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Maxi WOW microfiber plasma & LCD TV cleaning cloth

£2.99

This is the WOW wipe microfiber cloth. It is all you need to dust or remove fresh prints. For very dirty screens use in conjunction with a spray

AM 30ml Screen Cleaner & Microfiber Cloth

£5.99

Have A look at this great value, high quality 30 ml AM spray lcd, plasma & laptop screen cleaner and microfiber cloth.

The Definitive Screen Cleaning Guide (How To)

This Guide and the cleaning tools described are for cleaning almost any viewing surface.

Everything I mention below does not have to be performed each time you clean your laptop, plasma or whatever. Once you have it gleaming a quick dust/wipe every now and then and it will be shineing, for ages.

WOW Microfiber Cloth & PixelProtector Spray

Get the tools required

WOW micro fiber cloth.
PixelProtector spray (optional).
A piece of card/plastic about credit card size.
A really dusty screen with finger prints on it!

Turn the LCD television or other screen off to create a totally dark surface. If possible place the viewing surface with a soft light source on it.

This will make visible all the dust and other marks or smears. As you can see you can now see the full scale of the challenge ahead

First just wipe gently with a dry WOW wipe. For even pressure, fold the wipe over into aproximately a square shape. With their natual positive charge they attract dust and lock it in. Many of the finger prints and other marks wil be gone afterwards as well. The picture shows the screen partly cleaned after one wipe so you can see the effect.

If you look carefully you can see that even on the wiped part there is still the occassional mark. Dont worry we will deal with them next.

Wet your fingers under the tap. Flick some drops of water onto the wipe. Very little is required. The cloth should not be dripping wet. Just a few small patches of slight dampness is all that is required. As indicated in the diagram

Now wipe all over withe the slighly damp side paying special attention to any old, dry or stubborn marks. Do not rub vigourously, gentle rotations are all that is required to remove finger prints and sneezes etc.

If you are wondering why the cloth is a bit tatty it is the one I have been using for over 3 years now! Thats one of the reasons they are called WOW wipes. They can be used until dirty then washed upto 300 times.

Alternatively you can replace the step above by using the Pixel Protector spray. Just one squirt onto the screen, then wipe with the WOW cloth. The advantage of the Spray over water is it is a bit simpler and more convinient and has a formula that helps remove the crustiest of marks.

Read more about the Pixel Protector spray.

Trick for cleaning round edges of a screen

Wrap your card or plastic up in the cloth. Now wipe with the covered credit card edge from the screen edge towards the center of the LCD screen. Now you should be able to wipe up what was previously stuck at the edges.

This also works very well for cleaning between the keys of a keyboard.

Now give the micro-fiber a good shake and wipe all over with only the dry parts of the wipe. This will ensure you have removed any remaining water or spray and catch the last bits of dust.

As shown in the picture you can also clean the case of a laptop or the frame of the TV in the same way. The WOW wipes are great on glass TV stands as well, but TV stands can get really grubby so use a seperate cloth.

Warnings

1 - Screens absorb moisture... At the least it could leave an annoying mark that will never come off. !!NEVER LEAVE ANY MOISTURE ON YOUR SCREEN!! PixelProtector spray is specially made NOT to be absorbed into any screen but is good practice to make sure it is all wiped off.

2 - Screens use highly chemically reactive plastics and anti-reflective coatings. We strongly reccomend you do not put anything on the screen unless it has been specifficaly recommended.

Screen Cleaning Questions and Answers

Q - How do the WOW Microfibre cloths do it?

A - It is all down to the fabric particle size. If wipe for example a mirror with a normal cleaning cloth then some of the marks are gone, some of them get moved about a bit and smear and some stay where they are. The thing is that it doesn't matter how hard you wipe it still has the same effect. It is because the particle size in a regular cloth prevents it from making contact with the mirror consistentely. Let me explain. If you could zoom in with a microscopic movie camera it would be like dragging a fork through some sauce on your plate. It doesn't matter how hard you do it you can never move the sauce in between the prongs.

Wipe a hard surface with the WOW microfibe and it will make complete and consistent contact with the surface. Not only that but anything absorbable on the surface like finger prints or a cough spatter (urgh) will be absorbed into the cloth in the same way that water is absorbed into normal cloth. They also wipe away regular stuff like dust etc. Sometimes if a finger mark or something simmilar is old it leaves a dry hard deposit and additional techniques are required to clean them (see tutorial above). This is often the case when you use a microfiber cleaning cloth on a screen for the first time.

Q - Can I clean my IPOD like this?

A - If you are wondering about Apple IPODS then the reason I have not included them in the list is because although they are a very attractive screen they, in my opinion are a very poor design. And even the slightest speck caught up in the cloth(not the actual cloth itself) could potentially cause a scratch. So for this reason I will leave any advice about these devices to their manufacturer. In fact if you do a Google search for advice on the subject you are more likely to find tutorials on removing scratches! (I rest my case)

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How To Calibrate A Flat Screen Television With PixelProtector.

If you have a plasma or LCD or you are about to buy one and want to get the very best, most vivid, vibrant image that you can then this tutorial should help you do just that. It is not difficult or technical in any way and focusses on the most important test pages provided by PixelProtector so you can get the optimum HDTV Calibration as quickly as possible.

What Is Calibration and Why Should I Do It?

Every make and model of plasma/LCD screen is slightly different. Different resolution, components, brightness, colour, contrast and not to mention they all go into a different room with greatly varying ambient and dynamic light sources. So every TV shows a different picture and even the same TVs will appear different depending upon which room and where about in the room they are placed.

Even more significant than the above is that the manufacturers default settings are always set with colour, contast, and brightness settings that are way to high. This not only means that it is not set to the optimal picture quality but also causes your PDP or LCD to age faster. This last issue is particularly significant with plasma and is also a major contributor towards getting screen burn in, especially during the first few hundred hours of use.

So Calibrattion is quite simply the setting up of your TV to achieve the highest quality image possible. So who is the judge of what is a good image and what is not? Well ultimately you are. However it is a good idea to set the display with levels that compliment the broadcasters, film makers and game designers and then do a final few tweaks based on personal prefference.

By following the instructions below you can set the different levels on you television so they match how the programme makers intended there movie to be seen as well as automatically taking into account the vagieries of your specific make and model along with the physical lighting conditions in the room where it is.

You would pay upwards of £200 ($400) each time for a company to calibrate your screen so there is alot to be saved by doing it yourself with PixelProtector.

Residual Image Retention

First up If your TV is brand new then you dont need to worry about this unless it was a display or something like that. If your wondering what residual image retention(RIR) is I will explain. Basically TVs suffer from a phenomenon called 'burn in' it is where a static or frequently repeated image has left its mark on your television even when the particular image in question should not be displayed. The most common examples are TV guides, DVD menus, channel logos and computer game scores etc. These are screen burn for real and are dealt with in another article.

RIR is where the same phenomenon has occured but because it is much more gradual it leaves much less obvious marks that build up over the months that you use your TV. RIR does not leave a definite easily visible shape but simply causes apparently random smears that affect the colour that is displayed and makes it pretty much impossible to achieve a perfect callibration.

PixelProtector Colour Wash

If you find a DVD with a screen that is one plain light colour you will probably be able to see smears of inconsistent shade in various parts of the screen this is RIR. To get rid of it you need to run the PixelProtector 'colour wash' programme. Depending upon how severe it is it could take between 20 minutes and some hours to have the desired effect. PixelProtector is the only calibration DVD (that I know of) that includes a colour wash.

Afterwards If you look on a plain white screen you might see a slight coloured tint to the screen. This is no problem. Either watch a bit of TV or put the PixelProtector blizzard wash on for 20 minutes and it should now be a lovely even white.

If your image retention was really bad and it is not all gone after the prescribed time as advised by the DVD, dont worry. You can continue with the rest of the calibration and then re run the colour wash at another time . Each time you run it the RIR should decrease untill eventually it should be gone.

Simply put the above 2 steps have recalibrated all the pixels (picture elements) on your screen to a uniform brightness. Dont worry if you dont have a plain white screen to view the RIR because there is one included on the PixelProtector DVD. Now move on to the next phase.

The Basics

This process will take around 20 minutes and will leave you with a stunning picture for 6 months or more.
Sit where you normally would with lights and curtains etc where they will be when you watch the TV most. If like many people you watch some TV during the day with the curtains open and lights off and perhaps movies in the evening with curtains drawn and lights on then the calibration requirements will be different for each situation. Dont panic, there is a solution but for now just choose the most important/common situation and we will calibrate for that first.

Image Enhancement Technologies

Picture enhancement technologies are the various systems and effects that TV manufacturers use to try and improve the quality of viewing on there televisions. As you might expect these are most commonly found on the newer and usually larger screens like Plasma (PDP), LCD and DLP.

These technologies work by changeing the image sent to the TV useing a processor that mathematicaly manipulates the colours. brightness and other properties of the picture. What is undisputed is that you should turn off these features before calibrating. I would argue further that you leave them off for ultimate viewing pleasure. After all who knows best what your picture should look like? George Lucas(the movie makers) or the geeks at Sony(or where ever).

You can identify these IETs with phrases in the TV menu like 'edge enhancement', 'vivid', 'sports', 'DNIE' and others. Simply put if the option is not talked about below you can safely switch it off.

If you want to learn more about IETs then read this article and this one as well. It is not necessary to read these articles to continue with this tutorial.

Brightness

Load up PixelProtector and find the test pattern pictured here.

What you need to do is lower the brightness untill the black areas cannot be seen. Then increase the brightness 1% at a time until you can just about see the black area in the bottom right.

There are several simmilar test screens that follow. Try to achieve as close to what I have described on each.This is the perfect brightness setting. It will assure the following.

Firstly that when black is displayed it will be a pure black colour. And when there are shades close to black it will make the often very subtle difference especially in dark scenes more as the film maker intended. This is extra important for LCD screens as they have inherently poor black levels. This will not only significantly improve the quality on LCD and plasma TVs but on the latter will actualy prolong the life of the TV by reducing phosphor ageing very significantly.

When you have finnished this step you will probably notice that the brightness level is significantly lower than it was before. This is good.

Contrast

Use the test pattern as shown here. Lower the contrast setting right down. Then slowly raise it up until the difference between the pure white colour varies from the grey colour (bottom left) by the smallest perceptible amount possible.

There are several simmilar test screens that follow. Try to achieve as close to what I have described on each.

Getting this right is simple and will make a huge difference to the detail that can be seen in a given scene. Things like weak shadow, skin texture, subtle shades of white like artex on a ceiling or woodchip in a wallpaper become more accurately portrayed.

Also this prevents colour bleeding where bright colours (like white) can appear to extend beyond where they should be. This occurs because of the way a plasma or LCD works. Simply put light colours are 'made' from more light energy than dark. Calibrating the contrast very finely can at least reduce and often eliminate this problem.

Colour

Use the patterns shown here. This is quite simple. Make sure you have switched off any of the enhancements as suggested previously. Choose a setting name like 'normal' or 'standard' on your TVs menu. Now only make slight adjustments at a time on the Red, Green and Blue.

What you are looking to achieve with the pattern is a clear distinction between the lines and the background colour but without any 'hardness' or outline. Your goal is to produce an even, blur free image where the join between the colours is clearly defined and the different bars don't bleed into each other.

Flick between the different screens and try to achieve as described above on each.

Try not to get too hung up on this setting. The 'final tweaks' at the end will help with colour as well. Colour settings are one of the areas that a £200 calibration service comes into its own because the engineer would bring along costly colour measurement equipment. But unless you are configuring a 'video wall' at Wembley stadium you can achieve superb results using this method.

Sharpness

If you do not have a 'sharpness' setting it may well be called 'picture' or something simmilar. Use the test pattern shown here. Sharpness is a bit of a misleading title for this setting. And the adjustments you make here will be more noticeable when watching a high quality DVD than normal TV.

Simply put the lines should be clear and not blend into the background but the lines should not appear to have an outline and if you start to get extra 'bits of line' extending from the actual lines then the setting needs to be significantly reduced. There are several simmilar test screens that follow. Try to achieve as close to what I have described on each.

Final Tweaks

Now your TV is configured just as George Lucas would like it. But you might want to do some final minor adjustments. I would strongly reccomend that you do not tweak by any more than 5% each way because the black and white levels you have just configured really will make a superb difference to your viewing pleasure.

Another PixelProtector Test Picture

Bring up one of the PixelProtector test images. Start with brightness and skew it 5% up and down. Look at a single point of detail in the image perhaps the eyes, skin tone or another fine detail. Ask yourself as you move through each of the settings in turn and decide from personal prefference what is the optimum setting. Dont be tempted to go beyond 5% alteration as when you move on to the next setting you will have to make bigger compensatory adjustments and by the time you get to the last setting you will have a misconfigured screen. Next do contrast, then colour and finally sharpness.

And your done!

It is important to remember that components and physical attributes in a TV change over time. Most notably the phosphors in a plasma TV will age. Repeat the calibration process every six months or so to continue enjoing your Plasma or LCD screen at its best.

Calibration Summary

Colour wash - few hours.
Blizzard wash - 20 minutes.
Switch off all IETs.
Brightness - as described.
Contrast - as described
colour - as described
Sharpness - as described
Tweak.
Enjoy!
Repeat every 6 months or so.

Now if you are wondering about what happens when you watch the TV in different conditions then all you have to do is increase the brightness up for a ligher environment and down for a darker environment. Obviously make a mental note of the numerical brightness value to turn it back to. You should not need to touch the colour or contrast. If you are really fussy then most TVs have the option to save multiple configurations. Every make and model will vary but on the Samsung I am experimenting on you select Menu - Picture - Mode, you can then choose from between 4 pre named options and calibrate them accordingly.

It is worth mentioning there are many other image optimising features on PixelProtector like alignment tests, underscan and overscan as well as cableing tips. Most of these are there in case you require absolute perfection but an almost perfect image can be achieved just doing the above. And if you want more specific help then email support from the manufacturers is included in the price of PixelProtector.

It is true that correct cableing can make a fairly significant difference and I will cover some issues in a future article. But just to mention many of them are covered on the PixelProtector DVD.

For more information or to purchase PixelProtector click the link below.

UK & Europe (PAL) Version United States (NTSC) Versio n

I hope this article has been of some help and I hope you enjoy your plasma or LCD TV to its fullest.

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