The "guide" on Rtings has very specific settings. You can't use the settings from one TV and expect to get the exact same results on another, especially when factoring varying lighting levels (unless both are in completely dark rooms). The only truly useful guides without external hardware are those that make the simplest adjustments e.g. picture mode, contrast, brightness, backlight, gamma and color temperature. But those are still only useful when explaining the methodology, not the settings they ended up with. If he tried applying the IRE settings that Rtings used, it's no wonder the picture turned out bad. You'd have to be extremely lucky to get a set that ended up almost exactly the same as another.
There's no "properly" calibrated TVs without external hardware. When only the most basic functions are used, that's not really calibration. It's part of one, and getting your TV to look better than it does out of the box. That being said, one that has been properly calibrated beyond the basic controls isn't going to give you this night and day, "3D look" that was claimed in this thread. It's going to look better, but not mind-blowingly so compared to what you can do on your own. If you've already paid $3000+ on a TV and don't want to spend the extra time and money on how to truly calibrate it yourself, another $300 - $500 is probably worth it depending on how long it would take a calibrator to finally arrive.
This, a million times this. As someone who does paid calibrations jobs off and on for the past 6 years going on 7 years, paid, and calibrating 3 years prior to starting to take paid jobs and spending thousands on meters, pattern generators (most recently a Videoforge Pro which is soo good), software, service remotes, etc and just a straight time investment of learning various techniques and ways to circumvent displays controls due to issues with various controls or color decoding issues, nothing bugs me more than someone saying they calibrated their display when all they did was copy settings.
Most people do not realize that the same display can vary as much as 20% in it's grayscale and color decoding. When the EF9500 came out I did 3 basically back to back and the difference in settings was huge. Another example 2 co workers got a KS8000, I calibrated one of theirs, the other opted not to have it done. Came back saying the picture was worse then a 300 dollar Vizio, the one who I calibrated went over to his place, said it looks like shit. surprise surprise he copied settings from some site. I came over ad fixed it. Now he can't stop raving about how much he loves his display.
I think what gets me most about it is that one it kind of discredits people that do ISF calibration, also it gives a bad representation of calibration if it makes the picture worse, and also makes a great display look bad which hurts peoples opinion of said display and the brand, because for whatever reason people don't shop models they shop brand.
With all that said for minimal investment someone can get a cheap meter, a basic version of calman, chromapure, lightspace, and if they are willing to learn do it themselves. would cost just about the same as having someone come out and do it. Or just pay to have someone do it.
