Kiwimeat’s Kitchen

I recently had my Fujitsu Plasma screen and source devices ISF calibrated by Avical Australia. It took approximately 2 hours and cost a three figure sum.

So was it worth it?

YES! A resounding “Yes!” actually. All other family members noticed the improved picture quality and the richer colours, and brilliant contrast that was now consistent across all sources. I’m very happy with it.

I learnt a lot observing and discussing with the engineer doing the calibration. It was interesting to see that the final configuration was quite significantly different to my own settings!

One of the issues that came up was that despite the advances in thin panel technology fewer (not more panels) have advanced configuration options that can really assist in getting the best out of the panels. The engineers’ personal view was that in the current market Pioneer (Professional or Kuro) were best for plasma and the Sony X series for LCD and pretty much the rest should be left alone. Fortunately my now venerable (in flat panel terms) Fujitsu 50″ was the last of the models with advanced calibration options.

Much like the purchase of a sound meter and a good hour with a how-to that were a revelation on the audio side, I have found that the display calibration has really improved the quality of my HT experience, and I can highly recommend it for those who have made a substantial investment in HT environment.

One consideration is that you need to have all your source devices available and cabled up to your final specification as changing devices or even connectivity types will impact on the display calibration.

Mixing Gigabit network kit - especially “consumer” grade (aka cheap) - with Fast Ethernet (or wireless) devices such as Media Centre extenders can be bad news. At least it is for my setup.

Symptoms are that playback on the Linksys DMA2100 extender is either flawed (jerky, pixalated, audio drop outs) or completely unusable. The network optimisation report will show the link as being unsuitable for HD if not nothing at all.

Microsoft have a KB article which which describes a workaround. Either drop the Media Centre network card speed to 100Mbs or implement Flow Control RX on the host Media Centre. Linksys actually include an errata card in the box with this KB article linked.

Unfortunately applying the RX setting to the Flow Control on my Media Centre with it’s integrated Intel gigabit port caused the receive speed to die making networking and updating content on the Media Centre a royal pain. Likewise the gigabit NIC wan’t happy being forced to 100Mbs.

My solution. Disable the onboard gigabit network card in the Media Centre and install an old 3Com 3C905TX PCI Fast Ethernet Card. Hey presto, the DMA2100 is happy, and I can at least copy content to the Media Centre at reasonable speed.

All for lack of a $1 or less gigabit port in the Linksys Media Extender!

Moral of this tale - You get what you pay for!

Well I finally got round to organising to replace the faulty HDMI cable in my wall between the AVR and my wall-mounted TV.

Assisted by my friendly Hi-Fi guy we took the Plasma TV off it’s hooks and inspected the faulty cable. Try and we might we couldn’t get the existing cable to budge (in hindsight this should have caused alarm bells to ring).

We then tried to pull the replacement Kordz Evolution S 10m HDMI cable through the conduit using the pull wires. Disaster struck when we were about 90% of the way through. The pull-wires stuck and an attempt to pull it further caused the pull-wires to detach from the HDMI cable. Bugger!

It appears that the final turn in the conduit is too sharp and it prevent cables proceeding. So I’m back to running the HDMI cable in front of the feature wall and my in wall conduit is of no use.

I’m now awaiting the assistance of a custom installer who specialises in this sort of activity.