The controls

Once you have your lighting in the proper place and your adjustment options for your inputs down, you'll need to take a moment to familiarize yourself with your TV's video adjustment options.

In the menu for your TV, check out how many options it gives you for picture adjustment. You should see at least the following five settings:

• Contrast (picture)
• Brightness (black level)
• Sharpness (detail)
• Tint (hue)
• Color (saturation)

Your TV could have many more adjustment options. Standardize your image as much as possible before calibrating. Things like picture enhancers and black level expanders should be turned off. Some common ones are below:

• Color temperature (f. color) - turn this setting to warm or red.
• Black level expanders - disable
• Sharpness enhancers - disable
• Dynamic settings - turn to standard
• Edge enhancements (VSM) - disable
• Flesh Tone feature - disable

All manufacturers have their own names for common features. If you are unsure what it does, check your manual for a description.

Navigating the DVD

Once you have a handle on how to make adjustments, place the Avia DVD in your DVD player. Otherwise, at the main title menu choose "Advanced AVIA." Avia has an informative tutorial on how to use the basic patterns. If you choose to view it, do so now by selecting "basic video adjustments." If you would like to begin making adjustments without the tutorial, select "basic patterns." AVIA contains many different test patterns for video displays, the 5 most common patterns choices will appear on the display. For access to all of the video test patterns, select "video test patterns."

Calibrating your display

If your DVD player is connected to your display with a composite video cable (yellow RCA cable) or RF modulator, completely lower the color setting before you begin.

Needle Pulses and Steps

The needle pulses and steps pattern provides you with all of the necessary information needed to calibrate the contrast setting or white level on your TV set. The information you use on this screen will vary with the type of TV you own.

• Direct View & rear-projection TV's - Lower the contrast setting to its minimum value. Keep an eye on the steps pattern, as well as the two black
  lines on the left and right sides of the lower half of the screen. Slowly increase contrast until the top step looks white, rather than a dull gray. Each step should be twice as bright as the step below it. If the black lines start bending outward as you increase contrast, you'll need to lower the setting to a level that makes them as straight as possible, even if you have to sacrifice some of the dynamic white. If, while raising the contrast the steps begin to bloom outward, immediately lower your contrast setting.


• Fixed-pixel displays - Lower the contrast value to its minimum value. If you own a fixed pixel display such as an LCD or DLP TV, you'll need to keep an eye on the steps like above. However, you'll also need to watch the two moving bars in the white field at the bottom of the screen. You do not need to pay attention to the black lines. As you increase the contrast level, stop when the top step looks white, and when each step looks twice as bright as the one below it. If the moving bars in the white field disappear, lower contrast until they reappear.

Once this has been achieved, the contrast setting is complete. Move on to the next pattern.

Black Bars & half-gray

The black bars and half gray pattern provides you all of the information necessary to calibrate your display's brightness setting. The adjustment is the same regardless of the TV you own. Increase brightness to its maximum value. You should see two bars moving back and forth in the left side of the screen.

Once you have identified the bars, decrease brightness to its minimum value. Increase brightness slowly, so that the left bar is nearly invisible and the right bar is visible on the black background. Once this is complete, your brightness control is properly set. You may want to go back to the Needle Pulses & Steps patter to verify your contrast setting because the contrast and brightness controls in your TV often interact.

If using a test pattern that involves the use of PLUGE signals, you'll need to verify that your DVD player can properly output these kinds of signals. If not, calibrating black level will be difficult. Look for the drop shadow behind the main object. Increase brightness from its minimum value until the drop shadow disappears. If done properly, the black level will be correct. For players that don't output PLUGE signals, you'll need to verify black level using the IRE steps at the top or bottom of the screen. On the PLUGE pattern with the THX optimizer, the seventh box should be your true black.

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