
“The enthusiasts and power users took to our previous disc right away,” said Munsil, “but we got feedback that the disc was still too daunting for inexperienced users who’ve never tried to calibrate a television before. We did the same re-thinking for essentially every pattern we made, though the classic patterns are on there as well for the purist.” We re-thought the entire pattern from scratch and made something anyone can use, with step-by-step instructions right on the pattern. “The problem with the classic color bars pattern is that it was designed for broadcast engineers and is confusing for the new user. “We’ve created what we think is the best pattern for setting color and tint ever made,” said Spears.

The disc includes new editions of some of the favorite patterns from the previous disc, plus many new ones that are exclusive to Spears & Munsil. All of the scaling and color conversion was done using our own software as well.” “So every pattern was created from scratch, using custom software, in the native color space that is most appropriate for that pattern. “We still feel that there isn’t anything else out there that meets our quality standards across the board,” said co-creator Don Munsil. Like the previous edition, the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark, 2nd Edition uses patterns created from scratch using Spears & Munsil’s own in-house software. “We didn’t just want to add a few new features here and there,” said co-creator Stacey Spears, “we went back to the drawing board and re-thought every pattern.” There are more than twice as many patterns on this new disc as on the previous disc, covering every aspect of home theater testing and calibration. And for the professional or advanced enthusiast it contains a complete set of patterns suitable for precisely calibrating contrast, grayscale, gamut, and other settings using test equipment. It has audio level and phase tests created using the latest noise-shaping algorithms. The second edition adds even more features and patterns and sets a new bar for the term “state of the art.” The Spears & Munsil disc is the first (and at this time only) disc to offer stereoscopic patterns for calibrating and testing 3D televisions. The first edition of this disc was recommended by the New York Times, Widescreen Review, Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity®, and many other print and online publications. Spears & Munsil will be releasing ' Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark: 2nd Edition' early next week.

The second edition of the calibration disc adds tests for 3D televisions and more.
