Ironmike

I just bought a 32" Sony Wega, so I thought it was about time to buy Video Essentials. I went through all the video set-up stuff, but had a problem setting the contrast. The VE disc said that the line would start to bend when the contrast reaches it's optimum setting. Only problem is that the line never bends, so how do I properly set it? I Hope this isn't a stupid question, and would appreciate an help you guys could give me. Thanks!

JimRochester

I had a similiar problem with my new Mits. When setting the sharpness, the picture never changed like they said it would. So I left it down around 1/4. I guess you'll need to do it by eye. I do know it can be down pretty far though.

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X

That shows that you have good power supplies.

I believe this is a situation where Avia is superior. They have additional patterns to look at during the contrast setting. I believe VE has them also, but they put an inferior set in the another section.

iveal

I just purchased VE as well and also had trouble setting contrast on my old Mitsubishi tube TV. While my eye could never detect the line bending or the white box blooming, I did finally managed to set the contrast immediately before the white box blooming.

FWIW, I taped a strip of transparent Scotch tape at the edge of the white box. I then adjusted the contrast until I could see the box's edge extend beyond the strip of tape. That's the only way I could tell if the box was blooming; otherwise, my eyes would have never been able to determine the proper setting.

Maybe someone else who has a better solution or knows their way around VE better can help out. I'm new to this as well and would appreciate a more expert approach.

DigIt

This test is useful, and when the line bends, it should be very noticeable. I ran VE on an older TV and you actually couldn't make the line straight - that's how bad the TV was. If you do not have this problem, be glad your TV is performing well - I don't want to hear you complain about how your TV doesn't fail tests!
BTW, there are other contrast settings for blooming, PLUGE, etc. on the VE disc, so if your TV is performing very well on one test, move on to another. My TV doesn't bloom very much, so I just don't worry about that test signal and I concentrate on others, knowing that no matter what the setting, blooming will be minimal.

mugwump

Most TV manufacturers caught on to this and started adding more juice to their power supplies. You can crank contrast on full tilt and still not see any blooming on many newer sets. The easiest way I find to adjust contrast is to drop it all the way down then start working your way up. Keep an eye on the main white field on the screen and stop when it begins to look like white rather than light gray.

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