Home is where the Plasma and Projector is

It is nice to get home from some hotel with a crappy TV and get back to all of your recorded shows and rentals and DVD's, etc and go and watch them on your HD Plasma, LCD or projector. Ahhh, home again.
How many people out there feel the need to eyeball calibrate your hotel TV? I know I do. They always look terrible with over saturated colors, too much sharpening and poor selection of video mode that is way off (vivid).
Those 19 inch TV's or whopping bigger ones like the 32 inch ones they have in some hotels are no better setup than the one at your local pizza parlor.
It just goes to show that most people have no idea that TV's are not at their best with default settings. The ISF has been trying to educate the public for years, but with limited results.
Why?
It's all about perceptions of manufacturer intent and delivery.
TV's are set up out of the box to be ultra bright and ultra razor sharp, and in no way accurate. Many of them cannot be made extremely accurate even with ISF service menu calibration. In many cases service menu calibration is not even useful.
Why? Well, that question is one to annoy the manufacturers with. First off, they should make it possible to do grayscale calibration and other crucial settings without having to go into the service menu. That way, they don't have to worry about problems with returns because of failed calibrations. It would also result in their HDTV's looking as good as possible for the largest number of consumers. Oh yeah, that would be terrible!
The trouble is that a lack of consumer education has left the whole calibration issue in some kind of alternate universe where everything is not perfect out of the box. If manufacturers would just admit to this truth, consumers and dealers and calibrators would all be able to work from the same page - truth.

OK, enough ranting. Tbush should have a new article on recording Microphones with computers real soon, for your enjoyment.