The annual flat panel shootout at Value Electronics in Scarsdale, New York on June 26thand June 27th was more ambitious than ever before. This year, I was ably assisted by two other calibrators, D-Nice of AVS Forum fame, and Edward Johnson from North Jersey. We calibrated, measured, and tabulated data on eight of the industry's leading Flat panel TVs: Four of the top plasma panels, the Samsung PN50B860, the Pioneer KRP500M, the Panasonic TC-50V10, and the LGPS60, and four of the top LCD panels, the Samsung UN55B8000, LG55LH90, the Toshiba 55SV670U, and the Sony KDL-52XBR9. We measured Black level, Contrast Ratio, Grayscale tracking, Gamma, and Color space on all the panels and tabulated the results. Rather than give the test results first, we thought it would be fun and interesting to have the audience cast their votes based on both viewing test patterns related to each parameter, and also reference Blu-ray movie material like "The Dark Knight", and others.
Professional television calibration takes what we, at TweakTV, are suggesting as a starting point to the highest level of system performance and accuracy. It is essentially a fine tuning of your entire video system by a qualified trained technician with reference level test equipment. What we are providing with the User menu settings for digital cable and/or Satelllite via the HDMI inputs of HDTVs is just a basic start in what we refer to as “System Calibration”. A full professional system calibration includes setting up all the video sources including the cable box and/or satellite receiver, DVD player, and calibrating each input on the TV with a variety of sophisticated TV test equipment.
By now it is likely that many of you have heard that Pioneer
recently announced that it will be exiting the TV business. Last year at this
time the company announced that it would no longer be manufacturing the glass
for its plasma panels, and that it would instead be OEMing glass from Panasonic
in an effort to streamline their plasma business. There was a lot of
speculation then that Pioneer would ultimately be leaving the TV business, and
as it turns out that speculation has come to pass. I have been talking to
industry pundits this week to get an idea of how this came to be. It appears
that a series of large mistakes led to the ultimate demise of the Pioneer
plasma business.
Most of you
have probably heard about the transition from analog broadcasting to digital.
After all the transition itself has only been postponed about eighteen times. It was most recently scheduled to happen on February 17 of this year, and
congress has postponed it yet again until June 12th, 2009. The
consensus is there are still too many people in the U.S. that are not prepared
for it, and will loose their TV programming if it is done too soon. The
question is how long do the folks that have prepared for the change over going
to have to wait? I don't know about you but I have no confidence in the June 12th,
2009 date as it has already been postponed many times.
Every single day we receive countless requests. Many of the requests have the same question. "I want the best picture quality, what is the best HDTV made?" The answer is the Pioneer KRP-500/600M series. Attached are the suggested settings based off of a TweakTV professional calibration .
Panasonic debuted their new 85-inch plasma, the Panasonic TH-85PF12U 
The annual flat panel shootout at Value Electronics in Scarsdale, New York on June 26th
Professional television calibration takes what we, at TweakTV, 
