Chris Henley is a fun and energetic representative of Microsoft. He works on the Developer Platform Evangelist team at Microsoft as an IT Professional Evangelist in the western region and is the co-author of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference from Sybex press. Chris is a regular speaker and presenter at user groups, Technet events, and major conferences around the US.
He has extensive experience in the world of computer networks. He is passionate about the way that technology helps people. He has an entertaining and insightful style of communicating technical information and of making difficult concepts easy to understand. He is an expert in server architecture and network design. He loves to push the envelope of what we think about computers, and what software can do. Chris spends his spare time playing XBOX360 with his wife and kids, fly fishing, camping, hiking, and searching for the best chocolate cake on planet earth.
I like to watch DVD’s on my laptop! I can’t possibly work all of the time, and so when I need a break a good DVD is often the way to go. I was watching a DVD on a recent flight when the man sitting next to me asked where I got a laptop with such an amazing picture quality. I smiled because it is really just a standard Lenovo W510. I did however do some additional work to the display with a free tool that comes with Windows 7 which relatively few seem to know or care about.
The tool is called the Display Color Calibration Wizard, or DCCW for short. You can run this tool by going to the pearl (new lingo for the start button) and typing DCCW in the search box. Start the DCCW tool and we are under way. I will walk you through the process lest you think it is difficult or somehow otherwise prohibitive and then you too can watch your own DVD’s on a display that you have taken the opportunity to customize to your liking.
First you will see the splash screen for the tool indicating that you should move the window onto the display that you are going to calibrate. Not rocket science so far.
Go ahead and click NEXT
The screen indicates that if you display has a menu option that will allow the setting to be returned to factory defaults please do so now. If you don’t have a menu option for this (Like say on most laptops) just go ahead and click NEXT
Now we are going to work on the Gamma Adjustment for the display. If you are wondering what you are going for there is an example of the desired outcome on the center of the screen along with 2 examples of what not to do. Click Next
Here is what the initial gamma settings looked like on my laptop. Looks Like they might be a little too low.
Use the slider to set the gamma to match the desired standard. Here is what mine looks like now.
Its not perfect but if I go too high it swings the other direction quite rapidly.
Click Next
Brightness and contrast settings are you personal preferences and can be set accordingly. Click Next
Again they give you a sample of appropriate brightness.
Click Next.
Use the image provided to accurately set the brightness.
On to the Contrast Adjustment. Here again we get the 3 samples.
Use the image to adjust the contrast to your desired setting. Click Next.
The next item of adjustment is the color balance. Again we get some good samples for the right settings.
Click next.
Now we have the opportunity to use sliders for Red, Green, and Blue. Remember we are shooting for bland shades of gray. No color.
When you are finished click Next.
You can see that you have created a new calibration. You can click the buttons on the screen to compare the current settings to the previous ones. If you like the new settings save them by clicking Finish.
You will also notice that there is another tool that is checked to run by default when we are finished with the calibration called the Clear Type Text Tuner. More on that tool later.
Enjoy your amazing quality video! Remember you can come back and adjust the settings any time you would like by simply running the DCCW again.