[Help] Which calibration probe to choose?

[Beber]

Hey, guys.
Having an LCD for monitor and an OLED for TV, videos look quite different, so I'm considering buying a calibration probe so that both would look okay. How did you guys calibrate your PC monitors and TVs? Did you use a calibration probe and, if so, which one? I've been scrolling on this site (in French: https://www.guide-gestion-des-couleurs.c...metre.html), and I'm confused. Is there a difference between a PC monitor and a TV calibrationwise or do these probes work for both? I understand that these come with a calibration software, so a PC would have to be connected to the TV, which is okay for me.

[spoRv]

Before spending some money, I'd first try calibration "by eye"; sure, it will never be perfect, but if you have good color vision, and a lot of patience, result could be quite nice!

Hint: even with the same settings, different "modes" on TV will lead to quite different colors; so, first of all make your homework, and discover which are the default setting to start with!

After that, if you are not satisfied yet, I'd say to go with Spider5 - it seems better, IIRC.

[Beber]

I've went the "by eye" way a long time ago, using THX Optimizer and other tests like that which are sometimes on Blu-ray discs, such as old Studio Canal or Gaumont, plus some messageboard comments from people that bought the same TV as mine, had them calibrated and shared some of the settings. It's not so much my TV as it is my monitor I'd like to calibrate for color correction. 'Cause as of right now, when I'm playing with Resolve, the result is quite different on the quite cheap LCD monitor I'm working on and what it looks like on my quite good OLED TV. Plus when we comment on the color corrections here, it's rather moot if we don't see the same thing.

[spoRv]

THX Optimizer is a quite "light" optimizer!

I'd go with better ones - by memory, AVS HD 709 was quite nice IIRC, and free; there are many others around, I'd take a try to some.

Still, it will be quite difficult to get exactly the same colors on both OLED TV and LED (which kind?) monitor, even using a probe - at least, it's what I guess, as they are inherent different technology.

That's why I have decided to buy a FALD LED and use it both as monitor and TV - hey, I can't be wrong, WYSIWYG!

[deleted user]

The good ones afair have a sensor that can actually measure the spectrum while others just basically have a kind of normal RGB sensor. I have one of the cheap ones and was happy with it. You can particularly tell the difference when you have two displays on your computer from different manufacturers. It's quite impossible getting them to match up otherwise.

About default modes you don't have to worry because it will always simply measure in the current mode, so you just have to stay in the same mode as during calibration to keep it calibrated. Obviously you want to deactivate any auto-contrast features, if you have any. You can also calibrate to a brightness of your desire if you use a decent software, to make displays match up even better, for example when one is inherently brighter than the other.

I'm not sure about TV calibration specifically, but if you're using your TV attached to your PC I'm relatively sure you can use a normal PC calibration probe, as it simply generates an ICC profile that Windows then uses for that display. If on the other hand you want to match up TV + Blu Ray player with, say, a computer, then I can't really help and wouldn't know where to begin, but I would wager that you possibly might need a different calibration software/hardware, as a normal TV calibration might require the probe to be compatible with the TV or supported by it. But as said, if you're doing TV attached to PC - deactivate all automatisms and image "improvements" or that may interfere.

With all this said, I haven't bothered calibrating anything for over a year. What I do is just not critical enough to justify it and when it's viewed on someone's home display somewhere it's gonna look a lot different every time anyway so I mostly don't care.