For the fourth year in a row now, Value Electronics presented a Flat Panel Shootout where I was a presenter. The panel contestants were the Panasonic TC-P65VT30 plasma, the Samsung PN59D8000 plasma, the LG 60PZ950 plasma, the Samsung UN60D8000 edge lit LED, Sony XBR55HX929, and the Elite PRO-60X5FD.

For the fourth year in a row now, Value Electronics presented a Flat Panel Shootout where I was a presenter. The panel contestants were the:

Panasonic TC-P65VT30 plasma (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data )

Samsung PN59D8000 plasma (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data ) 

LG 60PZ950 plasma (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data )

Sony XBR55HX929  (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data )

Samsung UN60D8000 edge lit LED (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data )

Elite PRO-60X5FD (Pre Calibration Data / Post Calibration Data ).

All six of the panels were calibrated to the best of the display’s capabilities. We tested for Contrast Ratio, Color Saturation (color decoding), Overall Color Accuracy or Colorimetry (Rec 709 Color gamut accuracy, color decoding, and grayscale tracking), and Motion Resolution.

We identified two color related issues on two panels. First, the Panasonic VT30 did not have accurate color decoding as per the Rec 709 specification for HD material in the Custom Mode where the ISF modes are implemented. Even in the THX mode, color decoding, although somewhat better and less oversaturated, was still incorrect, an issue I noticed while calibrating my first VT30 back in June. Panasonic is now aware of the problem and working on a firmware update to correct it.

The other color related issue was on the Elite where Cyan at low luminance levels is skewed toward blue. We discovered this issue while watching Transformers III, which has a lot of scenery with Cyan at low luminance levels. Compared to the Samsung PN59D8000 (pictured left), my current reference for color accuracy, these scenes were distinctly blue. After identifying this issue on the Elite, we measured 10% to 100% luminance levels of Cyan to see if it was tracking that color correctly, and found that indeed it was not. The luminance was wrong and the x and y points were way off. The CalMAN Pro data graph revealed where Cyan was nearer to Blue in the C.I.E diagram down at 10 and 20% luminance levels, which perfectly correlated to what we saw on Transformers III. Sharp was at the event, has my data, and is working on a firmware update to correct this issue as well.

As in years past, we tested the four most important performance parameters in video to the human eye. Here are these parameters and their definitions listed in descending order of importance:

1. Contrast Ratio: Dynamic Range in video or the range from the panel’s ability to produce black to peak white or how low the black level measures on the display, and how bright it is capable of. Since all of the displays were calibrated to produce a peak light output of 35 fTL (Footlamberts), black level is definitely the most important element here.

2. Color Saturation, or how much color there is in the picture. This is directly related to the accuracy of the color decoding. It turned out that not all of the displays were correctly decoding to the Rec 709 specifications.

3. Colorimetry, or how accurate the color is. This entails accurate color decoding, good grayscale tracking or how well the grayscale measures from just above black to 100% white, and finally the accuracy of the Color Space, or how close it measures to the Rec 709 specifications for Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow the primary and secondary colors in video.

4. Resolution: While all the panels are technically 1080p resolution, the current industry standard, not all of them handle all HD signals correctly. We used the Silicon Optix HQV Blu-ray test disc to test for 1080i video and film resolution loss to determine how well the panels de-interlace 1080i HD sources from standard broadcasts like Cable and Satellite for both program material created in HD video, and with material (Movies mainly) transferred from film to video. We also used the Spears & Munsil Blu-ray test disc to test 24p performance. In both these areas, most of the panels passed all of our tests.