LCD TV Reviews

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 3,211:1

All before and after settings were conducted in the Movie THX Dark Room mode set for a peak white output of just under 30 foot-lamberts.

With a 100% peak white window level of 28.9 ft-L, and a full black screen, the full-on/full-off contrast ratio measured as shown above, with a black level of 0.009 ft-L. However, even a small amount of light on the screen alters this; displaying the pause bug from the Oppo BDP-103 Blu-ray player on an otherwise black screen increased the black level to 0.018 ft-L, for a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 1,606:1. Changing the Movie THX mode to Bright Room, without any other control changes, raised the peak white to 66.1 ft-L and the black level, with the pause bug, to 0.031 ft-L, for a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 2,132:1—an increase driven primarily by the increased peak white output.

Delta E is a figure of merit indicating how close the color comes to the D65 HD color standard. Values below 3.0 are generally considered visually indistinguishable from ideal, and under 10.0, likely to be acceptable to the average (non-critical) viewer. Pre-calibration, the set’s gray-scale Delta E averaged 5.63, peaking at 9.07 at 100% brightness. The pre-calibration color Delta E averaged 3.49, with blue the biggest offender at 8.4. Post-calibration, the average gray-scale Delta E dropped to 0.93, with a maximum of 2.88 at 20% brightness and no other value higher than 1.46. The post-calibration color Delta E averaged 1.56, with blue (as before) the highest at 2.97 and no other color above 2.32. All calibrations were performed with only the 2-point white balance controls; the 10-point controls were fussy to use and produced no meaningful improvement, at least not on our sample. While the CMS did help, and I used it in the above results, as with other systems we’ve tested, it’s tricky to use and not all of the controls are equally effective.

Post-calibration, with the gamma control on –1, the gamma was very uniform, averaging 2.34 with no value lower than 2.32 or higher than 2.35.—TJN