I am asking this question of the OB, because I did not want the Nerdery saying it absolutely has to be done, and because I know I'd get a straight shot from you all on whether is is necessary.

I finally bit the bullet for our living room TV and gave away our old 36" flat tube TV, all 220 lbs of it.

Replaced it with a 60" Vizio M-series razor LED. I think I am pretty good at the color adjustments, and the TV looks great. However one of the sales people I delt with said "almost everyone" gets their TV color calibrated by a specialist (which of course they offered at $249, with lifetime guarantee and subsequent check-ups as desired).

What is the experience of those on the OB with this "issue/non issue". If you did this, who did you use and how much did you pay? Is it really that beneficial?

TIA.

No.

Here is hometheatre.com's review and optimum settings for your TV. I used their recommendations for my Panasonic plasma and it looks 10x better than it did in the store.

http://www.hometheater.com/content/vizio-e60li-a3-lcd-hdtv-settings

You should definitely calibrate the tv. However, I wouldn't pay anybody to do it. Just google your specific model and the word "calibration" and there should be several sites that have optimized color settings.

I did this with my 60" plasma and if definitely made a difference.

$249 for tv calibration? Yikes!