LCD TV Reviews

Black: 0.007
White: 24.6

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 3,514:1

These measurements were taken in the Pro-Night Picture mode with the Backlight on 4, the Contrast at 47, the Brightness at 62, Gamma at Gamma 1, and Dynamic Gamma off.

This Hitachi’s black level is excellent for an LCD with conventional CCFL backlighting. In fact, it’s the lowest we have measured on such a set to date. Dropping the Contrast to 40 (and tweaking the Brightness to 63 to compensate) produced more above-white headroom, with a peak white of 19.4 foot-lamberts (more than sufficient in a dark or dimly lit room), the same video black level, and a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 2,774:1. In Gamma 1, the measured gamma averaged approximately 2.14.

The color tracking charts below show how well a display adheres to the D65 standard white point; the tighter the overlap of the three primary colors, the nearer the result is to D65. The Before Calibration result in this sample (taken in the Standard Color Temp setting) was fair at best. The After Calibration result is good, with the Delta E values at 3.1 or less between 30 IRE and 90 IRE (as low as 1.7 at 40 IRE, or roughly mid-brightness). The major exception was a Delta E of 12 at 20 IRE. This deviation was never apparent in normal viewing, but it may be seen as an excess of blue in the color tracking chart. It was uncorrectable without compromising the color in the mid-brightness region, where deviations are more visible.

There are no color management adjustments for the set’s color gamut, nor any optional, fixed color gamut selections. While the gamut was not oversaturated, it was skewed a bit (the white triangle in the CIE chart above—the black triangle shows the standard Rec. 709 HD color gamut).

The lowest overscan for HD sources was effectively zero in the Full aspect ratio setting.—TJN