Lion Audio/Video Consultants

To follow-up on my post that Gregg Loewen was coming to calibrate my Samsung 6167 RPTV Tuesday, I provide some feedback below.

My appointment was at 2pm, Gregg was early, how's that for a service call! Compared to my experiences with D*, Best Buy, etc, Gregg put them to shame for promptness.

Gregg had a couple of fully packed equipment bags and other items he brought into the house. I had the windows covered w/black trash bags and some dark towels. I usually do this anyways when watching NFL on Sunday afternoons to maximize my viewing pleasure, my wife thinks I'm nuts but that's another subject.

Gregg set-up his equipment and fully explained, step by step of what he was and would be doing. He said some of his clients could care less of his process. To each his own but why bother, plus he is educating you on an expensive hobby.

Gregg used a software program to measure my set's current output of the color spectrum and grayscale. Most of my colors were pretty far off with blue being the closest to what it should be per ISF standards. My grayscale was way off, too hot!

Gregg went through the service menu many times, tweaking each color...blue, green and red. Once those were precise, he did the secondary colors...cyan, yellow, and magenta. He got all either dead on or within fractions. He also got the grayscale within fractions of 6500k. He copied to settings for all my inputs, I have HDMI and component 1 now but it's good to know if I add in the future, I'm set.

Once he was done (about 2 1/2 hours), we viewed some HD from D* and then we looked at the Fifth Element on DVD and he pointed out the contrast and colors, especially the flesh tones. I noticed differences right away but it wasn't the apparent night and day...not yet anyway.

After Gregg left, I sat down for some critical viewing. It became apparent rather quickly of the differences from before and after. The colors were so much truer to the subject. I had used DVE before to set everything and thought I had done a good job. Gregg's calibration but all that to shame. I really noticed my hot colors, red and oranges were very refined, not bleeding over or screaming 'look at me'! The flesh tones were so real. My 9-year-old immediately noticed a difference on the Discovery HD channel in the detail of the animals. The feathers on the birds were amazing. We were so engrossed in the HD viewing, we never got to a DVD. That will come later.

To sum it up....

- Gregg was great!
- I didn't have the instant 'holy mother of crap' experience some have right away.
- BUT...once I viewed subject matter I was familiar with and did some constructive viewing, this was money WELL spent and I am extremely satisfied. I now feel I have the best possible picture, not the one that came screaming off the showroom.

Thanks - Jeff
(9-28-05)
- Jeff: Samsung HLR 6167 DLP RPTV
Click here to see more testimonials.