Essential HDTV Accessories

Back when HDTVs cost $5000, spending another few hundred bucks to bring in a professional calibrator to make a house call to fine-tune your set seemed like a good investment. But now that some pretty large HDTVs cost $1000 or less, few people want to spend half again as much on a visit from Dr. Lookgood.

You could opt instead for a hardware calibration device such as Datacolor's $200 SpyderTV (pictured), which includes a colorimeter, test patterns on a DVD, and software that runs on your PC or laptop (though some videophiles prefer to use the colorimeter with third-party software such as HCFR 2.0.1).

But you can perform a simple and reasonably effective calibration for almost nothing: Look through your DVD collection for a title carrying the THX logo; its presence on a DVD case may indicate that the disc includes free calibration test patterns (though you'll still have to send off for a pair of special glasses, for $4.50). See our story "How to Calibrate Your HDTV" for more options.

Datacolor Spyder TV: Latest Prices