Customer Reviews

Colorvision STV100 Spyder TV Colormeter

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this puppy a few days ago and have run it a few times to get a feel for the calibration qualities of the Sensor.

Now let me say that I've tried it in a room with only modest light as well as a room with no other Ambient Light Source and both proved to be identical values so as long as it isn't broad daylight with the blinds open it is pretty reliable.

Let me add that the device is a Colorimeter which is for calibrating color and it is actually very good at it! Much better than you could eyeball regardless of who you are.

So with all that said, let's address some of the complaints, or should I say misconceptions with the device.

1st, all the Device knows are absolutes that are pre-programmed into the software and it is designed to achieve accuracy within a certain degree (often lower than .05% Deviation) and your eyes will never be that accurate.

2nd, Skin Tones Change based on the light source used and unfortunately Hollywood knows that the lighting creates atmosphere so the skin tones will never be 100% reliable in any movie; So let's take the movie "The Guardian" for example this movie had no less than 7 different light sources depending on the scene and this would make calibrating your screen based on skin tones as tough a target as trying to pinpoint a Democrats Morals (After all, truth is relative right?). In Reality Skin tones can only truly be used to judge Calibration based on a Daylight Scene and ONLY if You Know the Skin Tone To Begin With.

So if you're going to judge the devices capabilities then you should use known quantities to judge. Good sources are Whites Lines, Known Black Items and Blue Skies or use a modern Animated Feature like Finding Nemo or Shrek where light temperature is never really a factor.

Now as for Brightness and Contrast, these characteristics are designed to work within a defined range as well and the Colorimeter is doing what it's told to do...

Basically, the software measures the top value and the bottom value for each setting and then takes a few calculated readings from in between to determine range while setting the appropriate mid-point for Range. Keep in Mind, that isn't arbitrary and as such the device will not know if part of a scene is too dark, it is just trying to keep everything operating within a certain range without letting parts of the scene get blown out (the more range your TV has the better this will work but at 700:1 or 1500:1 it will require some user intervention).

My advice for setting up a TV, that is less than 2000:1 contrast ratio, with the SpyderTV is to go through the whole setup and then tweak the brightness and contrast with a THX Video Test from a Pixar Disk like Finding Nemo or using DVE for these settings.

So, with all that said this device is every bit as accurate as higher priced calibration tools but does require a little bit of knowledge to operate properly within spec.

Used on Sony Bravia LCD and got same results as factory default settings except for tint which was badly biased to red. Managed to get a better picture using trial and error (by varying things like backllight and sharpness which are not evaluated by spydertv). Tech support is a joke. Don't waste your money!

I have calibrated about a dozen TVs with mine.
Ambient light WILL affect the finial out come of the procedure!
The only other thing is to make sure you follow the steps carefully,
If you zig when you should of zaged you get to start from the beginning. John

I'm in the midst of auditioning LCD panels and the local ISF certified guy wants $350 per panel to calibrate them. I like TV and everything, but there's just no way that I am going to spend $350 on TV that I might possibly keep.

Still, the store settings on any two panels have two problems. First, they are amped up beyond compare as the TV vendors compete to be "who's the brightest" on the lit showroom floor. Sitting in my living room, they are far far too bright to watch. Second, they display colors totally differently. It's just hard to compare to 2 sets that are calibrated so differently.

Now the TVs that we are looking at cost a pretty penny, and it seemed that a couple of hundred dollars to inform the decision was a good idea, just like the hundred dollars for an HDMI splitter seemed like a good idea. The splitter was a good idea, the Spyder TV Colormeter not so much.

I calibrated 2 panels with this product. Two things are true about the calibrations. First, they do not look at all the same. The Sony panel has red shifted flesh tones while the Sharp looks cold and sterile. Second, they look way way worse than before the calibration. After 20 minutes of watching Casino Royale, it was time to revert back to a toned down version of the factory defaults for each.

At first I thought that I had not followed the instructions right. Maybe it was not dark enough. Maybe the sensor was not positioned right. Having done the process several times, I can state categorically that while the colorvision Spyder TV may not deliver good results, it is consistent in its delivery of bad results.

I simply cannot recommend this product.

I used the SpyderTV to calibrate my 2 yr old Panasonic plasma (which I had originally calibrated with the Avia DVD) and I thought I was watching a brand new TV when I was finished. The software is easy to use. I strongly recommend calibrating in a dark room as indicated in the manual. I does make a big difference.

The Colorvision STV100 is a good/great colorimeter. The trick is getting the right software which unfortunately is not included with the hardware. Instead of a robust set of software tools to do a proper calibration, the Spydertv package comes with just enough software support to do a very minor and basic adjustment. However, with the use of a product called "Color HCFR", which is a FREE set of software tools, one can get fantastic DIY calibration results with the Spydertv colorimeter. Just head over to http://www.homecinema-fr.com to grab what you need. I still rate this as a 4 star package due to the fact you can still get a great calibration by downloading the free software.

Set up as directed. Color, contrast, brightness setting recommended seemed to be "too much". I had to tune them back to make the picture correct to my eye. I'll try it again with the room totally dark to see if that will make any difference.

The product has high potential. Unfortunately, tha same cannot be said for the company, Colorvision. The hardware would appear to work fine. The software is problematic:
(1)it does NOT work with Vista
(2)it does not load completely with XP Professional
(3)the web site patches do NOT work
(4)the web site is difficult to navigate to
(5)Customer Service is TERRIBLE! unresponsive, indifferent, and if and when you do get a response it may have no relevance to your problem
I returned the product out of frustration

I have the same problem that Xrayman does.
I was wondering if I had a faulty unit since it was an "opened" item and slightly discounted in the store where I bought it. I guess I'm not the only one who has this problem. My TV is a Plasma, for whatever that's worth. And I too found that the SpyderTV did not set things correctly. Color was much too saturated, and contrast and brightness were not correct. The only thing it did do was correctly choose the color temperature, which I do think is better than what I had it set to, so I'm now using SpyderTV's recommended color temp. But I reset everything else back to the settings I had already achieved by eye. I am going to try it out on an old CRT television and see if it works any better on that.

My plasma isn't new, and I would recommend that people do not use this product on a new plasma. It requires you to put a bright white square up on your screen for far too long. I had to run through 15 color temperature settings, letting SpyderTV take a reading on each one, while leaving the bright square up. Took at least 7 minutes. That will temporarily burn the square into a new plasma screen. ...and might throw off the remaining measurements that have to be taken.

I used this unit to calibrate my Mitsubishi WD65732 DLP HD TV and was surprised at how good the picture looks after the adjustment. I first went through the tv manual to make sure I understood all the various adjustments the tv makes and wrote them down on a spreadsheet so I could study them and make sure I knew how the language related to the SpyderTV adjustment language. Once I did that and marked down the adjustment ranges, it was a breeze to run the software and make the adjustments. It even creates a pdf file at the conclusion for record purposes and future comparisons. Some of the adjustments for color temperature were surprising, but the bottom line is that the picture looks great!