as a rule 100% agree pal, a £35 quid firestick chromecast would be all you need to makes a smart tv smarter.
where mine bears fruit is the external playback options built into the TV as standard. MKV playback from ext media, and a built in DNLA server allowing playback of any media shares on my network.
simple terms i've given share permissions on my PC to my download folder and have the free plex server software running from start up (plex is so fecking handy for multiple different devices). can watch anything on my big screen that way
I may be controversial in saying that I think pro calibration is a complete waste of money. Yes, you get a more accurate picture, but imho you don't get a "better" picture, in that the eyes are terrible colorimeters anyway and are in fact incapable of determining corrects hues and white balance. So the fact that your calibated TV's colours are spot on, is somewhat irrelevant.
I would agree with your advice entirely - just set up the TV yourself using some basic test patterns.
Your need to do 4 things:
1. Put the picture on a Warm setting (Warm1 or Warm2 typically). NOT normal, or god forbid cool!
2. Set the black level high enough such that you can just discern the darkest details, whilst at the same time enuring that things that should be black are as black as they can be. i.e. you don't want everything to be black with no detail.
3. Set the contrast as high as possible, but low enough so that you can determine the differences between the very brightest things on screen. i.e. you don't want everything to be pure white with no detail.
4. Adjust the backlight so that the picture is bright enough (or dark enough).
Once you've done all that, you'll have a picture that is pretty much as good to if you've had in professionally calibrated.
(Speaking as someone who's owned plasmas since 1999, now OLED and have several pro calibrations and I have my own pro colorimeter. I've come to the conclusion it isn't worth it.)
Hi Chippy_boy.
Yes, I think you are right about human eyes. We adjust very easily to whatever we receive but the point that I tried to make is that from shooting the footage to distribution to our TV then standards are met to ensure that it is exactly how the directer of the footage wanted it to be distributed. The Blu rays are mastered to these standards with the expectation that the purchaser may see this film in the same way that it was directed and produced.
Obviously if it is not important to you to see it in its original form then just play with your TV until it gives you your combination of colours, brightness, contrast etc that you like, or at least get your white not too blue (usually very blue) and adjust brightness (actually blackness) and contrast correctly.
Cannot comment about professional calibration but like yourself I have used good spectro calibrated colorimeters with various software to give me results that I have thought to be worthwhile but it all depends on how accurate it was in the first place before you adjusted it to be correct of course.
My experience is that DIY calibration was worthwhile on the panels that I bought although I must admit I never owned say a Pioneer plasma just bog standard LED´s with the usual backlight arrays.
Currently got a Hisense 4K LED which I am very impressed with.
Ah, I see so much the same as you get on a Blu Ray player or for that matter a video streamer.
obviously if you get all these already on your TV then great but usually less expensive to have them external because TV's are so slimline that there tends to be less room these days for audio speakers and video chips that can be anything other than functional to that particular TV.
I'm no expert mate, i can say that Panasonic gt50 use a app server(no local data stored) so nothing bar a few chips extra i guess would be needed.