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Old 7th June 2014, 01:53   #4  |  Link
Asmodian
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: San Jose, California
Posts: 4,406
Quote:
Originally Posted by GCRaistlin View Post
huhn, thanks for your answer, but let's begin ab ovo though - should I use "TV levels" instead of "PC levels"? I believe it's "TV levels" but just in case.
I have tried to use custom levels. I have had set black to 2 to make bars 2-16 blend. Then I have opened a BD Remux from my collection and compared the black area of the picture with custom levels and TV levels. TV levels definitely give more details! So I'm not sure about
As huhn stated, it sounds like your TV is crushing blacks, this is very common in my experience. Again reiterating huhn; MadVR should be set to output PC levels if you can get your TV to handle it correctly (full range input), from your description your's does except for the slightly crushed blacks. Calibrating to BT.1886 should fix that and restore the lost shadow detail using PC levels without raising the black level, no one likes gray blacks.

If you have everything set correctly there should not be an obvious difference in shadow detail using PC or TV levels, you need to change other settings if you change between them to compensate for their differences. If you see a lot more shadow detail using TV levels you probably raised the black level until it was significantly above where your TV clips; this is very bad IMHO as a low black level is one of the most important aspects of a good TV. I prefer slightly crushed blacks to a raised black level if you cannot calibrate.

I don't think anyone can accurately answer your questions about brightness/contrast without having experience with your TV, which TV make and model is it?

Quick and dirty; with brightness at a "reasonable midpoint" raise contrast as high as you can and still see bar 234 then raise brightness as high as you can and still see bar 17. Then check that you can still see both 234 and 17. This is not correct on a lot of TVs as brightness and contrast can mean different things on different displays.

If you do not want max brightness you can set brightness as desired and then raise contrast as described. Sometimes the picture starts to go weird as you raise contrast but bar 234 is still visible, in that case you should lower contrast below the "weird" threshold.

Last edited by Asmodian; 7th June 2014 at 01:59.
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