Truth about HDTV calibration Video

Truth about HDTV calibration Video Transcript

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>> [Background music] Hello everyone. I'm Molly Wood and welcome to the CNET Mailbag. The show where we morn the passing of cnet live but try to make up for it with some nerdy TV calibration advice so let's get right to it.

>> First up some love for CNET Live which just had its last episode on June 11th. The show will still be around for special events like CES but we're replacing it with a new cnet live page that will host all of our live streaming videos like all our pod casts and future big time stuff. However, not all of you are happy about the change. Mark says, excuse me, did I just hear Brian Cooley and Tom Merritt tell me that cnet live is changing into a website that shows all the live shows on one page. Not cool; change this or I will have to stop going to cnet.com; not really but don't change it. Thank you. It's kind of contradictory there.

>> And Sam writes, oh my God, I can't believe cnet lives is going away. Why? CNET Live was the only show where viewers like me can call in and have two or three cnet review experts help me solve my tech related problem. I think CNET is making a huge mistake by canceling CNET Live. I watched it every week and will be very sad to see it go.

>> I know you guys and I just wanted you guys to get a chance to express your sorrow but we do still have the show for occasional tech help and there are the cnet forums for all kinds of assistance and well, there's always Google, and on that note, I did think it was only fair to try to answer a tech related question for you on this show. I'm not going to make a habit of it but here goes.

>> Heather says I have a question, I just bought a Samsung LED TV and Best Buy is heavily pushing there geek squad calibration. It's expensive though and to tell the truth, sounds like their just selling their geek squad services. I've read several articles and watched cnet videos on TV calibration and it sounds like with the help of a DVD, I can do a pretty good calibration job myself. True? Is there something about the LED TVs that would require professional calibration over what I can do myself?

>> Well, Heather I asked Senior Editor David Katzmaier who reviews TVs here at cnet what he thought and he said basically, yeah, geek squad maybe but the first place to start is the CNET picture setting forums. Try those since they're free and then if you don't like the picture, try the following steps in order. One, try some other people's free settings. On that settings forums there are at least two other sources for HD TV settings; try those. Then like you mentioned Heather, buy a calibration disk and try to tweak your TV that way. There's a link to our DIY guide in the left nav of the forums too. Finally, go to www.imaginingscience.com, find a local calibration guy and compare the price to the geek squad service. If it's more, go geek squad. If it's not, don't. Hope that helps.

>> [Background music] All right, let's do some lover mail. Jessica says I just wanted to give Bonnie Cha some love and say that I loved her unboxing of the pre video. I thought she looked like a kid on Christmas morning. She practically tore the boxes apart. It just goes to show just how much she wanted to get her hands on the pre; and can I just say, I want droll, yeah, you got a love a girl who loves her job.

>> And then Larry cracked me up with this one; OMG, hunko dripping with yummy TV uploaded today. Molly was interviewed by Mark. Can you say the bold and the beautiful? How the heck tall is Molly? She towers over Mark whom my daughter thinks is as yummy as Ben and Jerry's fish food. I've never seen Molly so hot. Hubba, hubba. Diabetics will have to wear shades to watch all the eye candy on CNET. Thank you for the icing on the tech cake.

>> Larry, you're weird but awesome. Thank you.

>> And finally, in a little bit of crazy mail, Matt says, light off; light on; light off. That is all I have to say about the CNET Mailbag.

>> Explain?

>> [Background music] And that's it for this week everybody. Keep the feed back and questions coming. E-mail me at mailbag@cnet.com or send your snail mail to 235 Second Street, San Francisco, California. 94105, and thank you for watching.