Does Calibration Matter in Commercial Settings?

​Here at AVPro and Murideo we talk a lot about ISF calibration and how important it is when building a high performance A/V system. Display calibration is necessary to achieve two goals: 

1. Ensure that the display shows the content as intended. For example, red being the correct red instead of an orange-ish red or an oversaturated red.
2. Ensure that the viewer can see all of the details in the picture regardless of the room lighting. Nobody should miss out on shadow details when watching a dark TV show, movie, or playing a video game!

You typically hear about ISF calibration in residential environments, but what about commercial environments? How important is image accuracy when showing advertisements? How important is it to match multiple displays in the same room, to match the displays that make up a video wall, to make a commercial display comfortable to look at and easy to read?

As important as ISF calibration is to a home theater system, it is as equally important in a commercial environment. Let’s take your favorite sports bar for example. Next time you go, look around at all of the displays see if they all match. Check out the grass on the baseball field. Does it look real or radioactive? Take a look at the white jerseys. Can you see detail in the jersey or is the white totally blown out? Calibration will fix all of these problems by making all of the displays look the same.

​Next time you encounter a video wall, maybe at an airport, take a look at each panel. Especially when an advertisement pops up. Are all of the panels equal in brightness, or are some brighter or darker than others? Do they match in color, or are some white while others are a blue-ish white? Now imagine that you are a marketing executive for a brand that pays for advertising space in that airport. What would you think if you saw your brand or logo on the screens and the color of your logo was incorrect? All of these problems will be fixed with calibration since all of the displays are calibrated to the same standard.

In many cases a commercial display will be initially set up in its brightest picture mode. Not only does this ruin the image quality, but it can literally be painful to look at. That last thing someone wants after a nice dinner in a restaurant is a migraine. In one extreme case, in an airport I had to close my eyes while coming down the escalator because the LED wall is entirely too bright. Not only is this unnecessary wear and tear on the display, but it can be dangerous!
 
As important as ISF calibration is in a home theater system, it is equally and arguably more important in a commercial environment. In these cases, the goal is not only image fidelity and accuracy, but also to save the life of the displays and to keep people looking at these displays comfortable and safe. 

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​AVPro and Murideo have everything you need to offer display calibration to your clients. From pattern generators (the Murideo SIX G and VideoForge PRO) to meters and software including CalMAN we have you covered. Not only does AVPro offer the tools you need, we also work hand in hand with the Imaging Science Foundation to put on the best training in the industry. Have questions on how to get started or want to attend an ISF class? Give us a call at 877-886-5112 or visit avpro.training/isf for more information! 

The Murideo SIX G Generator

The Portrait Displays VideoForge PRO and C6 Colorimeter