curtgottler

Is it possible to damage a CRT HDTV by turning up the sharpness and/or
picture brightness too high? What are acceptable levels?

tom d

Contrast (while level) is the biggest culprit. The default setting
on many TVs is sometimes all the way up, while ideal levels are
often 50 or less. Brightness is really black level, so setting it
too high at worst will probably just look bad.

A friend recommended that I get the Avia Guide to Home Theater:

http://www.ovationsw.com/avia.html

You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc. They have test patterns
and tutorials on how to use them. It's really great. The optimum
settings for brightness, contrast etc often are not what you'd expect.
I set my contrast according to their recommendations and it ended up
way down at 23...but guess what...the pictures noticably better...much
more accurate than it was before (this is with a CRT rear projection). I
haven't had a chance to do more than adjust the basic video settings, and
even that's made a big difference.

In any case, watch that contrast. Setting it too high is really not good
for the TV.

Tom