From time to time I get emails from people that love me, hate me, or just want to correct me. This time, I got an Email (one of many) wanting me to be more specific about Grayscale and Color Temperature on the podcast. Since I’m not going to do that (I think Dina’s snoring would cut into everyone’s enjoyment) I’m going to let one of you. Kenny’s email was the most thorough and he agreed to let me reprint it here.

Tom,

First and foremost, let me say that I love the podcast. You feed my need for sarcasm and make me appreciate that I am not the only person who has a hard time handling stupidity. Now on to other things. In recent podcasts, you have mentioned 6500K as the basis for proper color temperature for a calibrated TV and that most people perceive this as dark. That is only partly correct. The way that our eyes work, we are least sensitive to blue. Therefore manufacturers push more blue to make things seem brighter to us. Pushing more blue is more importantly done to offset any green tint that would be cast on the TV if it were displayed under fluorescent lighting.

Because we are most sensitive to green, we would spot that green error right away and think the picture looked horrible. As an example, pictures taken in an office environment and the way they make everyone look pale and sick. Those TVs would look very much like that. Knowing that would not sell TVs, manufacturers purposely offset the green tint with a higher color temperature. When a TV is put in Movie or Theater mode, the backlight is also reduced to limit overall light output or luminance. In some of your explanations, I think you are confusing luminance and color temperature. I know that you may be trying to simplify things for the listeners, but you may in fact be adding to the confusion.

I say this because I am an ISF certified calibrator and your explanations somewhat conflict with a proper explanation. Many tricks are used to make an image seem brighter so that a TV is more likely to sell. Over driving contrast, using too high a color temperature, cranking up the backlight, etc, are just some of them. Improperly set up TVs sell better because most people do not know what a proper picture should look like. They have been trained by the market for years to accept an inferior picture as what they should have in their home. This is why those same people marvel at the theater experience. If only they knew that their TV could look very similar. It all comes down to training so thank you for trying to do that. The main reason that LED based TVs are so bright is because of the extremely high color temperatures that they default to, and the over saturation of color.
Manufacturers want them to look the most vibrant of any of the technologies because the untrained consumer will flock to it like a moth to a flame. Once calibrated, these sets look just as good as any other.

By calibration, I do mean a full ISF calibration that properly sets the white balance as many of these sets track at about 12,000 to 14,000K.

Overall you have done an excellent job of keeping us informed and up to date, and I thank you. I just wanted to tweak a little bit to make it more accurate and still keep it simple.

Keep up the good work.

Kenny

Thanks Kenny for your extremely well thought out response.

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