Customer Reviews

Video Essentials

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I felt that I needed to write a review because so many of the other reviewers clearly didn't understand much of the purpose of this DVD.

Problem: you need to setup a projector or projection tv (e.g. set the dynamic convergence). You read the service manual. It says "feed a checkerboard test signal into the projector and proceed to tweak the following variable resistors inside the set until red converges with green..." Hmm, you don't have a video test pattern generator do you ? But...stick this DVD in your DVD player and lo and behold you now DO have a pretty good test pattern generator. And at $40 it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the real thing.

Obviously not everyone needs to or is able to perform dynamic convergence or focus adjustments on their equipment, but I do and so do many others and this disk is a godsend for us.

The video calibration section is this DVD's strength. The explanations of the roles of brightness, contrast, sharpness, color, and tint, together with steps of how to adjust them to get the most proper picture, are great. Also a blue filter is included for use with the color test patterns (but no green or red ones). Still, the program scarcely mentions certain video issues such as grey scales, picture convergence and trigonometry, and only says they need to be handled by professional technicians. Also, there are many clips of what look like real TV programs scattering throughout the disc that are supposedly for you to test your display, but we are never really told what to do with them other than just "eye-balling" them and see if they look right after you made your video adjustments.

The audio calibration section not only doesn't tell me anything new, it doesn't tell me nearly close to what I (or most people) already know. It merely comprises of a brief "tour" of surround system, a superficial segment that essentially just reminds you to check your connections, a segment on checking polarity of the center speaker, and separate segments containing pink noises for testing each speaker, which is something most people already have built into their receivers. There is absolutely not a word on important issues like acoustics of the room, speaker placements, cabling, or what type of speakers to use.

I sincerely hope the disc maker would release an improved edition of the disc that has expanded coverage on audio. But I would hate to pay a higher price for it since it is already at a premium.

This is arguably one of the better setup discs around, if not the outright best. Two pieces of advice for peak tweaking: 1) for video setup you really need to do this at night with all the lights off, unless of course your screen is in an already very dark dark room; 2) watch the video all the way thru before making any adjustments, if you are a novice at this type of thing. For optimum audio tweaking you must have a SPL meter. Radio Shack sells one for $35.00 and it is well worth it. Also, make sure your running Dolby Pro Logic for any measurements and balancing of the surrounds. If you pay close attention to all the instructions you will be in for an audio-visual treat once you have completed all the tweaking - enjoy!

If you have a video projector or other high quality video format, calibrating with this disk will make it look GREAT! Very educational.

TIP: If you are using an LCD type projector but you move around a lot (different apartments,etc), you can project your LCD projector directly on a white-ish looking wall instead of having to setup a screen. Normally if you do this, you'd get a lousy, off-color picture. But if you calibrate to the wall's color with this disk, it looks very close to perfect. Have done this in several installations with VERY VERY good results.

You probably could live with out this DVD, but if you are a perfectionist you won't have any other option but to get it. It does it's job well, but the secret behind it is rather silly and cheap. Not to crazy about payiing all that money either. Be warned, you will look ridiculous looking through that blue peice of plastic!

Ignore the people who poo-pooed this title. If you've ever chased your brightness, contrast or hue adjustments all over the place, this DVD will put an end to it. It will show you how to adjust your TV so that it is CORRECT. Period. If you care about that, then you have to get Video Essentials (or rent it if you must).

This DVD has good explanations of what it is doing, the use of the filter to set the color balance correctly was useful. Running this did actually marginally improve the picture.

However, if you are a videophile with a projection TV there is one enormous omission: There is no pattern available to make sure the three colors properly converge on your screen. Incorrect convergence has a huge impact on picture clarity.

This DVD is desperately in need of an update, it needs to take projection HDTVs into account. More attention to detail is required to get the best from the latest and greatest TVs and it just wasn't available here.

As it stands this DVD is worth no more than $15. With a few more up-to date features (such as convergence) It'd be worth up to $25. As it stands I'm very dissapointed.