Product Description

The year was 1997, and the disc for videophiles was Video essentials, the ultimate home theater calibration tool of its time. Having sold over 300,000 copies in just the first few years of DVD infancy, it was time to develop the next generation. Now comes Digital Video Essentials, the most advanced program for calibrating today's televisions, including high definition, plasma, and other state-of-the-art screens and home theater systems. Created by Joe Kane and featuring the visual work of renowned cinematographer Allen Daviau (ET, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple) DVE is the one, the only, calibration program that will render all the other calibration programs obsolete.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13027 in DVD
• Brand: Joe Kane Productions
• Released on: 2003-09-09
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 6.00" h x 10.00" w x 8.00" l, 2.00 pounds
• Running time: 114 minutes

From the Back Cover
The year was 1997, and the disc for videophiles was Video essentials, the ultimate home theater calibration tool of its time. Having sold over 300,000 copies in just the first few years of DVD infancy, it was time to develop the next generation. Now comes Digital Video Essentials, the most advanced program for calibrating today's televisions, including high definition, plasma, and other state-of-the-art screens and home theater systems. Created by Joe Kane and featuring the visual work of renowned cinematographer Allen Daviau (ET, Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple) DVE is the one, the only, calibration program that will render all the other calibration programs obsolete.

Customer Reviews

DVE Manual
If people would just search around on the internet...
It took only a few minutes to find the link to the manual.
Here is a link to a 69 page manual for DVE in PDF format.
I have not read it all yet. But seems to give detailed descriptions of navigation (still not the smoothest) and
descriptions of how to use the test patterns.

http://www.videoessentials.com/docs/DVE_Consumer_NTSC.pdf

One more link I found, explains a little simpler the "basic" adjustments. It's a review from Audioholics, but talks about and shows what the test patterns should look like after adjustment.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/avhardware/DigitalVideoEssentialsDVDr2.php

There also is a page one... that talks about Audio

I wish I had read the other reviews before buying
First let me say that I consider myself to be an "intermediate audiophile". I have 4 complete A/V systems in my home (2-5.1, 1-6.1 & 1-7.1 systems). After purchasing a 65in. HDTV and running across this product on-line by chance,I figured...what the heck? Well, just got it/watched it today. The commentary part is basic stuff that most folks know. Then...you get several audio (followed by video) test tones and patterns thrown at you. I know about pink noise, white noise etc., but like several other reviews, "Where the heck are the instructions on what to do with them ? I know the basics of the audio tests, but I feel bad for anyone else who isn't "into" this stuff. What were these people thinking ? (I promptly e-mailed DVD Int'l with these same comments/questions and hope to get a response and reasonable explanation. The only review I read before buying exclaimed "easy to navigate". Like other reviewers stated....this product is terrible to navigate through.

I'm not very keen on any of the video patterns. The "gray color" card....What the heck do I do with it ??? What the heck do I do with ANY of the video test patterns ? Do I adjust my dvd player ? TV ? It really aggravates me that they leave you hanging out there with no explanation or instruction. I'm sure this disc is pure gold to a technician or professional set-up folks. However, while I would venture to say that I know about ten times more about A/V systems that most of my friends, watching this disc left me feeling like an idiot. In my e-mail to the company I even said "Just tell me I'm an idiot and completely missed a section/chapter...I can deal with that". I decided to come to this site to see what others had to say. I now see that I'm certainly not alone. I would even venture to guess that some of the "pro" review folks might be a little less than forthright when claiming how great this disc is. Either trying to stroke their own egos or they're certainly waaaay ahead of this humble soul. Maybe I'm just getting old :-). For the guy who said his Yamaha A/V system wouldn't read the supposed DTS....you need to get it checked. It is in DTS.

Well, I've always been VERY pleased with my current systems, but I'm always open to any possibilities to make them better. I did learn one thing ! I never really thought about the color of the wall behind the screen. However, my main system doesn't need/want any ambient light around or behind it so it's a moot point ! :-) I guess I'll go back and watch it a few more times. Maybe something will click.

Surprisingly Poor
The successor to the original Video Essentials was a long time coming. The new version suffers from the same flaws as the original: poor layout and access on the disc, very poor explanation in the narration, almost non-existant explanation in the liner notes, and consequently difficult-to-interpret test patterns. The narration is at times pompous and unduly technical--who is he trying to impress? I suppose that if you are already a set-up technician, none of the above matters, but I consider myself to know more about the technical side of audio and video than most consumers and had a very hard time making sense of even the basic adjustment instructions.



Just a few for instances involving the basic test patterns for adjusting brightness, contrast, color, and hue: the narration is terribly unclear as to whether proper adjustment leaves the outermost black bars on the pluge-plus-bars pattern just barely visible or not. Then, after the narration tells you that the pluge pattern is not useful for adjusting non-CRT displays such as my plasma, it does not immediately follow the pluge with an appropriate pattern for adjusting non-CRT screens, referring the user to another chapter for discussion of that. When you get to that other chapter, the explanation of how to use the ramped gray scales is amazingingly ambiguous; for one thing, the reference to the 100% points is unclear because the ramps are not labeled. Then, on the new test pattern used on DVE to adjust color and hue, there is no explanation as to which of the bars and patches are to be adjusted for color and which for hue--again a lack of on-screen labeling or narrative explanation.


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