Monitor Calibration Recommendations

[Garbz]

Thanks for the replies - I really appreciate your help!! There must be a way to work around the laptop monitor issue... :scratch: Do any of you know offhand if I would have the same viewing issues if I connected my laptop to our television and calibrated that monitor? It has a flat screen. Would the calibration hardware/software work on that as well?

I've never tried to calibrate a television. I guess it depends on the size of the pixels displayed on the TV.

So your television is actually a "monitor". I would think it would work.

The viewing issues with a laptop isn't something that can be fixed. It's a fundamental problem of the technology. See how thin those things are compared to a 2" thick S-IPS display? The problems with laptops are shared with most current technology thin TN panel LCDs, though the size/weight constrictions are less severe on the desktop LCD and thus the problems are more worked around. It all comes down to the display panel technology.

On that thought ... TV. My 42" LCDTV has an IPS panel, which at first thought sounds great. However straight away plugging the computer in the screen is saturated out the wazoo, gamma for each channel is slightly different, and the pixel layout alternating angled shapes like:

/ / /
\ \ \
/ / /

Do not really suit still images where fuzzyness is a downside not an upside as with TVs. (Note not all TVs use this pattern). The other interesting problem is a case of standards. TV ranges for some reason are from 16-235 not from 0-255. No amount of adjusting of brightness / contrast can fix this on many TV sets, though this varies again depending on input and processing. Long story short TVs are designed for something else than PC screens.

 

[inTempus]

I went ahead and ordered the Spyder3 Pro. Thanks so much for all the great information and opinions!

Good choice!