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131 of 131 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Video Essentials vs. Avia: No contest, May 11, 2001
This review is from: Video Essentials (DVD)
Having purchased both discs, I have very strong feelings about this. Avia bests VE in almost every respect: 1. Navigation: On VE, the navigation is handled by a very confusing set of menus within menus. On my DVD remote, I could only access one of the menus using a button that I otherwise never use. Until I figured this out, the only way I could skip through the initial (not very useful) audio stuff was to fast forward! Avia's menus work like every other menu I have ever used. No problem with navigation. 2. Color calibration: VE offers only a blue filter. However, Avia provides red, blue, and green filters and allows you set each independently. 3. Sharpness: VE simply tells you to turn your sharpness all the way down. The pattern for setting sharpness is so under explained, it is useless. Avia provides a full explanation and resulted in my setting the sharpness level considerably above zero. 4. Brightness and Contrast settings: VE provides only static bars (and requires that your DVD passes pure black). Avia provides bars that flash. This makes getting proper settings much easier. Also, your DVD doesn't have to pass pure black.
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79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good tool but too expensive, March 21, 2000
This review is from: Video Essentials (DVD)
Some love it and some hate it. I'm somewhat inbetween. The first part "Audio Setup" does nothing more than help you to connect the wires correctly and adjust the channel levels. I think everyone with a basic understanding is able to do this without this DVD. I expected some more help in finding the correct location for speakers and listener in the room (distance from wall, distance from listener, etc.). But besides a note to try different spots for placing the sub-woofer(s), not one word is spent about this topic. From my point of view, this part is absolutely worthless and could be reduced to a few words on a piece of paper. The "Video Section" is somewhat different. It offers some good reference pictures and explanations to correctly set brightness, contrast, sharpness, tint and color. After going trough all steps, the picture of my TV set really did look a lot better ! But here also I expected some more in depth insight. Summa summarum: It's a really good tool to improove the image quality of your set. But the price is way to high ! $10.- would be a fair price.
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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More $ than normal... but it will yeild excellent results, November 25, 2000
This review is from: Video Essentials (DVD)
This DVD is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to extract the most from their home theater. I am the managing head installer for a high-end Audio/Video salon in NY. Don't let the price concious reveiwers fool you, this DVD may be a little [much] but it provides you with reference video setup patterns whose use yeilds excellent results. Yes, your picture will look much much better. The audio tracks are usefull only to assure of proper hook-up, but the video tracks will give you a mastered set of calibration patterns for your monitor including black and white levels, color, hue sharpness and geometry. As professional set-up usually costs $300 and up, fifty bucks isn't that bad ... This DVD will improve your display, GAURANTEED! (For professionals some additional test patterns could be included; and as I am aware, an updated dvd is due to be released with all the features of the original Laserdisc including the full frame indian head pattern.) If you know what your getting you know this is an excellent tool indeed.
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