LCD TV Reviews

Measurements

Settings
Keep in mind that unit-to-unit variations, viewing environment, source, and screen (in the case of front projectors) might render the settings I used less than optimum on some samples of this display. If you try these settings, I strongly recommend that you do so as a starting point, following up with one of the several display-setup DVDs on the market to make certain that the basic picture settings are correct for your situation.

The grayscale-calibration controls are available only in the service menu, which end users cannot access. To fully calibrate this set, consult a qualified technician.

Image Settings
Mode: User 1
Contrast: 80
Brightness: 45
Color: 60
Sharpness: 49
Tint: 0
Backlight: 27
Color Temperature: Warm
XD Contrast: Off
XD Color: Off
XD Noise: On
Black Level: Low
TruM: High

Contrast & Resolution
Peak white level

• Full screen: 30.7fL
• 100 IRE window: 30.7fL

Black level: 0.018fL
Peak contrast ratio: 1705:1
Overscan

• 480i/p: 3%
• 720p: 3%
• 1080i/p: 3%

Horizontal bandwidth at 1080i

• HDMI/DVI: 37.1MHz
• Component: 18.75MHz

With a 1080i signal, the HDMI input showed strong banding at 37.1 MHz due to overscan processing; the component input was almost totally rolled off under the same conditions. Overscan amount is more aggressive than most, cropping 30 pixels on each side. This can be defeated by relabeling an HDMI input to "PC," which engages 1:1 mode and eliminates overscanning, but it only works with the HDMI inputs and only with 1080p signals.

Grayscale

The pre-calibration measurements were taken in the User mode after optimizing the user-accessible picture controls, while the post-cal measurements were taken after performing a full grayscale calibration in the Expert mode. As you can see, the pre-cal results were not much different from the post-cal measurements, and I much preferred watching TV in the User mode, so there's no real need to calibrate this set.

In this view, grayscale is correct when the three colors overlap. Blue predominated before calibration, and calibrating the Expert mode brought the colors into closer alignment except at the bottom of the brightness range.

Color Temperature

Color temperature rode a bit high before calibration, but not enough to make a big difference.

Color Accuracy

Green is obviously way oversaturated, as is cyan and, to a lesser extent, red. Blue is slightly off, and magenta tends toward red. Only yellow is essentially correct.