What? My Spyder 3 Elite software does show black level. And i can set a black level target.The Spyder software does not measure black level though, are there any free alternatives that would work with the Spyder 3 to measure blacks? Having said that the monitor does look inkier black while retaining the same great colours and gamma with no washout what so ever.
Open up the software> Go to 'Tools'> 'Information'> Under 'Brightness' and 'Black' you should see black level before calibration, target, and after calibration.
I realised one thing.. so setting contrast to 100 and turning down the RGB sliders does make colors and everything look like cr*p, but the calibration is supposed to fix that, but that means in applications which does not read ICC profiles (not color aware) like games etc the colors will look like cr*p and washed out.
So the method to improve black point might not be that good.