Pre-calibration, the 34PW9818's color performance was reasonably good but somewhat cartoony. I've seen much worse out of the box. After Kevin Miller's calibration, the set was almost flat across the board, mostly within 100 kelvins of 6500K. You couldn't ask for or get much better gray-scale tracking. Post-calibration, the 34PW9818's peak light output of 30 footlamberts was noticeably brighter than the 34PW9817's 18.5fL.

The 34PW9818 "held black" well in the Video Essentials DC restoration test. Even before calibration, the set didn't "wince," as the older model had, which indicates a better power supply. As with the older model, it was difficult to tell if a scan-velocity modulation (SVM) circuit had been implemented, though there was a subtle thickening of the black

vertical line on the needle-pulse test. The color decoder had just a bit of red push, but not enough to create problems with setting overall color level. While I'd noticed a slight orange cast to the 34PW9817's reds, the 34PW9818's seemed purer, more ruby-like.—MF