Some TV calibration services a total ripoff

Be careful who you hire to come set up and "calibrate" your new TV: You might be getting ripped off by a dodgy organization and a technician that has no idea what he's doing.

That's the accusation of one frustrated Circuit City employee, who sent a letter to Consumerist outlining his experiences as a technician employed to calibrate televisions purchased from Circuit City stores (a service for which buyers pay extra). His letter, in part, says that he was told to wear blue-tinted, cardboard glasses, pop a test-pattern DVD into the DVD player, and make a few "make believe" changes to the brightness, tint, and contrast settings on the TV. The key seems to be this final word of advice from his boss: "When you're done, tell them how much better their TV looks." Someone really understands the power of suggestion. Very clever, but very evil.

Check out the link below for his full diatribe against the operation.

I'll stop short of saying that all TV calibrations are a scam. If you're wholly confused by cabling, different audio format types, and the differences between progressive and interlaced, a professional home theater installer and calibrator is probably a good idea.

But reasonably competent techies can get by with any of the retail calibration DVDs on the market. I've had good luck with The Ultimate DVD - Home Theater Fine Tuning Made Simple, but many of the DVDs like this are very similar and any should work fine. If you can manage your way around the setup menu on your TV, calibration with a DVD is a snap. The results typically show a modest improvement, worth the $15 for the disc and the 10 or 20 minutes it takes to run through the settings. Don't expect the world... but more importantly, don't pay out the nose for someone who doesn't know what he's doing!

LINK: Insiders: Circuit City's In-House TV Calibration Is A Total Scam