Datacolor SpyderTV Colorimeter for Home Entertainment System

Dramatically Improves the Picture on Your Home Entertainment System.The Datacolor SpyderTV colorimeter and software deliver an easy-to-use solution for optimizing any TV for a better viewing experience. SpyderTV scientifically measures contrast, brightness, color, tint, and color temperature presets on your TV and helps you make the necessary adjustments to dramatically improve your picture quality. SpyderTV supports Plasma, RPTV, DLP, LCD and CRT TVs.

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• Reviewed by: WayneFChin

  10-12-05

  Duration of ownership: 10 Days

  Strengths: An objective and easy way to calibrate your TV for optimalviewing. It's kinda cool to see a colorimeter attached to the middle of your TV screen during calibration.

  Weaknesses:At > $200, its cost is pretty high for something you don'tuse often.

  Overall Evaluation: SpyderTV includes a colorimeter with an adapter for mounting with a suction cup or tripod, a handy carrying case, a software CD, and a calibration DVD. Bring your own laptop with a USB port. I used SpyderTV to calibrate my 42" Panasonic Plasma TV. The entire calibration process takes roughly an hour, including a suggested 20-minute warm-up time for the TV and DVD player. Here are the steps you follow: 1. Install the software on your laptop. 2. Since you should warm up your TV and DVD player for 20 minutes, spend that time to view the calibration tutorial on the calibration DVD; it's easy to follow and it's worthwhile to get a feeling for the calibration steps. 3. Grab the remote controls for your TV and DVD player. Believe me, you'll need them. Figure out how to adjustment your TV's sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, and color temperature. Know your TV's terminology for those adjustments, because SpyderTV may use different terms for them. 3. Attach the colorimeter to the center of your TV, and connect its USB cable to your laptop. Darken your room. 5. Start the software on your laptop and follow the instructions from SpyderTV's wizard to tweak each of the above adjustments. ~30 minutes later, you're done! I found the results incredible -- it was amazing how far off my original subjective settings were. Now the skin tones of the characters on CSI are more realistic! I had to back off on the reds a bit, though. I'm really surprised at how much I was missing before the calibration. SpyderTV is expensive at> $200, but I'm sure that amount is much less than paying for an ISF calibrator to come to your house. And you can calibrate using SpyderTV as often as you want with excellent results. If you've spent a good sum on your home theater, then buying a SpyderTV would be a good investment to optimize your TV viewing. I certainly recommend SpyderTV.

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