Avia II

List Price: $49.99 Discount Price: $19.99

Features:

• Menu provides synthesized audio & video signals designed to set up & test your home theater system
• Learn what you need for today's Hi-Def technology
• Easy-to-follow menus lead you directly to the information you want to know about

Customer Reviews:

Great Tool for Tuning Your TV [Posted on 2008-06-24]
It seems obvious once you hear about it but you spend hundreds even thousands of dollars on a new TV, who's to say when it comes out of the box the settings are the best for your environment or up to movie color standards? This DVD uses a video tutorial to walk you through your TV's color, shading, and sharpness settings and even addresses your sound system. In the advanced menu the DVD offers a large variety of advanced test patterns which are explained in the PDF found on the DVD.

Personally, when I bought my new 42" LCD TV, I thought everything looked pretty good. My friend had the old Avia disc without the color filters. I decided to buy the new one to get the color filters. After making the corrections, I didn't notice a large change until I switched back and forth. Everyone on my TV looked like they had a slight sunburn and I hadn't even noticed.

If you have bought or are considering buying a HDTV, spending $40 on this DVD is a must have as it will optimize your new TV.

Beginner explanations, good patterns [Posted on 2008-07-13]
The explanations are pretty basic/simplistic. As others have said, I could have used way more explanation on the contrast/brightness. I also have the DVE blu-ray, which has its own problems, but the explanations are much more detailed.

What brought it up to a 4 was the patterns at the end. There is a PDF which explains how to use the patterns, and they are useful. If they had a PDF that better explained the details of contrast etc., that would have brought it up even more. They say on the video that various things like links etc. are on the DVD, but I only found a PDF explanation of the extra patterns, and a glossary.

save your money [Posted on 2008-07-22]
might not be completely useless, but it's close enough. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, because I did wait long enough after buying my TV to have tweaked the settings to my satisfaction without this disc. The biggest reason I got it was to check the color accuracy, and I find their method of doing so extremely flawed. In fact, I found it useless.

You're looking through colored gels at a color test pattern with blinking squares in the center, and you really can't tell what the heck you're adjusting, or if it's getting better or worse or what. Just play a bunch of DVDs and watch a lot of broadcast channels and tweak until you get the skin tones right on most of them, it'll be better than this.

Did the job...but I expected more [Posted on 2008-07-26]
First of all I received the DVD 3 days earlier than the expected receive date. This was nice. The DVD case is cheaply made. The DVD was sliding around inside the case to the point that it scratched the disc. The colour filters are just tossed into the DVD case separated by tissue paper. The two guys narrating on the disc do a fairly good job explaining surround sound and HDTV settings. Using the HDTV calibration menu it was easy to calibrate my Plasma TV. I could tell the difference between my original settings and the calibrated settings. Calibrating my surround was just as easy. Navigating through the disc is a bit difficult. Some of the HDTV calibration test you need to repeat a couple of times. I could FF through some of the test but other test I could not FF. Between the overly casual nature of the narrators, the very plain set/stage and the script reading it appeared to me that this disk was kind of thrown together. Like I said. The disk did the job, but I expected more.

Good product. Did as advertised [Posted on 2008-07-26]
This disc was simple and easy to follow. The 2 "stars" were both informative in their directions, which were easy to follow. I haven't accessed the extra content yet, but the basic tests used will calibrate your display perfectly. This disc is good for both the inexperienced and the "pro". It's broken down into chapters, so if you need to go step-by-step you watch the entire disc. If you have prior knowledge RE: calibration you can skip right down to the tests.
All in all a great product, but if I had to say something bad about it, it could have been less expensive?

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