Calibrating an HDTV is a simple process, but few users bother to do it. Our handy guide walks you through manually calibrating with a test disc, but there's another way, besides paying a calibration specialist, that is. Datacolor's Spyder products have helped people calibrate their monitors for years, and the company is now bringing its technology to HDTVs with the Spyder4TV HD. This $129.99 (direct) kit includes everything you need to calibrate your HDTV's contrast, brightness, color temperature, color saturation, and tint with test discs and PC software.

A Spyder puck scans the HDTV as you go through the process, making sure the adjustments are accurate. It doesn't support advanced controls, so you can't get the precise calibrations a trained professional can, but it streamlines the process and can help improve your HDTV picture with only 20 minutes of work. It's similar to the original SpyderTV we reviewed in 2006, and uses the same concept to calibrate HDTVs. It can work with standard-definition TVs and computer displays, but for PC monitors you'll need a separate computer to run the software (or be able to output your Blu-ray or DVD player to the monitor while using another display for the software).

Design and What's Included
The Spyder4TV HD's  black triangular puck design is very similar to the other Spyders used for calibrating monitors, with a very long USB cable that connects to a computer. The puck itself has no controls, and is run entirely through a computer (Windows or Mac). To attach it to your HDTV, a plastic sling with several bungee cord loops affixes to the corners of the screen. I hooked the Spyder4TV HD up to a Sony KDL-46EX620 ($809.99, 3.5 stars) easily thanks to the very flexible loops and the sliding plastic clips that let it fit securely to the screen. Since the sling is separate from the puck, I could center it on the HDTV without worrying about the long USB cable. It was slightly awkward hooking the smaller elastic loops to the puck after I centered the sled, but after that it stayed on securely through the calibration process.

You get four discs in the box: A software disc, a Blu-ray disc, an NTSC DVD, and a PAL DVD. The NTSC DVD is for American DVD players and the PAL DVD is for European DVD players, but they all have the same simple test patterns. The patterns aren't nearly as varied or useful as the DisplayMate test patterns we use to test HDTVs, but they show enough to let the Spyder4TV HD do its work.

Calibration
The calibration process takes about 20 minutes, and while it's tedious, it's also extremely straightforward. The PC or Mac software walks you through listing your HDTV's settings and how far they can go, then walks you through contrast, brightness, color temperature, color saturation, and tint. The Spyder takes a baseline measurement of each setting, then directs you to adjust it up or down until it determines the best value. To its credit, the Spyder4TV HD led me to about the same levels I used for the Sony HDTV when calibrating it earlier with the DisplayMate test patterns. Once you're done calibrating, the software can save a log of the adjustments you've made so you can see how far from the default settings they are. The log includes test graphs, but the graphs have no values besides the settings, so they don't actually show any empirical information about how much the picture has improved. The test discs include several images for analyzing the screen visually, and the software has several tips to tell if the picture is still too light, too dark, or too saturated.

If you're hoping for extensive calibration that will get your HDTV to match ISF standards, the Spyder4TV HD will disappoint you. It walks you through basic color temperature, saturation, and tint adjustments, but you won't get guidance for any advanced color settings, like the six individual channel adjustments found on Sharp HDTVs, for example. Considering it's a $130 consumer calibration puck, and not a $15,000 chromameter run by a trained HDTV calibrator who spends four hours adjusting your screen, that's understandable. 

Spyder4TV HD streamlines HDTV calibration and produced very good results for what it does, but if you don't have a notebook computer or can't move your PC next to your HDTV, calibration will be an awkward process. It doesn't support more advanced color adjustments, but if you want to bring out the best shadows and highlights on your screen and make your colors generally accurate, it's a functional device. It's more precise than eyeballing adjustments while just using a calibration disc, but it's also much more expensive.

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