05.16.2008 — Following the popularity of Vaughn Petraglia's "Whole Home Audio and Video Switching Using HDMI," CE Pro is presenting additional case studies from HDMI Licensing, LLC.

The first, written by Joel Silver, president of the Imaging Science Foundation, presents six tips for installing HDMI-based systems. -- ed.

Don't Rely on Factory Presets

We have a saying around here: give me the picture, the whole picture, and nothing but the picture. And you cannot depend on factory presets to get you the whole picture, especially when you're mixing different brands of components.

So the first thing I look for are picture quality adjustments -- not just on the TV but on my sources. I won't mention the brand, but we recently bought four advanced DVD players; same model, same reseller, same city, and each required very different adjustments for brightness and contrast.

In consumer-priced goods, this is the norm.

To address this, you need some kind of basic test-pattern disc -- a cheap but indispensable tool if you want to deliver the whole picture to your client.

For example, if black is set to PC black, you'll have a bad picture if you're watching television because the CE world defines black differently. Many devices have a switch for this: 0 vs. 7.5; "Enhanced black;" "Higher/Lower;" or "Darker/Brighter."

If your test pattern shows under-black, you know you're not getting the right picture. If you want the whole picture, don't guess; test for it -- and test both ends of the cable. It could be either device -- don't blame the cable!

Optimize Aspect Ratio

If the source is high-def, we can assume wide screen. Thankfully, with HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, that's going to be the preset -- one of the simpler things in our new world.

But our old movies come in multiple formats: widescreen, old-fashioned letterbox, and old-fashioned TV, which is going to exist for many years whether we want it or not. So the installer has to make sure that's set correctly, and understand which TV setting is proper.

The critical part of this is that we're now in a 1080p world. 1080p sources are common, and so are 1080p displays. But virtually all consumer TVs have an overscan feature, which magnifies the picture a bit to hide the ugly edges, so you're not really getting the full 1920x1080 picture.

With an NTSC source, or with many satellite and cable systems, you may just be stuck with it -- but you should never tolerate overscan when the source is HD-DVD or Blu-ray. There is no good scaling, period.

So one of the new -- and critical -- aspect ratios is the one with no overscan, whatever the manufacturer calls it. New devices coming out soon will feature a "JUST" (Justify) setting, but it's also known as point-to-point or pixel-to-pixel, and it means a full 1080p image with no scaling.

If you've pressed a button labeled "keystone," "horizontal," or "vertical," go back and unpress it. You can destroy the picture.

Invest in Test Tools

Should you own test tools? In a word, yes.

They can get expensive, but any business requires a certain level of investment. Something fairly simple called a multiburst -- a collection of vertical lines that get finer -- is a good place to start. It documents to your eye whether the pixel mapping and aspect ratios are set correctly.

You can get them on discs, you can get them in portable, battery powered generators -- but you've got to have this. As we say around here, "We get paid to know what we're doing." We don't guess, we test.