LCD TV Reviews

Setup & Tests
Calibrating the LN52A750 was easy, though I don't recommend trying to do this yourself without the requisite training and test equipment. As you can see in the Measurements section, I got the grayscale and color temperature quite close to correct except at the lowest brightness levels, where they went blue. This is common among LCD TVs and did not seem to noticeably affect real-world material.

Staring with the HQV Benchmark DVD at 480i via component, detail was as good as standard-def can be—better, in fact, than most TVs I've seen lately. The set's performance on the jaggies tests was among the best I've ever seen—even the waving flag was completely jaggie-free. Digital NR (noise reduction) worked well in Auto mode, cleaning up the noise without softening the picture appreciably. Even the High mode worked reasonably well.

The film-detail test revealed that the set's processor picked up 3:2 pulldown quickly and reliably. I started looking at Auto Motion Plus (AMP) frame interpolation with this test, and it sharpened the bleachers as the camera pans to follow the race car, though it didn't do much for the car itself. The 2:2 video cadence was smooth and solid, and mixed 3:2 film with video text crawls were excellent.

Next, I looked at the HQV Benchmark HD DVD at 1080i via HDMI. The video resolution-loss test was solid as a rock, but there was lots of shimmering in the film resolution-loss test. AMP improved the detail in the pan across the bleachers, but it was not dramatic.

The set picked up 3:2 pulldown on the Spears & Munsil test HD DVD immediately, but there was a strange shimmering artifact in the middle of the bleachers. AMP improved the detail in the bleachers significantly, but the shimmer was visible regardless of the AMP setting.

The best test of 120Hz frame interpolation is the FPD Benchmark Blu-ray test disc. With AMP on, the horizontal resolution in the horizontally scrolling monoscope improved, but the vertical resolution was actually degraded. The horizontally scrolling characters were sharpened, especially in the low-contrast tests. All real-world clips (hammock, swing, etc.) looked much sharper with AMP on, and I saw no evidence of the artifacts I observed under the same conditions with the previous-generation LN-T4671F.