Spears & Munsil: High Definition Benchmark – Blu-ray Disc Review

September 19, 2009 – 4:29 AM - Posted by: James Segars

Tags: Calibration Disc, Don Munsil, Spears & Munsil, Stacey Spears

1080p in VC-1 on a 25gb disc
LPCM/Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD MA 5.1
are not applicable here.
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– 2009
– N/A
– N/A
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This disc uses 7.23GB for all included demonstration material and calibration/evaluation patterns.

Overall Verdict – A Superb Evaluation Disc

Buy it @ Amazon.com or Direct

— Review written by: James Segars —

The Disc Itself is created by Stacey Spears and Don Munsil of the DVD Player Benchmark fame.

Popping in the disc, you will be greeted with a pleasant, and beautifully shot introduction montage that showcases perfect HD reference material. At this point, you have two options: continue watching the lovely images, or hit the “Top Menu” button and proceed directly to the calibration/evaluation menu. Irrespective of your decision, your final destination will be the same — the disc’s main menu. From here you can access everything the disc has to offer. This is a big plus for the newcomer or weary consumer. Where other calibration discs bury patterns amidst pages and pages of options, here you need only click on one of five clearly labeled buttons and out pops every pattern/option available to you on the disc.

I really appreciate the simplicity of this menu, especially after having spent a considerable amount of time with Digital Video Essential calibration discs (on HD DVD and Blu-ray). I don’t think that they’re as atrocious as some would have you believe — at least not the HD versions, the DVD menu is unnavigable — but like most people, I’m a fan of options and calibration discs are no exception. I like to sample every calibration disc that’s out there in order to get the most out of my display, but more importantly, I want to crosscheck the discs and patterns just to make sure that there are no errors or shortcomings with the provided patterns which could throw off the calibration process. Sure, it’s unlikely that the disc’s patterns would be sub-par or messed up, but there’s also no harm in double checking if you’ve got numerous discs to reference.

Getting back to the disc though, I found the included patterns to be excellent, and organized incredibly well, making for a very speedy and efficient calibration/evaluation check. My player (BDP-S350) mated with my projector (HC-4900) has always given me some slight de-interlacing issues, and the disc confirmed that once more. However, I was able to correctly dial in the appropriate color space option for my Blu-ray player while referencing the included chroma patterns (“Chroma Multiburst” and “Chroma Zone Plate”). To be more specific, if I leave the Color Setting on “Auto” (the default option) my Blu-ray player chooses to output “YCbCr 4:2:2″, however this option yields a poor rendering of the color red, making the edges of red objects appear slightly blocky on the screen. This is no news to me — I noticed this last year when I first set up the player — but until now I hadn’t clearly seen the difference between the different colorspace options, and I wasn’t positive that I was getting the best colorspace reproduction, only the best that I could perceive. And so, I’m happy to report that this disc helped me toggle through the color settings on my blu-ray player until I arrived at the optimal setting of RGB (16-235) aka. “Limited” which is the very same my setting my eyes told me was correct many months ago.

Additionally, the “Chroma Alignment” pattern allowed me to discover the purpose of an enigmatic option in my projector, the “CTI” setting. With a scale ranging from 0-5, and no proper definition in the user manual I’ve long wondered what the significance of that option may be, and whether or not it could effect the projected image in any way. Naturally, like any curious Home Theater tweaker, I have toggled through the numbers while looking at various test patterns and films, but it was all for not. I couldn’t see a difference. Now though, with the use of the aforementioned pattern on this disc, the difference is as clear as day. As the title of the pattern suggests it has to do with chroma alignment, and by thumbing through the CTI scale, I was able to get the alignment dialed in perfectly (at around, 2). Thank you, Spears & Munsil!

Moving beyond the “Setup & Evaluation” menu, users can choose from “Source Adaptive De-interlacing” or “Edge Adaptive De-interlacing” tests to fill out the rest of their evaluation endeavor. It’s important to know that when it comes to evaluating de-interlacing performance that you either leave the player in 1080p mode in order to test its de-interlacing ablities, or you set it to 1080i so that you can evaluate the display’s de-interlacing performance. I went ahead and did both, and in the end, neither the projector or the player de-interlace flawlessly, and after weighing the evaluative pros and cons I settled on having the player de-interlace, as it did a slightly better job all around.

Next up is the “Demonstration Material” which includes the introductory montage (in case you missed it, or would like to watch it again), and the Spears & Munsil title screen, both of which are provided in all three lossless flavors (PCM, TrueHD, DTS-HD: MA). Lastly, rounding out the package of auditory demo goodies are the inclusion of three lossless promo-intros from DTS and Dolby — namely, DTS-HD: MA 5.1, DTS-HD: MA 7.1, and Catalyst 7.1. The benefit of having all of these lossless options at your fingertips is that you can toggle through each of them, making sure that your AVR or player is capable of handling/decoding/bitstreaming the respective codecs.

Lastly, you can click through the “Setup” menu — should you want to switch the disc pattern codecs, or change the pattern playback option — or get some help with the disc’s (somewhat) unique navigation controls. And of course, if you’re eager to find out exactly who did what, there is an “About” menu for that every reason.

All in all, this Blu-ray calibration/evaluation disc is extremely easy to use because it’s fast and exceedingly easy to navigate. Add to that the exceptionally helpful and explanatory onscreen help screens — pull them up whenever you need them by hitting “up” on your remote — and you’ve got one of the best evaluative starter discs around. It may not have everything you’re looking for in a calibration disc but everything included on the disc is of the utmost quality, and it’s all easily accessible.

Whether you consider yourself a novice or seasoned Home Theater veteran, a calibration disc should be in your collection. It is the definitive tool for setting up your new equipment, or tweaking your current setup, and no home theater should be without one. Do yourself a favor and pick one up. Your eyes and ears will thank you.

Video Quality on this release is 1080p in VC-1 on a BD-25 (25 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc).

While the majority of the video segments and test patterns are provided in HD, Spears & Munsil have taken it upon themselves to include the option to switch your desired program codec. Choose between: HD VC-1, SD VC-1, or SD MPEG-2. Naturally the disc will default to the HD VC-1 option, as this is a HD evaluation disc, but the option remains for anyone who would like to test how their player/display handles SD content and switching back and forth couldn’t be easier.

Audio Tracks on this release are in LPCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD: Master Audio flavors, all provided in 5.1 configurations, with a few select 7.1 demonstration materials .

Bonus Materials are not applicable.

Overall, this Blu-ray calibration/evaluation disc from Spears & Munsil has a lot to offer the home theater user, new or seasoned. The helpful full screen explanations/directions are much appreciated, and the simple, efficient menus make pattern and evaluation material selection a breeze. It might not have everything you need to get your Home Theater dialed in perfectly, but it has certain patterns that you likely won’t find anywhere else. All things considered, this disc is an excellent calibration tool and no home theater will be complete without it.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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