Why people don't care about calibration?

sblantipodi

sblantipodi

2[H]4U
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Aug 29, 2010
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Hi all,
can you explain me why you don't care about calibration?

Many people here likes to have an IPS with a good color accuracy but why no one talks about the ability of the monitor to be calibrated with a colorimeter?

A good factory calibrated monitor can retain his accuracy for few months, no more.
My EIZO after 5 months of use has a very very bad white point, obviously if you use the monitor every day you will not notice it, but after the calibration process you say, wow, how bad was before.

So, why people don't care about using colorimeters?
 
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1. Because led don't age /degrade much at all, seems like you bought yourself a ccfl in 2015
2. Because accuracte not = look good.
 
baii said:
1. Because led don't age /degrade much at all, seems like you bought yourself a ccfl in 2015
2. Because accuracte not = look good.
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I have a CCFL, surely led does not degrade as fast as CCFL but this does not means that your white point will last for years.
 
Far fewer IPS aficionados care about absoulute color accuracy, rather than just having saurated color that is even across the entire screen. Consumers can get used to off colors, but less so when a side by side comparison is staring them in the face, particularly within the same screen.
 
Until they have seen the difference it makes, they dont know what they are missing.
Even if they do, they might not consider it is necessary and worth the money/effort to correct.
They can see the picture, if its not bright enough change contrast/brightness, if not enough colour ...
 
Nenu said:
Until they have seen the difference it makes, they dont know what they are missing.
Even if they do, they might not consider it is necessary and worth the money/effort to correct.
They can see the picture, if its not bright enough change contrast/brightness, if not enough colour ...
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nenu, I remember your nickname when I bought my EIZOs some years ago, you have "the monitor skill" :D
I'm interested in your opinion.

What monitor you suggest?
Is there a GSYNC monitor that can be calibrated correctly with a colorimeter? Hardware calibrated?

I bought my S-PVA because it was an amazing all rounder that can be precisely calibrated with a colorimeter.
Is there something like my old S-PVA now? A good all rounder that can be calibrated and with GSYNC?
 
I'm nowhere near a monitor afficionado, I have a great appreciation of quality and am into a lot of technologies.
There are many things I can advise on, fine honed monitor selection isnt one of them.

I am in the camp of being very happy with 60fps constant so try to achieve that because I can use my current video hardware which I am extremely happy with.
I have never tried a gsync monitor, so to some extent I am similar to those that "dont know what they are missing".

I can tell you that all monitors can be calibrated unless they are extremely basic, but even then, with a computer that doesnt stop you.
With a computer, you have 2 methods of calibration, via the display or via the computer with a colour profile.
The most basic of calibration tools will calibrate just the monitor, many these days can do both.
imo you should try calibrating the display first because that is the only place where analogue adjustments can be made (ie the 0 to 255 range will hopefully not be reduced).
If you need to go further, you can make small adjustments on the PC.

fyi
Professional displays have RGB configuration only, there is no CMY colour config.
If a display has CMY settings, that is to compensate for problems with linearity on RGB.

I have read that the current crop of Gsync monitors are not the highest quality, hopefully someone will correct that if it has changed.
 
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sblantipodi said:
I have a CCFL, surely led does not degrade as fast as CCFL but this does not means that your white point will last for years.
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And people that remotely care about picking a better monitor won't keep the same monitor for years.
Larger
Moar pixel
Moar this
Most that

:)
 
Do you calibrate your speakers? I mean real room correction that can get the frequency response razor-flat, not just twiddling a GEQ. Do you have an accurate calibration mass for your kitchen scales?

People who use their monitor as a tool need it calibrated. For everyone else, it doesn't really matter as long as it looks ok.
 
baii said:
And people that remotely care about picking a better monitor won't keep the same monitor for years.
Larger
Moar pixel
Moar this
Most that

:)
Click to expand...

Fortunantly, I have no problem in changing a monitor, trust me. :)
Every six months I create a post like this to see if there is some reasons to change my current monitor and I currently see no reason to change it.

I have a 5 years old monitor with S-PVA, it is an all rounder, it can do amateur photografy, wide gamut, when calibrated it has 1100:1 contrast, 0.11cd/m2 black, good overdrive, 10bit lut, precise calibration and it can pass the UDACT test at 100%.
The only things I complain about is the lack of gsync so I'm asking here for a valid alternative.

I want good color calibration using colorimeter, 10bit LUT at least, good precision in color calibration, 1000:1 contrast at least, maximum 0.11cd/m2 black, wide gamut and it must pass the UDACT test with easy.
This is what I have with my current monitor, I would like to add some faster response time (I don't care of 120Hz since I don't play fast games) and gsync, 4K could be an interesting option.
 
Can you explain to me why people care about IPS but are content with w-led backlights?
 
Polar_Fox said:
Can you explain to me why people care about IPS but are content with w-led backlights?
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Viewing angles and the persistent notion that TN is always inferior. The latest 8-bit TN panels look just as good as their IPS counterparts but don't have as good viewing angles or wide gamut (a plus in my book). I'd say the backlights are not in most people's minds, they just care if it's IPS or not.

Personally I don't care about absolute color calibration that much nowadays since I don't do any graphics work anymore and my home computer is mostly for gaming now. My current display came nearly perfectly calibrated out of the box (just needed to reduce brightness a lot) and has been so to my eyes ever since. It has sufficient controls for adjustments if needed.
 
My notion about calibration is that it is often done at a software level, not at hardware level. And this opens up games completely ignoring your calibration, which essentially renders your efforts toward calibration for nothing.
 
chenw said:
My notion about calibration is that it is often done at a software level, not at hardware level. And this opens up games completely ignoring your calibration, which essentially renders your efforts toward calibration for nothing.
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Depends on the monitor, and the level of calibration. Most monitors have some lookup tables you can calibrate via the OSD. So if you do that part of the calibration, it'll stick. That can help you get a more neutral white point. Also the high end ones will often let you fully calibrate the LUTs using their tools. The NEC P and PA series do that, many of the Eizos do that, and the Dell U3014 and U2714h do that.


As to why people don't, well because people decide what they do and don't care about to various degrees. People have started caring more about monitors, but still not much. I see it all the time as an audio head. Nobody seems to care about sound on the computer, they use cheap speakers or headphones. I think it is very important, and have a massive, reference calibrated sound system.

It's all in what you decide to care about, and different people care about different things.
 
Polar_Fox said:
Can you explain to me why people care about IPS but are content with w-led backlights?
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IPS isn't about color accuracy for the consumer, it's about not having the colors shift when you move your head a few degrees, especially an issue with larger monitors. Sure calibrated accuracy is nice to have, but decent modern TNs have pretty good calibrated color accuracy anyway.

Also, wide gamut monitors are a big problem for games and other non-color managed applications unless you have a hardware LUT, and those are only in very expensive monitors that are simultaneously not suited for gaming(poor response times, low 60hz refresh rates, etc).

Basically a W-LED 1440p IPS high refresh rate monitor is the closest thing you can get to a monitor that's good for everything, every other type is specialized for one thing or another. Would it be nice if there was a hardware LUT 144hz IPS monitor out there with 0ms input lag? Absolutely, but nobody thinks it's worth paying $2000 for.
 
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So, basically, monitors aren't about picture quality for an average consumer, they are about displaying images without significant distortions.

And it doesn't really matter if the whites, are, in fact blue and the native color temperature is 8000k which cannot be compensated properly by the panel light filtering. An uneven gamma curve with black clipping is fine too.

Might as well just play all your games on minimum settings if picture quality doesn't matter, it's not really worth spending 1000$ on a gaming rig after all.

(Well, maybe not all w-led monitors are bluish, but most of that I've seen were, compared to my ccfl.)
 
I was thinking of calibrating my XB270HU. Can anyone recommend a preferred colorimeter and software? I don't really know much about doing this other than it can get expensive, so I'm not sure what the best value is to be had with these things.
 
NukeDukem said:
I was thinking of calibrating my XB270HU. Can anyone recommend a preferred colorimeter and software? I don't really know much about doing this other than it can get expensive, so I'm not sure what the best value is to be had with these things.
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I have the X-Rite ColorMunki. I bought it used off of Ebay because the retail price is $170. I got it for about half of that.

If you are doing any photo editing, calibrating your monitor is a must.

The only downside is that the Windows picture viewer is super buggy and will display everything super dark if you calibrate your monitor.
 
Because I like vivid colors more than real colors.

Edit: Is it even possible calibrate old CRT TV and monitors?
 
For the most part, using a calibrator won't fix the inherent issues a panel has. You can get pleasing results manually just by fiddling with the RGB values and other OSD settings. I wouldn't worry about hardware calibration unless you do print work or other color critical stuff. Some casual photoshop editing doesn't warrant buying expensive calibrators, but then again you can easily find cheap ones that'll do the job just as good as the more expensive ones with more features.
 
Because I'm not going to spend the money on a calibration tool that I'll use once every 10 years. It's just not worth it to me, even though I really want a correctly calibrated monitor. If I could borrow (or rent) one, I'd do it in a minute.
 
Polar_Fox said:
So, basically, monitors aren't about picture quality for an average consumer, they are about displaying images without significant distortions.

And it doesn't really matter if the whites, are, in fact blue and the native color temperature is 8000k which cannot be compensated properly by the panel light filtering. An uneven gamma curve with black clipping is fine too.

Might as well just play all your games on minimum settings if picture quality doesn't matter, it's not really worth spending 1000$ on a gaming rig after all.
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Basically, yes. At least to the first couple paragraphs. :)

I'd suggest that colour uniformity, viewing angle, pixel pitch, refresh rate, physical size, and AG coating are more important than absolute colour accuracy, even to people that care about displays. (And most people don't really care.)

For similar reasons you'll often see people with $1000 gaming rigs and crappy speakers, or a crappy chair, or a crappy keyboard. Or someone with a multi-thousand-dollar TV and a dinky little all-in-one surround-sound system. The deficiencies simply aren't important to them.

Unless they're doing photo/video editing or graphic design (i.e. where accuracy actually matters), most people just want something that looks decent, regardless of whether it's objectively accurate.
 
Polar_Fox said:
So, basically, monitors aren't about picture quality for an average consumer, they are about displaying images without significant distortions.

And it doesn't really matter if the whites, are, in fact blue and the native color temperature is 8000k which cannot be compensated properly by the panel light filtering. An uneven gamma curve with black clipping is fine too.

Might as well just play all your games on minimum settings if picture quality doesn't matter, it's not really worth spending 1000$ on a gaming rig after all.

(Well, maybe not all w-led monitors are bluish, but most of that I've seen were, compared to my ccfl.)
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I don't play a picture, I play a moving image. It doesn't matter how perfect the color calibration is on a wildly overpriced hardware LUT RGB-LED NEC monitor is if it's 60hz, because poor motion resolution hurts the image in a game much more than slightly imperfect color accuracy. And I do mean slightly.

I don't know where you get the idea that all W-LED monitors have an 8000k white point, or anything like it. Most decent quality W-LED IPS panels SHIP with a 6500-7000k white point, and are easily changed to whatever you like without even a colorimeter, though of course you can calibrate if that's what excites you as well. Personally I'm totally fine with my XB270HU's default color temp of 6800ish and 1.9-3.0 dE without calibration. Should you choose to calibrate, you can get it down to 0.4-1.0, but frankly unless you have a reference next to it, it doesn't much matter.

Even poorly factory calibrated, cheaply made W-LED IPS monitors like the Asus PA248Q (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_pa248q.htm) are almost all easily adjusted to an appropriate white point simply by eye and 30 seconds in the color temp settings. Your complaint doesn't seem based on reality.

Also, while it would be nice if you COULD buy a hardware LUT, 144hz, 1440p RGB-LED monitor with low response time, I'm not sure you understand that such a product would cost several thousand dollars, which puts it WAYYYYYY outside the price range of someone with a low end $1000 gaming rig. Achieving NEC/Eizo professional-level display uniformity and adding all that hardware comes with significant costs, costs that don't make any sense for the average consumer to bear.
 
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Polar_Fox said:
So, basically, monitors aren't about picture quality for an average consumer, they are about displaying images without significant distortions.

And it doesn't really matter if the whites, are, in fact blue and the native color temperature is 8000k which cannot be compensated properly by the panel light filtering. An uneven gamma curve with black clipping is fine too.

Might as well just play all your games on minimum settings if picture quality doesn't matter, it's not really worth spending 1000$ on a gaming rig after all.

(Well, maybe not all w-led monitors are bluish, but most of that I've seen were, compared to my ccfl.)
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While I like to have accurate colors, I am not going to spend the money on a colorimeter or a display with a hardware LUT to preserve that profile across all application. I do not work with graphics so 100% accuracy is not important. Getting close enough to my, however, is. Using the OSD to do an eyeball adjustment with test images has always been enough to get color to the point where I'm happy.

It does bother me immensely, though, when I see people with displays that are obvious from a distance they're not adjusted. I once went around my department at work adjusting monitors for everyone and they were amazed at the difference. A few complained about the low brightness since I'm sure they're used to 350 nits under flourescent lights, but I convinced them to give their eyes a chance to adjust and they're happier for it.
 
aadik said:
Is it even possible calibrate old CRT TV and monitors?
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Yes, very much so. The trinitrons can be calibrated as shown in this guide. Older CRTs can be calibrated by directly adjusting the voltage on each of the guns, as well as the G2 voltage.

I would argue that having a good gamma, and a consistent grayscale, are two of the most important elements of a calibrated display.
 
Because I use it to browse the web and play games. If my blue is too rich it doesn't really matter, as long as it looks good to me.
 
spacediver said:
Yes, very much so. The trinitrons can be calibrated as shown in this guide. Older CRTs can be calibrated by directly adjusting the voltage on each of the guns, as well as the G2 voltage.

I would argue that having a good gamma, and a consistent grayscale, are two of the most important elements of a calibrated display.
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Yes! I second this. It's not difficult to do, and it's not very expensive either. Newer televisions require you to go into the service menu (and that can be a bit of an adventure), but older televisions require you to remove the cover and make adjustments to the television while it's live. It's not as dangerous as it sounds.

A DTP-94 and a spare laptop is all you need, and some method of getting images on the television to take measurements. Properly equipped, calibrating CRT televisions for white point doesn't take that much effort at all. PM me if you're interested in more info.

EDIT: Of course, you do this at your own risk.
 
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To answer the OP, I think the reason is because ignorance is bliss. Also most people, even after they're made aware of their ignorance, will tend to agree that it looks great, but it's still not something they're interested in.

For me, once I went calibrated, there was no turning back. All of my displays are calibrated for D65. Even the old Dell CRT on my DOS box is adjusted to D65. :D For me, it just looks better.
 
Well, calibration is more than color temperature and saturation accuracy.
Greyscale and gamma are rather critical for movie, and game somewhat (think dark scene and perceived contrast).
 
baii said:
Well, calibration is more than color temperature and saturation accuracy.
Greyscale and gamma are rather critical for movie, and game somewhat (think dark scene and perceived contrast).
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I agree. My post is simplifying a bit. I myself perform greyscale calibrations on all of my displays.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Yes! I second this. It's not difficult to do, and it's not very expensive either. Newer televisions require you to go into the service menu (and that can be a bit of an adventure), but older televisions require you to remove the cover and make adjustments to the television while it's live. It's not as dangerous as it sounds.

A DTP-94 and a spare laptop is all you need, and some method of getting images on the television to take measurements. Properly equipped, calibrating CRT televisions for white point doesn't take that much effort at all. PM me if you're interested in more info.
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Um...you might want to be careful with that statement.
The voltages from an old television can *KILL* a human if you touch the wrong thing with that screwdriver...
 
Falkentyne said:
Um...you might want to be careful with that statement.
The voltages from an old television can *KILL* a human if you touch the wrong thing with that screwdriver...
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Thanks for looking out. Edited my first post. Though I have yet to read of anyone being killed by a CRT.
 
My naive understanding is that if the CRT isn't plugged in, the risk of lethal injury is next to nothing.

Here's one perspective, I remember there's a more detailed one out there too.
 
spacediver said:
My naive understanding is that if the CRT isn't plugged in, the risk of lethal injury is next to nothing.

Here's one perspective, I remember there's a more detailed one out there too.
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You really shouldn't be encouraging people who don't know better to poke around where high voltages are present. Charged capacitors can and do injure and kill people.
 
Mr Evil said:
You really shouldn't be encouraging people who don't know better to poke around where high voltages are present. Charged capacitors can and do injure and kill people.
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The only capacitor I have ever been shocked by was from a camera flash capacitor after I took apart a broken camera because I was interested in seeing the innards. It did give me a bit of a kick and left a couple tiny burn marks on my finger.

Anyway, I have taken apart and worked on numerous CRT monitors and TVs in the past. I was probably around 12-14 when I took one apart for the first time.

All you have to do to discharge the capacitors is to turn the power switch on after unplugging it.

After that, there is not a single capacitor that will have any charge it it at all.

Oh, and from one of those stories
According to Besco, he never opens computer power supplies, which typically bear “high voltage” warnings.

“I don’t go there,” he said of power supplies. “You can’t repair it. There are no serviceable components. It’s a $20 box, so if it’s not working, I take it out and put a new one in.

“The moral of the story is: Heed warning labels.”
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NEVER, EVER, EVER take your computer to this place to be repaired. If they are using $20 power supplies then there is absolutely nothing worth buying from them as they only sell super crappy hardware.

And if he thinks that power supplies can't be repaired he really doesn't know what he is talking about.

Either that or he is trying to avoid a lawsuit which would not surprise me one bit.
 
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NukeDukem said:
I was thinking of calibrating my XB270HU. Can anyone recommend a preferred colorimeter and software? I don't really know much about doing this other than it can get expensive, so I'm not sure what the best value is to be had with these things.
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Calman RGB + C3 if you're on a budget. Outperformed even the retail unprofiled i1display pro in my experience.
 
Because its a finnicky, very time consuming, and annoying process, if it was as simple as selecting settings, calibrating, putting the file somewhere and having perfect calibration, I expect a lot more people would be interested.
 
People usually don't like the results, mainly because their eyes are used to whiter/blue~ish flashy and sharp settings.
A calibrated mode in comparison will look reddish, dark and soft.
 
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