and as I mentioned above the next step for calibration as the do indicate atleast some measures of colour and greyscale/gamma tracking, in otherwords some sort of indicative measurement to adjust against rather than just your personal visual cues.

Where do they fall down, well in several ways, firstly they degrade with age and use. Light slowly breaks down filters, ie they fade. Best care as discribed above is to store in a dark place with good temp control. The second issue is filters and their conceptual design around human vision, this though is based upon the source being absolute values, which leads us to the problem that most displays struggle to be absolute value, so as result the measures you make will be not correct amplifing the errors. Couple this with absolute unit to unit variance and you can get quite large measurement errors.

Source is the next big issue, the AVS reference which is free and quite good has a flaw, that is the player you use, the DVD/BD players vary in output levels, what I see is brand per brand have differences, usually consistant to the brand but never the less they all vary from absolute reference. This just adds to the troubles for the user to what and why something just doesn't quite look right dispite the efforts to calibrate the display. Tis Why I use a reference video generator, about $5000nzd.

Ok dispite all of the above negatives, knowing the above and with knowledge of calibration and such, it is possible to produce reasonbly accurate results with cheap consumer devices and the free french software, it's in fact how I cut my teeth. BUT you have to do your homework, and learn a little about what is going on.

Masterpiece Calibration Ltd, isf certified

www.mastercal.co.nz

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Reply # 496596 22-Jul-2011 11:27

I ordered the glasses from THX and shipped to my box in the US, which will ship to NZ cheaper than THX themselves.

I'll be in the US in December, so might pick one up then.

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Reply # 496619 22-Jul-2011 11:49

Masterpiece:
I use a i1pro spectrometer and a Chroma5 colourmeter, where the C5 is regarded as one of the best affordable colourmeters in the market, which I have also had calibrated against the $30000 spectrometer in the states.
The Chroma5 is roughly $1200~$1500nz depending on all the exchange drama again.

This leads us to the $200~$500nzd general consumer grade colourmeters, most are ok, for what they are and as I mentioned above the next step for calibration as the do indicate atleast some measures of colour and greyscale/gamma tracking, in otherwords some sort of indicative measurement to adjust against rather than just your personal visual cues.

Where do they fall down, well in several ways, firstly they degrade with age and use. Light slowly breaks down filters, ie they fade. Best care as discribed above is to store in a dark place with good temp control. The second issue is filters and their conceptual design around human vision, this though is based upon the source being absolute values, which leads us to the problem that most displays struggle to be absolute value, so as result the measures you make will be not correct amplifing the errors. Couple this with absolute unit to unit variance and you can get quite large measurement errors.

The Chroma5 was the affordable meter to own. That however now falls to X-rite's new (and far more affordable) OEM Display i1 Pro. Its still a filter-based meter, but its encapsulated and should degrade far less quickly then the likes of the Display 2/LT. The cost of the meter itself is neglegible to someone who already has Calman or Chromapure licenses and even SpectraCALs overpriced C6 offers an affordable and substantially better solution for those wanting an upgrade over the cheap LT/HFCR solution (i.e. me).
The reason I suggested the LT/HFCR combo in this thread is simply because this is the last chance to own the LT as they are out of production now. After they are all gone, there is a big gap in the entry level market where only the Spyder 3 remains (and I wouldn't trade the LT for a spyder). That means much more money has to be spent to get started.

Source is the next big issue, the AVS reference which is free and quite good has a flaw, that is the player you use, the DVD/BD players vary in output levels, what I see is brand per brand have differences, usually consistant to the brand but never the less they all vary from absolute reference. This just adds to the troubles for the user to what and why something just doesn't quite look right dispite the efforts to calibrate the display. Tis Why I use a reference video generator, about $5000nzd.

I know your bread and butter is the Pro displays and using a reference generator as a source is nothing less than what I'd expect when getting one of those calibrated, but for home use I would argue the contrary. Once you walk away, the end user is still left with having to play their sources from their non-reference player. It would be nice if we all had Oppos, but I'm not convinced that calibrating to a reference source is preferrable to using the user's own player in a domestic situation. If their playback device is very far from reference, then a calibration with a reference generator isn't going to change that. It may even end up worse. That presents a problem once they change gear too.

Ok dispite all of the above negatives, knowing the above and with knowledge of calibration and such, it is possible to produce reasonbly accurate results with cheap consumer devices and the free french software, it's in fact how I cut my teeth. BUT you have to do your homework, and learn a little about what is going on.

Yes I agree and will add that it is even harder this year with the Panasonic models. They need special attention, different workflow with different windows sizes required to get good results. Pretty much a nightmare for anyone with limited equipment and knowledge.

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Reply # 496706 22-Jul-2011 14:00

I partly agree with the home use sentiments of the the source, for the home user who has only the basic calibration equipment. However the true source reference knowledge tells you where to set the players(if it has them) basic settings so as to drag the player up to the display and reference source. The user is then left with a matched source. If they purchased a new source player they would have to compare the input differences with a test disk and match the player again with the old player or display.Thats how it works.

You can/could also purchase a device like a Lumagen radiance mini, (2HDMI in 1 out), where you can calibrate the inputs and outputs separately, also set scales per source and scale. In fact as long as the source has reasoble out levels the output of this device remains unchanged. Very powerful, available through Murray at Rapallo. Actually have his unit in my hot hands at the moment, quite powerful indeed. About $3000nzd though.

Id advise those interested in a colour meter for themselves to go xrite brand over spyders. Spectracal did sell calibrated spyder(3)s, but they threw half of the stock they had out as being to far from reference and adjustment range. Xrite is more of the world colour management leader, they have been doing this for years and produce quality equipment for consumer markets.

Yes the free french software is good for what it is, I actually built some of their probes aswell, but there is(as always) caveats in what the software does and how it does it. I have had Spectracals calman professional software for a number of years, actually been one of the early beta testers. The current version can remote control top of the line Panasonic panels, VT30's, VX200 series, also control the above mentioned lumagen remotely. But thats pro gear for you, for the everyday user, even calman home is getting a bit much.
But these are just tools, the artist still needs to hold the brush and know how to use it.

Masterpiece Calibration Ltd, isf certified

www.mastercal.co.nz

"I'm not a robot!"

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