So me and my HDTV recently celebrated our 2 year anniversary. i had beer, and it decided to stop displaying blacks as vividly as it used to. i put up for this for a while, it doesn't bother me too much when watching movies and television, but when Niko gets stuck behind objects i don't even see, well then we have a problem.

there's lots of calibration options out there, you can check the innertubes or craigslist for someone to come by and professionally calibrate your set, geek squad has a service as well, but the problem is, they have a habit of charging over $200.

being the cheap bastard that i am, i went the DIY route, and picked up the MONSTER CABLE RED ISF CALDSK HDTV CALIBRATION WIZARD DVD. while it may not be the best in breed, it certainly did the job. my eyes are far from flawless, but the videos provided were comprehensive, and quite easy to determine whether or not your settings are optimized. the nice thing about this dvd was that it used moving pictures rather than still images, so you could get an idea of just how improved the picture gets as you go.

i've been twiddling knobs for years, and i'm gonna be honest. i never really knew what brightness, contrast, sharpness etc actually did. i just played with them til i got a setting that looked nice. having the controls explained, and knowing what to look for when making adjustments made all the difference. mah gamez look bettah. mah teeveez look bettah. my moviez look bettah, and life is good.

if you've never had your set calibrated, you have no idea what your missing. hdtv's are intentionally detuned out of the box, to provide the brightest/most colorful image, so that the tv stands out if it finds itself on a show floor. while compared to others, the brightest picture may look the best, you wind up losing detail in your blacks and whites. if you've done it before, never hurts to give it a little TLC every once in a while.