Digital Video Essentials HD (HD-DVD/DVD Combo) (HD DVD)

After having spent a couple of grand on a top spec plasma and further cash on an HD-DVD player, I found myself wanting to make sure the system was set up right. I am not a proffesional TV calibrator and so I thought this disc would help me out.

If it weren't for the pretty HD demo material, and the brightness adjustment sections of this disc, it would be almost useless to a non-pro.
I was wrong. It seems this disc is infact mainly useful as a resource disc for a pro tv adjuster. There are infact no instuctions on it's use on the HD-DVD side, you must turn it over and play the regular DVD side just to find out what all the test signals actually do. And even when you've done that, the disc talks almost exlcusivley about CRT's and projectors rather than LCD's and Plasma's.

It does have useful stuff on it, like how to set brightness, and colour filters to get the colour/tint settings correct. But calibrating the most important setting of all (the contrast) is described at length for CRT's only.

By the way, don't expect any instruction manual to be included for it either ... although you can feel free to go and read the (extremely technical) 147 page PDF document to perhaps get a rough idea for how to use the disc.

If it weren't for the fancy HD demo material and the brightness adjustment test pattern, this disc would be almost useless to a non-pro.

Calibrating a TV is for a pro, and yes this is advanced... But I like my new TV :)

The HD side does not contain the tutorials, so I recomend watching the DVD first, then adjust the HD side when you know what has to be done.

Remember to calibrate all inputs, since most TV's have separate memory per input.