Sony BD's: Step-by-step instructions for Blu-ray calibration

Originally Posted by paidgeek

There are a few adjustment where the included test patterns can be particulary useful for getting the best possible picture. Most of our discs have at least 4 test patterns included, SMPTE bars, monoscope, ramp and cross hatch. The first adjustment I usually concern myself with is the black level or "brightness". Bring up the colorbar signal and pause your player. Turn up your monitor "brightness" and confirm that all 3 pluge chips are visible in the lower right hand corner of the screen. If all three can be seen, then you have confirmed that your player and monitor are passing signals "below black". Next, adjust the brightness control down until the right chip is just visible. You now have an optimum black level setting. Put the player back into play mode and chapter skip to the next pattern, the monoscope and pause once again. Ideally, you should see a complete image with 16:9 shown at the corners and no truncating of the triangles. If you don't see the full image, check if you monitor supports "full pixel", "dot by dot" or some other description of a mode that allows a 1:1 relationship between the incoming signal and the pixels on your display. Some displays do not allow the disabling of "overscan" so you will not be able to make this adjustment. The monoscope is also useful for checking over sharpening, or filtering of the image. Ideally the round patterns comprised of wedges should be clear, sharp with no asymetrical gray bars or ovals. Distortions in the pattern usually indicate that a scaler is being used in the display. Also check that the squares comprised of 2x2 pixel black squares are distinct. If sharpening is used, the black or white portions of these squares is often exaggerated. And finally can you read the text on the bottom of the pattern for the company that created it? If you can, you are likely getting a full 1920 x 1080 image.

Of course there are many other important settings for Contrast and color, but these settings need to be adjusted according to your average room light. I recommend turning off all of the processing that is available in todays displays such as Noise reduction, DRC (Sony) or whatever a given CE company happens to be calling their image enhancement feature. If you have a good blu-ray disc, "Black Hawk Down" for example, you should be able to see the film grain from the original master faithfully reproduced. If it looks mottled or irregular, there is a good chance your display is using noise reduction or other processing and hurting, rather than helping the picture quality.