Just making sure there is nothing available for free, before I purchase a DVD. I'm looking for something that will help me in tweaking both my sound and video settings in order to get top performance out my equipment. I've seen several DVDs on the market, but looking for free first

there are a few dvd movies that will do this for you which ones i dont know sorry for not being much help , also there is a nokia monitor test that i used to check for dead pixels and moire lines and contrast.

Finding Nemo has that THX Optimizer. I think it's on the Star Wars Trilogy too but I'm not sure. I ran through the THX one, it was ok not sure if it made any difference.

Yeah, ALMOST all of the dvd's that are in 'THX' have the optimizer. But I think that I read somewhere that each of those optimizers are calibrated to the specific movie that they're on. I'm not sure though so don't quote me on that.

The remastered StarWars Trilogy has one too.

Pirates of the Carabean also has the THX calibration extra.

That's correct - the THX optimizer will be slightly different for each movie. That doesn't necessariliy make it a bad choice for adjusting the picture.

The best THX optimizer I've found that has good results across the board for me has been the Incredibles (there's even an advanced optimizer that's not available anywhere else). I've used this in combination with a good live-action film to achieve solid results. I picked several varied scenes from Garden State and played them after making changes on the Incredibles DVD.

I've tried the Star Wars optimizers and find they wash out the image a bit more than I'd like.

I've yet to try the Pirates of the Carribean one, but I'd bet it would be interesting to see what would happen there, considering the overdone contrast in that film.

Thanks for the tip. I never thought to use the optimizer on this project. It worked great.

Try this thread:
HOW-TO: Calibrating Display to Match HTPC Output


peace