Thanks Dan! It is honestly reassuring coming from yourself that absolute perfection won’t yield a huge deal of improvement. A lot of the fun of owning a pro monitor is in the upkeep and calibration but this was out of necessity and while it was laborious, I have no regrets. I couldn’t have achieved any of this if it weren’t for your very in depth videos on colour theory and HCFR. I learned quiet a bit from them and have a greater appreciation for those can get theirs dialled in to perfection

Thanks for the recommendation. I watched your calibration video as well, great job

The X-Rite ColorMunki always gets highly recommended but a little too much for my purposes. The Spyder2 isn’t very consistent in my experience but was really good enough. I’ll hopefully have a video out dedicated to downscaling in the coming months but will be more focussed on downscaling to 15KHz

@@MarcoRetro316 that would be cool, I’d be interested to see what you are running in more detail. My setup is all component, I use a gcomp 8:2 component switch for my native component consoles. I use also an hdfury x4 which outputs in component to downscale/convert HDMI consoles and my computer to 720p.

Thanks and very helpful advice

@@MarcoRetro316 if you ever want to go hard in the paint, let me know. I've calibrated over a dozen L5s. One more thing about ColorHCFR. The NTSC/Rec601 preset colorspace is wrong. You need to use Custom Color Space and plug the real SMPTE-C primary coordinates in manually.

@@khmr33 thanks for your help and it’s very much appreciated, I may revisit in the future once I’ve done the downscaling series. I’ve seen discussion about using (?)coordinates from the monitors manual and they differ depending on the monitors region, is this what you’re referring to?

I’m fairly certain this is incorrect but I didn’t set brightness and contrast through HCFR, I instead just used a pluge test pattern and got the feeling of where I wanted it to be. I remember reading that you should adjust the brightness to a certain ‘nit’ value as stated in the monitors service manual prior to calibrating the grey scale. The Retro Tech USA discord for patreon members is the absolute best place to ask about colour calibration, there’s some real smart cookies that are very helpful. For the L series, you display a resolution (480i as an example) and then go to the service menu and adjust each RGB gain and bias value and save the settings. Then when you display a different resolution, going back to the service menu shows different RGB gain and bias numbers. So the 20L5 saves its own values per resolution but the user can’t access those profiles freely until you display that res. Within each res there’s 2 predefined colour temps called D65 and D95, as well as USER. You can adjust all 3 per resolution but I just adjusted the USER temp and left the others as they were from the factory reset. Hope that somewhat helps

@@MarcoRetro316 Was actually in the process of asking the discord while you replied, I think BVMs should behave in the same way as the 20L5, ill check if the bias / gain numbers match up when i edit different resolutions, thanks :)

Thanks! Unfortunately no VGA monitors in my party of CRT’s atm

The standard 20F1 can self calibrate, the D20 also might be able to. You could try to find ‘SMPTE’ in preset adjust, channel set, Auto. You’d need to display colour bars with the 240p test suite while selecting the option if it’s there

Some people can eyeball-calibrate but definitely not me. In essence, my red picture was fixed by slightly driving down the red, plummeting the blue gain and then compensating by increasing the red and blue bias. It could be doable with a 240p test-suite colour bar pattern assuming it’s not the flyback’s screen potentiometer that’s dialled too high

That’s great you’ve got the same scaler, they’re super handy! Even with interlacing 1080i and it being a lower bandwidth horizontal frequency than 720p, I can only take a very general guess that the scaler will have an easier time downscaling from 1080p to 1080i rather than 720p. In the widescreen video, I showed that I run my HDMI-capable consoles to a matrix switcher so I can play on the projector or on the CRT. I prefer to feed the projector it’s native 1080p resolution to negate lag as it still runs through an AV amplifier, so it’s more of a convenience than anything for me to run at 1080p from the console and output 1080i using the scaler to the 20L5. I’d love to properly lag test the scaler but a time sleuth is expensive. I only really measured lag on the scaler from the WiiU 1080p down to 480i using the 240p test suite ‘reflex test’ which isn’t so scientific but for what it’s worth I got about 1 frame of lag. You’re right though that those games on PS3 and 360 run internally at 720p and upscale to 1080p. If I didn’t have the projector and only play HD consoles on the 20L5 I’d personally go with 720p

@@MarcoRetro316 Thank you for taking your time to give me an in-depth and detailed reply, buddy. Yes, the Time Sleuth is expensive, but what gets me is that it's been out of stock every time I had money to get it, so I just gave up on it. Here's my application for that scaler, that I'm thinking about: I want to play modern games on my channel sometimes. However, my BVM "only" goes up to 720p. In this case, I will ignore 1080i, just because of how interlacing shows on camera, I don't like it). However, with my recent videos, I also record capture footage simultaneously. I would like that to be in 1080p when available (Xbox One/PS4 onwards), and not 720p. I can't split the signal, as the BVM needs 720p. So here's the plan: console set to 1080p, going to an HDMI splitter. HDMI 1 goes to the Elgato for recording, no problem there. HDMI 2 goes to that downscaler there that we have, and converts 1080p to 720p, so that I can also play it on my CRT. Little lag is fine, if consistent. Then bingo, I can record both, theoretically, just like I did with other videos, without sacrificing the capture quality by making it 720p. Any reason you think this wouldn't work? I was initially going to buy one of those up down cross converters, then I remembered I had this scaler lying around!

That sounds like a perfect scenario to use the scaler. I’d play a game you’re familiar with and see how it feels. Gears of War is a good tester. There’s a reloading mechanic where if you press the right bumper at the right time during reload it not only reloads faster but deals out more damage. I used that as my reflex test for lag and it didn’t have any detriment to quick reload

@@MarcoRetro316 That is good news, thank you for confirming it! I will test it as soon as possible then. I never played Gears of War, to be honest, but I do know just the game to test lag that I'm familiar with, Hollow Knight. If there's lag there, I'll know. Super Mario World is the game I often use to test lag, but I don't have that game in 1080p here. Anyway, I appreciate your help, so glad I watched your video and got to learn all this, instead of spending money I don't have on other stuff.

I had to have the Spyder software install disc inserted prior to running the oemnist tool for it to work

I’ve lent the probe to a friend for now but where would that option be in HCFR?

I used twist ties haha. The screws for this fan were a little wider than the ventilation holes on the PVM and I didn’t want to deface the case. Good luck on your hunt finding a PVM. The 20L5’s are very versatile

Thanks Marco! Once I have the cash saved up to afford one & if the 20L5 I receive ends up being top notch in terms of Geometry, Convergence, Color & Sharpness, you bet I’m gonna enjoy that monitor to it’s fullest! Especially with the other resolutions it supports! And of course, I’ll install a fan inside the monitor to help keep it going longer. But that also means I’ll have to equip some heavy duty rubber tipped anti-static gloves to make sure I do not ground myself. Here’s hoping everything goes according to plan & that my PVM dreams will be realized & fulfilled!

I’d take Dan Mons aka StickFreakz advice and use whatever cheap colorimeter you can get your hands on that’ll work on a CRT. I don’t regret using this cheap device and it got me close enough to correct the colours. There’s definitely better hardware but it depends on your goals. If you love tinkering then a more expensive colorimeter to hone in the delta e values might be time and money well spent. I doubt you’d tell the finer points of the added accuracy though, otherwise stick to something cheap to get the job done, do it once and never worry about it again.

The video output from the PC needs to be downscaled to 15KHz to display the colour patterns on the PVM. There’s several ways to do this and you want to go with the method that’ll least mess with the colours. Some PC’s can output 240p with the correct video card but I’ve never gone down this path. I used an external downscaler instead to downscale the 720p image to 480i component or RGBs

@@MarcoRetro316 I play snes and playstation on RGB, would Portta component to hdmi converter on amazon work fine ? i cant something similar to what you have in video and im in canada. If I calibrate using component to the hdmi converter wouldn’t it produce a different result compared If use an rgb cable to converter ? Thanks

If the PC can’t output 15KHz then you need a scaler, specifically a scaler that can downscale to 480i. You’re correct about colour space conversion and you’d ideally want something that can downscale and output RGB. I haven’t tried this product but I’ve looked at the Aten VC812 HDMI to VGA scaler. It’s listed in the specs that it’ll output 480i RGB via VGA so you just need to combine the HV sync to produce RGBs. I’d be looking into that or similar product like an Extron VSC if you can find one cheap

@@MarcoRetro316 sounds like so much work, i don’t even want to deal with windows vista or xp on a old computer and I doubt anyone who says that they can calibrate monitors by just eyeing it lol anyways love the content btw 👍

@@porter3433maybe it could’ve ran in a later Windows but I’d already put in several hours trying to get past the driver issue by then, so the old laptop with Vista was a godsend. I’m certainly guilty of sinking more hours into calibration and fixing than playing games these days, and if you’re not learning or enjoying yourself in the process and it’s a chore, refocus back to what brings you enjoyment. Thanks for watching!

The issue was the PVM itself that had poor white balance from the previous owner not any of the consoles

Thanks for the tip! It was a very novice approach and I now know the Spyder 2 colorimeter is not a highly recommended probe because of its organic sensor. Eh, it was better than nothing but I’ve since used a ColorMunki and a reliable scaler. Now I’ve got fairly uniform Delta E’s. I followed Lex Locatelli’s guide, was super helpful