Blu-Rays and Color Management

[fike]

I know this is a bit off topic here, but I haven't found anywhere where this is discussed (even AVS forums). 

I recently assembled a HTPC (home theater PC) for running movies, slide shows, and streaming video from netflix.  It is attached to a 47" Samsung LCD television that has adequate quality (if not stellar compared to a computer LCD).  I've had two problems getting things to look right--one has been resolved the other not resolved.

First, photographs are very crunchy when displayed on a television display. I fixed this by turning the sharpness down to 20 (on a scale of 100) in the Samsung menus appearing on the television.
Second, and this is the real head-scratcher, I am finding that Blu-Rays don't respect the display profile and color calibration of the operating system.  I have causally calibrated the display to enable me to show slide shows of photos and to retain acceptable levels of fidelity to my computer display. It works pretty well.  BUT, Blu-Ray video looks terrible.  The blacks are muddy and washed out.  The highlights are also muddy and gray.  I hacked a workable (albeit temporary) solution with some very crude modification of the television controls like contrast and backlight, but this means I need two different television configurations, one for the PC apps and one for Blu-Rays played on the PC.  All I can conclude is that the Blu-Ray digital rights management software doesn't allow the image to be processed by the operating system and forces itself to play-out directly to the video interface, bypassing the color calibration.The results are bad.

I was originally using Corel WinDVD software. I tried Cyberlink PowerDVD and it is a little bit better, but not really very good. I am amazed at the difference between software applications on a format (Blu-Ray) that is supposed to be a high fidelity "digital" (whatever that means anymore) media. 

(Before anyone asks, Windows 7, nVidia Video card, HDMI interface, Intel i3, and my keyboard is from Logitech haha)

Does anyone have any suggestions about what I might try to get this all aligned?

[aaronchan]

As long as I know, most people calibrate their TV display within service mode rather than using an ICC profile. I'm not sure why but this is how I do it. I used to use the i1pro with some other software to cal the my projectors (including a barco crt) within the menu mode ( or service mode) by tweaking the RGB values.

aaron

[fike]

Yes, that's how I started. I actually then just used the Win7 little calibration wizard. I was mostly concerned with brightness calibration and less concerned about color fidelity. 

[tho_mas]

TVs display luminance levels in the range of 16-235 (8bit values) as opposed to 0-255 on computers. This is also true for current TFT & Plasma screens (by default).
TV leveles are also called "studio swing" whereas computer levels are called "full swing".
There must be some setting on your TV screen to run the display in either "full" or "tv" levels (or "full" and "studio" levels ... or whatever the naming is on your hardware).
Although a Blu-ray should be "studio swing" a PC typically expands the luminance range to "full swing" - therefore the TV screen should be set to display the full range of luminance levels when the signal is coming off a computer. The problem is: the naming of the settings may be confusing and depending on the hardware & software used to playback movies strange things may happen. But normally it all comes down to the difference of TV and computer levels and a certain setting in either the hardware or the software will do the trick...


edit: this may help - http://www.belle-nuit.com/test-chart

[AFairley]

Can you try hardware-setting your TV to what you need for the videos to look good, and then use a profiler like Spyder, EyeOne, etc. to set an ICC software-only monitor profile that will look good for the photos since it appears that the Blu-Ray players ignore ICC profiles?  I don't know if this would actually work, I have given up trying to look at photos seriously on the HTPC since the darks look so washed out when the TV is set up for pleasing video playbac

[fike]

Can you try hardware-setting your TV to what you need for the videos to look good, and then use a profiler like Spyder, EyeOne, etc. to set an ICC software-only monitor profile that will look good for the photos since it appears that the Blu-Ray players ignore ICC profiles?  I don't know if this would actually work, I have given up trying to look at photos seriously on the HTPC since the darks look so washed out when the TV is set up for pleasing video playbac

That is sort of what I tried to do, but the display needs to be set far to brightly (very hot) to be manageable with a normal ICC profile. It's like the Blu-Ray software assumes everyone wants their display to look like it is in demo mode at the store.