NaturalMystic79

I was wondering what picture setting you all use for playing video games, if you own a Sony WEGA. I have a 32" flat screen WEGA and of course I use "Movie" mode for DVDs and such, but what about games? Do you use Standard, or Vivid?

Thanks!

Brian Shannon

None actually.

I calibrated the TV with Video Essentials and left it that way.

X

It depends on how you have the various modes adjusted. You can make them look how you want.

NaturalMystic79

Shannon-

I, too own and use Digital Video Essentials to calibrate my TV, but that is for NTSC DVDs and such. The calibration isn't the same for video games. So in other words you use the same Movie setting for games?

Brian Shannon

I use the same setting for any video source. It is the setting I judge to be the most accurate to my eye after calibration. For the most part games look great except for the ones that are dark because the developers seem to feel that this enhances the difficulty of the game . . . ie., not being able to see.

steebo777

Just use DVE to calibrate it.

renaldow

I've also calibrated my Wega, and have seperate settings for games, movies, and regular TV. It's necessary, IMHO. Cable TV is so bad in their transmissions that some channels are really dark, others are really bright, others off on some colors, so I've got 'standard' calibrated and then tweaked a little to make almost all the channels look good. Movie mode is straight calibration, and then I used Sports (Why not? Closest thing to 'games') for PS2 and GC games. Sports is calibrated for color but has brightness, contrast, and softness turned up a lot higher than the other settings.

Video games aren't meant to look like DVD's, and vice versa... when you have a TV that takes various calibration settings it only makes sense to use that feature.

steebo777

Nearly every TV nowadays has the pre-set modes like 'Sports', 'Vivid', 'Movie', etc. Those modes are usually not optimised for DVD watching though. That's why DVE should be used.

renaldow

I never said that wasn't the case. The factory settings on a TV are never correct and the TV should be calibrated under all it's various modes.

My point is: A setting that is optimized for DVD is not going to be optimal for a video game, and is not going to be optimal for broadcast TV. People should take advantage of the fact that their TV offers various modes to switch between settings (standard, movie, vivid, etc.) and adjust each one according to their needs.

Keep in mind that the picture you get when calibrating on 1 input isn't going to be the same as on another input. In other words, if you use your calibration disc with the player connected through the component cables don't expect it to look the same if you switch the player to the SVideo input. So, if your DVD player is on 1 input and the video game on another, it's only going to be calibrated on your DVD player. Further tweaking for the video game is indeed necessary.

NaturalMystic79

Steebo-

DVE is only for calibrating for NTSC movies and such, NOT for games or broadcast television... that's my whole point. I do have it perfectly calibrated for DVDs under the movie setting, but I was just wondering what WEGA video control level it should be for Gamecube and PS/2 games.

Renaldow-

Sounds good, I think I'll try that Sports mode for my games. I'm about to get back into Metroid Prime on GC and will set it to Sports. Hopefully the Edge enhacement doesn't ruin the PQ, if not I can always change it.

steebo777

Right, I completely agree with you guys. I was just saying that for overall viewing (if you're using the same input for DVDs and video games), that in my experience, the DVE calibration actually looked better than the preset modes. Sorry if I couldn't type what I was thinking earlier... someone has a case of the Wednesdays.

renaldow

NaturalMystic79, here's exactly what I did:

Calibrated the setting for color and hue exactly. Then still using the test patterns set the contrast and brightness a few notches higher than they should have been for movies. Didn't do anything witht he sharpness.

Then I put in 2 different games, a dark one and a colorful one (used The Thing and Sly Cooper) and adjusted the brightness and contrast so that I could see everything well in both. Nothing hidden in the shadows, in other words. Lastly I played with sharpness so that it wasn't real soft like you'd want w/ DVD's but wasn't too sharp so that it started to razorblade the game graphics.

hifi

I use MOVIE always, I love a dark picture.

Josh H

I calibrated the movie setting with Avia, for games and cable I just played around with the setting manually under standard until I liked it.

I like my games pretty sharp, so it's much sharper than my movie setting. I also set the VM filter to high because I like edge enhancment in most games (some N64 games being an exception as it clashes with the washed out anti-aliasing in those games) and for tv as it makes text much more readable and I watch a lot of ESPN, ESPN news etc and like how it makes the score and text on the tickers sharper.

But I'm in the minority there.