CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[sanlyn]

I see posts in this forum and elsewhere about EyeOne Display 2 and LT problems with Red. Some users claim the EyeOne reports less Red than actually exists in their image, others claim their D2 or LT reports more red than exists.

Those who say the D2 or LT reports too little Red usually claim that their readings keep asking for more Red or less Green to smooth their grayscales, resulting in images that look too red. Those who claim their D2 or LT reports too much red say they keep reducing Red or adding Green for a flatter grayscale, then end up with green shadows in flesh tones or too much Green overall.

I'd argue that it's difficult to tell whether the problem lies with Red; from the symptoms, the problem seems to be the way D2/LT reads Green; if Red were the culprit, then the results would have too much or too little Cyan (Blue + Green), not just Green. From Day One, readings I made on my two HDTV's with the LT always showed an elevated Green. In any case, my own Display LT is now a year old and it appears, true to current horror stories concerning EyeOnes, that my LT is ready for participation in my community's next recycling drive. What I'm seeing on my displays and PC monitors (I use XRite's auto calibration on PC's, but HCFR elsewhere), results with the LT are askew in several directions. First, there's always too much red; in my case the color usually missing is blue, not green. I see too much Red in skin tones and dark hair, but at the same time there are green facial shadows, orange Afro's (darker brothers get a little purply but lighter types go mango); and caucasians look overly pink, so blue obviously isn't missing from the brights -- though I keep wondering how so many pinkish caucasians managed to get the undersides of their arms sunburned, or why Marilyn Monroe's platinum blonde bleach job has dark roots the color of a WWII Panzer tank. Oddly, the grayscales I'm getting are uniformly flat from IRE 20 to 80, and sometimes flat from 10 to 100, and CIE placements are pretty darn tight, regardless of the type of video cables I use. These symptoms indicate that more than Red is out of whack.

Because this "Red thing" seems to rear its head even with brand-new EyeOne's (almost always the LT -- doesn't anyone use the non-LT version?), it seems by now that someone would have devised a workaround for this over/under problem. I haven't seen any comparison figures or graphs with EyeOnes and other meters on this particular problem.

In any case, since nothing in this digital world is worth a damn after the credit card payment gets approved, I bit the bullet and ordered CalMAN with a new Display 2 (not the LT, which I don't trust anymore). I figure the CalMAN/D2 package likely has better integration between software and hardware than I get with HCFR. And a QC industrial engineer in the aircraft industry tells me that the price difference between XRite's Display 2 LT and their non-LT doesn't seem justified by software features alone; more likely, a non-LT is closer to spec than an LT, which possibly explains why the labels on the back of these critters has different model names. So I'm hoping that the learning curve for CalMAN/Display2 will yield improved results.

I know what many will say: just get the EyeOne Pro. What I've spent over 4 years on a color-dyslexic Spyder and a schizo EyeOne is still less than the price of the Pro, which itself involves serious maintenance costs that rival the annual maintenance of my Honda Civic. Seeing as how competent direct-view CRT's have disappeared in favor of inferior digital displays that by design can't display color accurately to begin with, I don't see that the Pro offers us non-pro's that much. Note: I can't afford it anyhow. No way.

End of rant. For the time being, at least. But my earlier question still applies: why has no one documented or found a work-around for this wide-spread EyeOne problem?

[Nashou66]

All colorimeters will drift over time, I was one of the people who have had my D2 drift before the year was up. Spectra cal gave me credit towards the Eye one Pro. The new probe is much more accurate. But they say for those probes that use filters you need to keep them in a dry environment. Humidity will make them drift further. One thing you can do is profile your D2 to a known good working probe. this way it will be up to date. this is what sorta Spectracal is doing with their version of the new S3. But the cheap probes are throw away probes.

Athanasios

[sanlyn]