Calibration

As delivered, the Sony KP-57XBR10W's geometry was slightly off—a slight left-to-right squeeze made objects look about 5% skinnier than they should have. This can be easily corrected in the service menu by any competent technician, or performed as part of the aftermarket calibration that we recommend for any set. There was also some pincushion distortion at the very bottom of the image, noticeable primarily on the bottom of 2.35:1 transfers at the transition between the image and the letterbox black bar. It was minor and I did not attempt to correct it.

Apart from the slight shortcoming in black-level retention noted in the review, test patterns looked uniformly impeccable. Horizontal resolution (on DVD) measured 525 lines on the Avia test disc—and the 6.25MHz maximum-bandwidth pattern was clearly visible. Full-screen color frames showed no discernible video noise. On the overscan bounce test on Avia there was no visible change in the picture size with changes in average picture level. Overscan itself was low (about 5%), and there was a red push of approximately 5%.

As delivered, the Warm setting of the KP-57XBR10W's gray scale was most accurate (the "Before" setting of the gray-scale chart shown here). Neutral ranged from 10,800 to 12,400 kelvins, and Cool was consistently in excess of 15,000K. But the set calibrated beautifully, deviating by more than 150K only at 20 IRE output—the lowest level we look at, and extremely difficult to measure accurately.

The Before/After calibration numbers are shown in the accompanying diagram, the latter measured at a peak-white level of approximately 20 foot-Lamberts.—TJN