One week to go!

[Steve Mann]

Next Friday morning at 9:00 AM GraigM will be arriving at the front door to calibra.. er, Graigibrate my 65908 Mits! I can't wait. I'm taking the day off work and will be taking some pics (as long as Graig doesn't mind) and putting them on my site later. Should be a very interesting day.

I know *someone* here (and maybe others) will be getting his set done a day earlier.  

[Matt Heebner]

WHOOOOHOOOO....that someone is ME!!!!! I can not wait oh man oh man. Still 6 days away. I took Thursday and Friday off. I am planning on leaving a big 'ol butt mark on my couch the day after and revisiting some of my favorite movies on my Craigabrated set.

Matt

[SteveClemetson]

I hate to rub your noses in this fellas, but Craig calibrated my set yesterday.  Craig and his wife, Sue, are two of the finest people I've ever had the pleasure to meet.  In fact, I miss them already.  They are the sort of people you wish were your neighbors or in-laws.

Before I talk about how my set looks, let me tell you how impressed I was with how careful and meticulous Craig was.  He must have spent 15 or 20 minutes just cleaning the mirror in my 65819.  No matter how many rags he went through, he refused to stop until the mirror "squeaked".  There were times I just sat there in complete silence because if felt like I was watching a surgeon at work.

So, how does the set look?  In a word: stunning.  After Craig finished, he put in The Fifth Element SuperBit.  Though I own the disc myself, it never looked like this.  Numerous times, I let out an involuntary "whoa" or little squeal of delight.  In fact, my DVDs now look like what I had come to expect from HDTV.

In another week, you guys will be as giddy as schoolgirls after you see the results of your Craigabration.

[This message has been edited by SteveClemetson (edited 06-09-2002).]

[RickNeff]

Good to hear that calibration by Crag was done well!  I'm still one of those who want to be part of the Eliab (from hometheaterspot.com) tour if he makes his way to WI.  Doesn't seem like a lot of people are signing up though.

------------------
Richard Neff
Proud Toshiba 56x81 owner!

[Steve Mann]

 

Originally posted by SteveClemetson:
I hate to rub your noses in this fellas, but Craig calibrated my set yesterday.  Craig and his wife, Sue, are two of the finest people I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

Hey Steve,

I was wondering what you guys did for meals and breaks while they were there? I'm would like to possibly grill out some stuff for lunch and/or dinner and I was wondering what Craig and Sue's preferences were. Did they prefer to take a big break and get a way from it for a while, or did they wanna stay at it will just smaller breaks here and there?

I was just curious so that I might have an idea of what to pick up for the big day.  :-)

Thanks!

[SteveClemetson]

As far as meals go, Craig and Sue ate before they arrived and they work straight through until completion.  Craig took a couple of smoke breaks, but that's it.  I asked them about dinner, but they politely declined.  They said they didn't mind if I ate around them.  I did, however, treat them to their first weissbiers to celebrate the successful calibration (both Hacker-Pschorr and Leinie's berry weiss).

[Steve Mann]

 

Originally posted by SteveClemetson:
As far as meals go, Craig and Sue ate before they arrived and they work straight through until completion.

Wow... sounds like they're a couple of work-a-holics. Well, I just have to see how it goes then. They've gotta have a Wisconsin Brat or two while they're here.  

[Matt Heebner]

I dont care what they say, they are having some Miller beer, and a Balistrarie's pizza. I'm paying him good money dammit, they will have some!

Matt

[MesaV]

The pizza will be great, but NOT that so-called beer!

[Matt Heebner]

Hey, I like Miller. It's my favorite for drinking around the house. My favorite is Hackerschorr (sp.?) Weiss on tap of course, followed closely by Lienies Honey Weiss. But drinking too much of that stuff will make you seriously fat! My working around the house beer is Miller Lite....I know I know...lite?


Matt

[Steve Mann]

 

Originally posted by Matt Heebner:
WHOOOOHOOOO....that someone is ME!!!!! I can not wait oh man oh man.

Well?! Well?! How's it going? Anything to report yet?  

Have you guys cracked into the Miller yet??  

[Matt Heebner]

Alright everyone, I have to put in a few words before I go to sleep for the night. I am tempted to just stay up and watch movies all night on my newly calibrated (Craigerbated) set.
I first want to say a big thanks to Craig and Sue. Two excellent people! I am very thankful they came to WI. They truely are super nice, and awesome people. I hope that they swing by this way in a year or so, and that we can get together on a more social level.
Now on to the calibration. When I first heard that Craig was the "Zen" master of Mits calibration...it sounded good but I didn't quite understand what it meant. I do now! The amount of time he spends on the most minute detail is amazing. Zeroing everything out and starting from scratch everything is something that takes an infinite amount of patience. Yet Craig took it all in stride.  The second he dragged his equipment in the house, he started on the set. Eleven and a half hours later he walked out, and I literally sat in a "stunned" silence watching a picture that has never looked so good. I was shocked at how different a movie I had seen a hundred times looked. SO much cleaner and detailed, color looked much more accurate and vibrant. DVD's really did look almost as good as HD. I noticed tiny details that just weren't possible to notice before, especially with Mits's innaccurate color decoder. I was laughing at things that I had never seen before, and amazed a TV could look this good. I even mentioned to Craig that I thought the differences would be much more subtle. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth. I noticed big differences in color and clarity instantly.
As someone stated above, it was like watching a surgeon at work....I agree. Very methodical, very patient, very professional. I must have asked a thousand questions I am sure he's heard a billion times, yet he answered enthusiastically (sp?) every one. Sue was also a pleasure to talk to as we talked about their travels all over the country. They also suffered through my dog, who was in their way most of the day, and my ever curious kids who wanted to be a part of the action. I did somehow manage to get them to take a quick break and eat some pizza with us .
Anyways, awesome job, awesome people. I plan on doing some major movie watching over the next few weeks. I can't wait to see some of my favorites "for the first time"!

Matt

[Tom Snyder]

Just to recap (so it's all right here):

What does it cost?
How does one contact him to calibrate their set?

BTW.. does a non HDTV source look signficantly better as well?

[Matt Heebner]

First off I would like to clarify that Craig only does Mitsubishi Tv's. I asked him about it, and even though he said he has experience with others he wanted to specialize with just one. Also he is on a 6 month calibration tour from California to Florida and back to Cal. sort of in a whacked out horseshoe pattern. He started in April, and today is his last WI calibration. He said to say if anyone is interested that he would probably be back next summer.

Here is his complete list of services and flat rate price. As far as standard TV....I believe that it is a good as you can get from such a source. I think it looks better, but truthfully only marginal. Not Craigs fault as you can't squeeze blood from a turnip. Directv can only look so good, and PQ I think is maxed out on my TV. HD and DVD's are where the calibration really shines!
Matt

Craig's email: mghometheater@earthlink.net
______________________________________
(Taken from HometheaterSpot)
Here is some information on what my Mits calibrations and tweaks include and the price.

A full scale Mits calibration takes approximately 12-14 hours and this includes the following:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Remove the lens assemblies and give them a good cleaning. We also remove that nasty tape at this time and replace it with new tape after focus is complete.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 just about every set needs to be zeroed out, magnetic centering and yoke rotation checked and set and then the geometry is redone from the ground up. This isn't just for correcting speed bumps and uneven geometry, that can easily be done by eye. This actually improves convergence which improves picture clarity, otherwise I wouldn't spend this much time, and your $$ on this step and the next step.

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 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 so that it is fully optimized for "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..

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.

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

Just about everything up to this point is done to improve clarity, everything that follows is to improve color.

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.

At this time the user controls will be centered except for Contrast and Brightness. These settings will be determined during grayscale calibration.

Check and adjust Gamma for NTSC, 480p and HD modes.

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

Set HD 1080i Grayscale.

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.

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

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 12-14 hours to do all of this I like to start the calibration around 9:00 A.M. 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 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 I would be happy to add it on to the calibration. You buy the Duve and let's say $100 for me to install it. But, there are a number of posts here on the SPot that can help you with this so you can save some $ here. If we install the Duve, it is done right after inspection and before the cleaning starts.

I feel it is best if you let your set break in for about 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 set good a chance to break in to make sure that nothing is going to fail. These CRTs change a lot in the first 300-400 hours so giving it a little time to break-in will help hold your calibration longer.

I have spent 100s and 100s 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".

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[This message has been edited by Matt Heebner (edited 06-14-2002).]

[Steve Mann]

Well, mine was certainly a different experience, though it was no less amazing. After taking an initial look at my set and through the settings, Craig was very surprised. He said that this was literally the very best he had seen any Mitsubishi prior to calibration. He said that the set was so good, that there was no way I would get the normal 'wow factor' and that he didn't want to the complete calibration and then have me feel that I had 'been ripped off'.

Soo... I did want a couple of things done, like permanently correct the red push and center out the user controls, so we negotiated a VERY fair price for the approximately 2 hours it would take to do what I wanted. He completed the work and was gone.

I'm a bit let down that I didn't have the opportunity to experience the 'wow factor', but I'm also very pleased to know that I have been experiencing the very best the TV can offer all along. I thought the dang thing looked very good and I guess I was right. Also, now there is no doubt about the TV. I don't have to wonder if I'm getting all I can out of it.

I think all this speaks very well for Craig. It would have been easy for him to plop down and do the complete calibration and collect his money. Instead, he was more concerned about the satisfaction of his customer. That says a lot about him.

According to Craig, I hold the record for his fastest calibration call.