Possible CraigM Mitsubishi calibration tour

[borghe]

I have been emailing with the famous CraigM on a possible stop in Milwaukee on his way back from the east coast this summer. I will post his email back to me, but to sum up the important parts, we (I) need 6 other Mitsubishi owners who are interested in this for him to stop. Now if you look through this email you will see that his work is thorough. If you read the testimonies from the past week or so you will here members of this board that are very pleased with the results. AND if you figure out the $750 as per input, you are only paying $150 per input which seems to be much cheaper than most other calibrators are charging.

Now the catch. First and foremost, you have to have a Mitsubishi set. Craig eats and breathes Mitsubishi and it is all he calibrates. Second is you have to be serious about this. As stated in the email he would like to see at least 7 people sign up for him to stop. I don't know if this number is set in stone, but I would like to see at least 4-5 of us commited to this before I start begging and pleading him to stop.

So if you are interested in this, sign up here. Maybe if we are really nice one of our mods or admins will make this sticky. This is by far a great opportunity, especially for anyone who has just purchased their Mitsubishi wihin the last year or anyone who may have not had the money to have Craig do their set last summer.

His reply to me is contained in the next message.

[borghe]

Hi Eric,
 
Yes we are doing an east coast calibration tour and the exact route back home (west) has not been set yet.
 
It would be nice to see at least 6 others in the Milwaukee and suburbs area.
 
Approx time frame would be June/July.
 
Here is the information on what my Mits calibrations and tweaks include and the price.

A full scale Mits calibration takes approximately 10-14 hours and includes the following:

1. First Inspection. Using various Avia and HD Generator test patterns I inspect the screens, CRTs and other items on your set. There is no sense in calibrating it if you are going to need any repair work. Also at this time we look at Component 480i as verses S-Video if you have an interlaced DVD player. Since Component 480i has a number of differences that effect other calibrations and tweaks we need to agree on which hook up you will be using. At this time we also talk about the protective screen and remove it if you would like. At this point I'll have a good idea on how much improvement you'll see from the calibration. 98% of the sets see a very nice improvement in image clarity, color, geometry and convergence. If I feel that you will not see that much improvement I'll let you know so you can decide if you want to go forward with a full up calibration or if you would be better off just correcting a few items and save some $$.

2. Next we open it up and continue the inspection: Mirror condition, Lenses, and check for CRT coolant leaks. If all of that looks good, the lenses are removed and the actual CRTs, coolant and coolant lenses are inspected for any anomalies.

3. If everything passes we move on to cleaning. Cleaning is a very important step in the calibration. Even though these are relatively "new" sets, they all need a very good cleaning. This really helps improve the picture clarity.
 
4. Clean the Mirror. This usually take 3 to 4 passes to get the factory "film", smudges and finger prints off. The 73" set with the Mylar mirror should never be cleaned only dusted lightly with air.
 
5. Give the lens assemblies a careful but very good cleaning. We also remove that nasty tape at this time and replace it with new tape after focus is complete.
 
6. The coolant lenses are cleaned next. These coolant lenses or covers are very concave and collect a lot of dirt and bug parts at the factory.
 
7. And then the Screen Assembly is cleaned. It is amazing how dirty many of the fresnel lenses are (inside back of the screen). This shows up as dark streaks in a 100 IRE (White) Field.

8. Then I hook up my black box (I2C Interface) and download and archive all of the current User menu and Service menu settings for your set.

9. G2 Voltage (Screen VRs) is next. I set these at factory specification +- .1 volt. This determines the base level for all of the following adjustments and it may improve CRT life. This also helps the AKB (Auto Cathode Balance) work properly which helps hold the grayscale adjustment as the CRTs age. These are set incorrectly on just about every Mits. A little too high or low isn't that bad it's the spread  between the three CRTs, upwards of 15 volts from the factory, that needs to be corrected to get the best grayscale and AKB working properly. The factory spec calls out for +- 1 volt, not the 5-15 volts that I regularly see. Also if G2 is set to high or low it hurts horizontal resolution and softens the picture a little.

10. Electrostatic and Manual focus, a very necessary and key element to a super image.  Some models of the newer Mits have astigmatism correction (Quad Field Focus), so this will also be checked and adjusted to allow for optimum focus.  99.9% of the new sets with Quad Field Focus have been set wrong from the factory and this hurts corner and edge focus. I check and re-check each CRT multiple times to make sure they are at the best possible focus across the entire screen.

11. Lots of Geometry work to get the Green Grid and Overscan set properly. This is done for both SD and HD using Mylar grid overlays, actual external grid images and special scrolling test patterns to cross check horizontal and vertical linearity. Since I don't just eyeball geometry, this adds a lot of time to the calibrations. I have found that it's best  to zero out the Mits factory settings on every RPTV and then set magnetic centering and yoke rotation for green and then do the geometry from the ground up. This isn't just for correcting speed bumps and uneven geometry, that can easily be done by eye. This really improves convergence which improves picture clarity, otherwise I wouldn't spend this much time, and your $$ on this step and the next step.

12. Service Level Convergence for both SD and HD. I zero out SD and HD Fine Red and Blue, set Coarse Red and Blue to starting default values, check and set their magnetic centering and yoke rotation and then re-do convergence from the ground up. This is the only way to do convergence, the Mits factory settings leave a lot to be desired and many times make it impossible to get a real good convergence across the entire screen. The Mits Red and Blue grids are pretty good but they are not exact so I use grid "images" from Avia and the HD generator to converge with. This assures that your actual image will be properly converged. Convergence is done with binoculars so that it is fully optimized from "Your Viewing Position". This eliminates the Parallax Convergence Errors that occur when convergence is done up close to the screen. Once again, I take a lot of extra care here. This is a very important step in getting the best clarity from your Home Theater..

13. Check and adjust edge enhancement through the black box for NTSC, 480p and HD modes. This removes some more of the Mits Showroom add-ons and gets us back to the true Home Theater look.

14. Check and adjust SVM and Sharpness for NTSC, 480p and HD modes.

15. Just about everything up to this point is done to improve clarity, everything that follows is to improve color.
 
16. Properly set the color decoder for NTSC, 480p and HD modes to remove "Red Push" on ALL inputs. No more attenuators.  Besides correcting Red Saturation this also corrects Red Hue, Green Saturation and Green Hue so this also fixes the HD 1080i color decoder problems.

17. At this time the user controls will be centered except for Contrast and Brightness. These settings will be determined during grayscale calibration.
 
18. Check and adjust Gamma for NTSC, 480p and HD modes.

19. Set 480p grayscale, Contrast and Brightness and make them as linear as possible across the entire IRE range. And then check them against other test patterns and on actual images. Along with everything else, this is another step that I put extra work and care into for the best possible color reproduction from 0 IRE to 100 IRE
 
20. Set HD 1080i Grayscale.

21. And set grayscale for the NTSC inputs (Coax, Composite, S-Video, Component 480i). The Mits allows High Color Temp grayscale to be set independently for each of the three main display modes (NTSC, 480p and HD) which is very nice since they need to be set separately. The grayscale does vary between NTSC, 480p and HD.

22. Save all of the newly calibrated and tweak settings through the black box.

23. Put it all back together, wipe it all down to get my finger prints off, and then view some DVD and HD scenes to make sure you are truly 100% happy.

I use a Colorimeter for setting all of the grayscale modes/inputs and an HD Generator for setting High Definition Overscan, Geometry, SVM, Sharpness, Color Decoder and Grayscale settings.

Since it takes approximately 10-14 hours to do all of this I like to start the calibration around 9:00 or 10:00 A.M. (depending on sunset) so I can complete it before Midnight rolls around.
 
To do all of the above tweaks and calibrations I have a flat fee of $750. No surprises, no extra charges and no added fees per input, mode or signal type. Just one all inclusive fee.

 
Duvetyne ......... improves the blacks and shadow detail it also improves color saturation. To install Duve adds about 1.5 - 2 hours to the job. It would be great if you could do this prior to calibration, it's really not very hard to do, just time consuming. If you are nervous about doing it We would be happy to add it to the calibration. You buy the Duve and let's say $100 for us to install it. But, there are a number of posts here on the SPot that can help you with this so you can save a few $ here. If we install the Duve, it is done right after inspection and before the cleaning starts.

It is absolutely best if you let your set break in for approx. 3 months before calibrating it. The phosphors are a little hot out of the box and 3 months lets them mellow out a little. 3 months also gives the other electronics in the set a good chance to break in to make sure that nothing is going to fail. The CRTs change a lot in the first 300-400 hours so giving them a little time to break-in will definitely help hold your calibration longer.
 
I have spent thousands of hours analyzing the Mits HD sets and I believe these tweaks and calibrations are the base requirements to get the most from your set.
 
It makes no sense to have your grayscale calibrated if you don't have the color decoder corrected. It is almost useless to do electrostatic focus without doing manual focus and there's no reason to do focus if you are not going to thoroughly clean ALL of the optics. Edge Enhancement impacts SVM and Sharpness. Gamma impacts Grayscale, Contrast and Brightness. Geometry impacts convergence. Convergence has a major impact on the final image, etc. etc. So, IMHO there is only one way to do a Mits HDTV 100% right. To me, it's not just another RPTV, it's your "Home Theater".
 
If you have any questions please contact us at (***) ***-**** cell.
 
Thanks !
 
Craig and Sue Miller

[Todd Wiedemann]

Sure, Eric, it's 'stuck'.

Wish I could shake $750 loose ... wife's kitchen comes first.

[borghe]

hehe.. Just have her read the email. :p

[dheiner]

$750.00 in June or July??

I'm in!!

[Greg Oman]

I'm in.  I have two days in July that may be committed to my *other* passion, but if we get 6, I'm sure this will not be a problem, just a little schedule juggling.

Greg O.

PS: Cleared with wife.

[borghe]

We are up to three here, and there is a guy on Home Theater Spot who would be willing to be included as long as Craig counts Chicago in the total. So if Craig is willing to include him we are up to 4. Excellent. Will still work on it.

Regardless of if we can get Craig or not I'm starting to think I am going to do a Duvetyne lining. He recommends doing it before he gets there (not required) and I've been doing some reading and it doesn't look that hard. I found it on Yahoo for under $7/yrd. Should be able to do it for under $40 myself.

[Matt Heebner]

I was going to suggest posting on Home Theater Spot as well, but it seems like you already have. I dont think you will have a problem. Last June after Craig left this area (I had about 7 or 8 signed up in the Milw-Madison area) I had probably 4 or 5 guys asking me if they could get it done. Track those guys down and you should be all set!:D
Tell Craig that I would be interested in a tune-up. I organized last years tour so he should still remember me.

Definitely do the DUV...it's pretty easy and relatively cheap.  MilwaukeeHDTV.org's own Steve Mann has an EXCELLENT website showing step by step a duvatyne install. Both he and I have done our own so if you need some help or something just ask.
Here is the link:Duvatyne Install

And Todd, I've said it before and I'll say it again...A calibration by the Zen Master of Calibrations is worth every last penny! Why settle for a factory tuned Corvette when you can drive a Calloway!

Matt

[borghe]

We are currently up to 5 including 2 Chicago guys, as long as Craig lets us include them. Looks like it should be no problem getting him here.

[Pat]

Originally posted by borghe
I'm starting to think I am going to do a Duvetyne lining.

Regarding Duvetyne, it has been shown that high quality, long fiber velvet (not velvetine) is far blacker than Duvetyne, at additional cost.  Its also available locally at every fabric store.

A well-respected person on HomeTheaterSpot did a light reflectance study of the two and found that even at the points of velvet's "sheen" (which is seen at some angles), its far blacker than Duvetyne.

Especially since its a do-it-yourself project, and can be done to any RPTV, not just Mitsubishi's and not just HDTVs, its one of the best tweaks around.  I've done it to two, one "big" screen non-HDTV, and one "bigger" screen HDTV, and the results are remarkable.

[Steve Mann]

Thanks for the kind words and for posting the link to my Duve page, Matt. As soon as I read his comments about doing the Duve I was going to post the link, but you had already beaten me to it.  

I would agree that it is a very worthwhile tweak. As long as you take your time and are careful, this is a very easy project. And fun too!

[MarkS]

Sign me up!  I missed the opportunity last year but definately want to do it this summer.  Thanks for organizing the "tour".

Mark

[GJC]

Wow, this sounds really great!  But I can't shell out $750 to do this.  Jeez, that's like 1/3 the cost of my little projection TV.

Any chance for a reduced calibration set?  Maybe just 2 inputs?

-Gary

[Skipjack]

First and foremost, you have to have a Mitsubishi set.

Drat! Can I put a piece of masking tape over my Toshiba logo with "Mitsubishi" written on it?  You think that'll fool 'im?

[RickNeff]

Yeah, I also know the feeling since I have a Tosh set myself.  I've been trying to get Eliab from the Home Theater Spot to get to Milwaukee, but there hasn't been enough interest to get non-Mits sets calibrated.