The HP turned in a good set of results on my scaling and deinterlacing tests. On standard definition sources (480i) from the HQV Benchmark test DVD it performed poorly only on the 2:2 (video) cadence tests. It did well on the Coliseum "flyover" scene from chapter 12 of Gladiator, showing only a few artifacts. It also properly deinterlaced 1080i sources to its native 720p resolution, though it did not recognize 3/2 pulldown in 1080i film material.

While the HP does not offer any user-selectable noise reduction features, there may be some non-defeatable noise reduction on the component inputs. When I compared a noisy source through both the HDMI and component inputs, the noise was quite obviously reduced when I used component—without a significant loss of resolution. The component bandwidth was a bit less wide than HDMI, but not enough, I believe, to explain this. Nor did it appear that the difference was due to added noise in the HDMI input itself, as that input looked clean with clean sources.

The HP's color temperature in the Warm setting (the closest to accurate) ranged from just under 6500K in the brightest whites to the mid 7000Ks in darker grays. But the set calibrated reasonably well, though less evenly at the bottom (dark) end than the top. One nice touch: not only can each of the three color temperature settings be calibrated separately, but calibrated separately for each type of input.

The red and blue color points were respectably close to the HD standard, though green was noticeably oversaturated.

The set's overscan, measured through both its component and HDMI inputs, averaged a satisfactory 3% with all consumer SD and HD input formats (480i/p, 720p, and 1080i).

The resolution held up well to the maximum frequencies required at all of these resolutions, though it appeared marginally less extended at those frequencies in component than in HDMI, most noticeably at 480i (6.75MHz).

The best results, which resulted in little or no edge enhancement added by the set, were obtained with the Sharpness control turned down as low as possible. I generally ended up with settings between zero and 20. The set did have less inherent, non defeatable edge enhancement than the PL5060N (LINK) last generation HP 50-inch set that I reviewed recently for Ultimate AV.

Finally, the peak contrast ratio for the HP was 1,301:1, measured using a 100 IRE window pattern- 75.44fL peak white and 0.058fL for video black. Using a 100 IRE full white field, the peak contrast ratio measured 433:1 (25.14 peak white, 0.058 video black). ANSI contrast, measured from a 16 square checkerboard pattern, measured 701:1.