[ISF][MICHAEL
TLV][TOURS]
Denver 2001
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Denver Tour Wrap Up
I got home to Calgary on the 24th of October and with little notice, the
next day I walked into my day job office and promptly submitted my resignation with but a
couple of days notice. It would not have mattered what management would have said since I
knew I was off to Denver in just two days and nothing was going to stop that.
So for a brief period, I was both employed and yet unemployed although rather carefree
in the thinking. I just did not have very much time at home between trips and as I told
many on the tour, these trips are great, but in the end, I leave your home and you get to
enjoy the fruits of my labour. Unfortunately for myself, I also have my toys at home and I
do not get to enjoy them while I remain on the road. I miss my toys … but don’t
feel sorry for me because I know exactly what I am doing and the trade-offs that I have to
make.
Flying out on a Saturday morning, I got a bonus when I met a friend that I dance with
at ballroom dancing and she worked at the United Airline counter. She bumped me to first
class on the trip down. The first time I have ever sat in that area on a plane … and
boy, were the flight attendants bothersome or what? I could not have a moment’s peace
before they were asking me if I wanted something else to eat or drink. I appreciate their
efforts though, but I just wanted to sit back and catch up on a few Anime titles that I
did not have time to watch at home. I really appreciate the portable DVD players here.
They always last the entire length of the flight and then all the waiting time at the
airport as well.
Arriving in the mid to late afternoon in Denver. Very large airport, but oh so empty
(understandably so). This place looks like a shopping mall. I rented a Subaru Forrester
this time just to see how this type of car handles. Big mistake, and yuck to boot. No
power at all and the altitude just played havoc on the car’s mileage. I had to do a
lot of climbing here.
The Host’s home (Ernie) was located in Golden, just west of Denver and the home
was at some 7,400 ft in altitude. This would definitely have an affect on me during the
week to come. Up and down and the ears took so long to recover each time. The last time I
was here was some 18 months previous when I drove down to here from Calgary to attend the
ISF seminar. I did not get to see too much of the city that time, but I really got around
this time and learned to appreciate the fairly logical layout of the roadway system. (This
coming from a Traffic Engineer too.) Although I am driving around outside of the peak rush
hours so the perspective is somewhat different.
All told, I ended up working on some 14 units on this trip. The first one at
Ernie’s home was the Mitsubishi 46807 unit. Over the course of the week, I would also
calibrate his older 32" Sony and a commercial grade 10" Sony portable monitor.
Having come from the moderate heat of LA, I was preparing for something much cooler and
I over packed with too many winter clothes. It was a heat wave of sorts in Denver all
week.
Sunday
Next up was another Mitsubishi set … a 55" one this time. Problems arose as
the home was too well lit by daylight so I had to crawl under the sheets yet one more time
to get things right. The protective screen had already been taken off the TV so things
were already better than purely out of the box. There was one big issue with the screen
though … there was a lot of gunk on the bottom part of the screen. Apparently it had
gotten there as a result of the wife painting the ledge above the wall space where the TV
was kept. Some paint had dripped on the lenticular screen and some kind of solvent or
soapy material was used to try to remove it. I cringe to think of that. Of course, we all
know now that the Lenticular screen is terribly fragile and to never clean it with
anything except water and maybe watered down dish washing soap.
The second unit on this day was the venerable Toshiba 56X81. Always dependable in its
performance with no surprises. Tweaked out very nicely and the access to the design menu
is always welcome. Both the HD and the SD sections were calibrated here, but as the client
would find out later on, even HDTV broadcasts themselves are so uneven and erratic in
nature that a properly calibrated HD section might still yield some odd looking images.
No surprises here. The HD stuff "sometimes" had a purple quality to it in the
black area. Completely absent from the test pattern generator, but occasionally showing up
on material. Not to mention that some times the material is too bright and sometimes it is
too dark.
Monday
The next day, it was an all day affair at one person’s home. This client had both
a 46" Mits and an AMPRO 4600 unit in his main theatre room downstairs. The Mits was
sitting up on a makeshift table and actually angled downward toward the viewer. The AMPRO
was very neat to calibrate as we went through the entire set up procedures from focusing
to geometry to grayscale. The client knew the service menus much better than I and so he
rode shotgun as I shouted out changes. A lot of fun for this day and it finished up with
some disappointing results in the area of HDTV resolution. The set was supposed to be able
to display 2500 x 2000 with its 9" crt’s but when the HD generator was turned
on, it was apparent that even the 1920x1080 signal could not be fully displayed as well.
He was probably getting 1400 to 1500 lines and nothing more.
Tuesday
An interesting visit on this day as the first client had Louis Carliner visit his home
in January / February to calibrate his Pioneer Elite RPTV. I got to even see how Louis
filled out his ISF report card – messy writer though. (Grin) (Which I choose not to
use as much since I would rather just send the finished graph to the client via the mail.
They see the results graphed on the laptop first though.)
So why did I have to come in if Louis has already worked on the TV? Well, the set was
serviced over the course of the year and he just wanted a double check to verify that
things were still the way they were. I touched up the grayscale a bit and added the HDTV
grayscale as well. I spent most of the time dealing with a linearlity issue that the
client had with the TV add to the fact that his convergence grid was not properly centered
even though the TV image was.
This took a long time … pretty much the whole day. And it reminded me why I hate
doing geometry. Yuck.
I finished up after 4:00 PM and then I headed for Fort Collins up north in the state.
It was some 45 minutes to get there, and it didn’t help that the map program did not
match the actual road signs so I missed my exit by two exits. Bummer. Luckily, I doubled
back, grabbed some much needed dinner and arrived no worse for wear at the client’s
home.
The set this evening was a 40H80 Toshiba so I knew it was going to be just fine. The
client mentioned geometry, but the geometry was the type that I could handle. Yes …
I was pretty much left alone all evening to work on the set and all the while, there
was scratching on the patio window behind me. The client had a huge dog … almost the
size of me … and he was outside wanting to come in. Which reminds me to mention the
words … dog hairs … they get everywhere. I left Fort Collins by 10:30 PM and
drove back to Golden.
Wednesday
This was a day of cats and dogs. The first client had two Italian Greyhounds that were
literally miniature versions of the real thing. They just kept pawing at me no doubt
because they could smell all the other animal smells on me. This day was pretty fast for
me what with a 34" Panny tube set in the day time and a 56" Panny in the
evening. And both within a mile of each other. Well, I spoke a bit too soon as the
34" Panny was quirky to say the least. This one had a service menu that looked like
no other in the panny line. As a result, it took about an hour to just figure out the
inner workings of this menu. Then the trick was to make it work properly. It seems that
the 480P signal from the DVD player put the TV into a mode where adjusting the cuts and
drivers did not work. Everything was locked down.
The first work around was to set the DVD player to 480i and then it would let me make
changes in the menu. The second work around was to hook up the HD signal generator and
then the 480P section could be adjusted. This was an interesting home because it was
shared by a few people and each person had his own separate HT gear in different rooms.
The second client was close enough so I was able to pop over to the local Best Buy to
do some sight seeing finally. Yes, my idea of sight seeing. This was Halloween after all.
But I made it over to the client’s home about an hour early and we were able to begin
a bit sooner. This was an interesting home to say the least since the client was into
woodworks. He had fashioned speaker stands out of old discarded lumber … and had also
built a coffee table from the same material. I had joked a bit about the table, but the
humor was lost since this was really the table.
The set was pretty straight forward in design and I ended up calibrating all the modes
including the 720P input as well. The TV was also paired with a Toshiba SD 2200 unit which
just wasn’t very good for a set like this.
Back to Golden … again.
Thursday
Another quick day or so it looked like it before things started. I was hitting the
south end of Denver this day. Beautiful scenery. Breath taking. But things got off to a
really slow start when I arrived at the client’s home. I rang the bell. No answer
… no one home. I called the client … at work … reminded to him that today
was the day for his session. Now I had to wait for him to send his wife home to let me in.
But all got sorted out and I got in and completed the job on his Mits 55" set. When I
was done, I let myself out the back door as there was no one left in the house.
A bit more free time between calibrations and more sight seeing.
The second client had a new Mits 65" but his pairing with a non-progressive scan
Panasonic was not the best. Still, a relatively problem free calibration. The ony snag
came at the beginning when I was unable to access the service menu due to Mits’ ever
changing access code merry-go-round. The number I had copied from the net was wrong. How
dyslexic of me. It didn’t take long to get the real codes though and I was off to the
races.
Friday
And so that was it. I had lunch with Ernie on this final day and then I headed off to
the airport. I got to sit in and watch him piece together a commercial for the Remax
people to sell them on a sponsorship of a musical tour next year. Seeing how commercials
are created from the ground up was fascinating to see although it could also bore some. So
much work goes into making these things.
Meesa going home!!!
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