Qdeo Blu-ray test disc promises more nits to pick and adjustments to obsess over

Pristine transfers and favorite demo material aside, if you're an obsessive-compulsive videophile like us, one of the first discs you reach for after unboxing that new TV is a calibration disc. You know, the ones with the exciting test patterns and narration that empty a room really fast. Make space in your arsenal for one more of those riveting discs, because Marvell is bringing out its Qdeo Blu-ray disc to help you evaluate your setup, and with a focus on noise reduction, format conversion and image enhancement, this disc could be a good fit for modern systems that have the ability to stack tweak upon tweak at the player, receiver and TV. We'll admit that we're always a little leery of electronics manufacturers that issue their own test discs, but as long as no foul play is uncovered, it certainly can't hurt to have another choice on the market; some test patterns just work better for some people.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 19th 2009 11:29PM]

Test discs allow home users to improve their situation without having to have a professional calibrationist in. Silicon Optix (makers of the Realta and Reon-vx chips) used to provide a good solution to show off how good their chips were. IDT have HQV now, so you can't order the discs from their website at the present time. That leaves you with Spears & Munsil disc, which is supposed to be very good (and even comes bundled with an Oppo blu ray player). Marvell is a leading chip maker, and I would be quite interested to see how their test disc is. Perhaps it will show off how good their video chips really are.