Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: One day deal on a home theater color meter

This is topic One day deal on a home theater color meter in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=006896

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 10-05-2013, 12:22 AM:

Note: this is off a one day deal site, for Saturday OCT 5th. Although you may be able to find it later somewhere else. It is for a "Datacolor S3TV100 Spyder3 Colorimeter TV/Home Theater Color Calibration"

I thought some people might be interested in this.

Home color meter

Below are the details for this meter, although I could not get the formating to copy:

Designed for home theater system to display accurate colors, shadows and details just like the director intended
Ultimate Color Accuracy for your Home Theater - get clearly defined shadow and highlight detail
Save Energy - Calibration can save a bundle on the annual operating costs of a TV
Extended life of your television backlight and LCD tubes by adjusting your set to the the optimal (not maximum) lighting levels
State-of-the-art optical design and new 7 detector color engine provide industry- leading performance
Calibrated set will properly adjust the brightness and contrast and reduce the amount of electricity consumed by the display
Precisely calibrates all of your Plasma, RPTV, DLP, LCD, CRT TVs and Front Projectors
Scientifically determines the optimal settings for your display using the sliders that exist in the user menu of your TV

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-05-2013, 12:33 AM:

At $50 it can't be worth bothering.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 10-05-2013, 04:28 AM:

The Spider 3 will do its job. For a home environment it's ok. Better than nothing. I have an X-Rite, and now X-Rite have developed a new one which is cheaper and faster and can be pointed at the screen.

Compared to my Jeti is indeed quite accurate. They can't be calibrated and mine is a surface sensor - cannot be pointed at the screen even though I do it anyway: as I said better than nothing.
Clearly you won't pay £3000 for a colour meter for your personal screen.

Posted by Steve Moore (Member # 4753) on 10-05-2013, 06:26 AM:

I can't see how a "correctly" calibrated monitor/tv reduces electric consumption? Possibly with a CRT if the guns are being driven less hard, but thats hardly a selling point [Smile]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-05-2013, 09:14 AM:

And just what makes this meter's reading worth their numbers? The good meters cost $8000 and up because their numbers are accurate and actually have meaning...in fact, they are only good for a year.

I've shot different color meters at the same screen and when both are calibrated, the numbers agree within specification. "Cheap" meters are notoriously inaccurate. The same goes for luminance meters.

If you want a "cheap" meter...why not use your phone to take a picture of your theatre's screen after it is calibrated and be sure to load the REC 709 color space so it is right for the "HDTV" color space. Then use that as your target at home? You are only trying to hit either the white color or possibly to go for all three colors and white.

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 10-05-2013, 02:46 PM:

Steve, I think you missed the fact that this is a meter for home use. Not for cinema. And I wouldn't even imagine someone who installs home systems for a living would even want to use this meter. For that price, I would imagine it is more useful as a hobby meter.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-05-2013, 04:14 PM:

I didn't miss the point...my point is when it comes to color calibration...using a cheap meter is no better than using nothing. It is $50 wasted. So it gives you numbers...what good is it if those numbers have no meaning?

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 10-05-2013, 06:08 PM:

Steve, the Spider 3 is a good meter. It's slow and not designed to be aimed at a projection screen, but I wouldn't say that it's no better than using nothing. The final result won't be 100% accurate, but you know how off can commercial TVs and PRJs be out of the box.
Maybe you'll end up with 6300K rather than 6500K, but it's much better than the standard 9200K!
XRite have released a better meter at a very good price, I guess it's one of the reasons why the price is so low.

My old XRite Display 2 does not give random numbers, I have compared it with my JETI and the readings are all consistent.

Posted by Joe Elliott (Member # 4006) on 10-05-2013, 09:48 PM:

Sorry Steve, I misread your post. Reading it again, I realized that.