| Video Noise October 2008
The Great Video Displays: My
2008 Picks
 Last month, I singled out the current Pioneer
Kuro and Samsung plasmas as being truly great video displays -- the best I’ve seen in
2008. This month I discuss what makes these displays better than the competition. But
before I get into the details, you should know two things: 1) I talk here strictly about
image quality, and not about any of the bells and whistles these or other displays may or
may not have. 2) These evaluations are of the displays as viewed in a darkened home
theater, not in a family room lined with windows.
The Pioneer Kuros’ strengths are their very dark black
levels and reasonably good factory settings -- "good" in the sense that the gray
scale tracks very uniformly through its 11 steps from 0% white (which is quite dark) to
100% white, without any of the dips or peaks that would create a color tint that would
deviate from a consistently and completely neutral gray. Factory settings for HDTV color
space and the normal user controls are all relatively good. A professional calibrator
could still make some additional improvements, but nothing as dramatic as with many lesser
displays.
 Images viewed on the Pioneer Kuro
displays immediately look special. Star fields seem to have many more points of
light than I’m used to seeing on other displays, and the black around the stars is
amazingly deep and dark. Colors are convincingly accurate and always look perfect, whether
pastels, deeply saturated jewel tones, or anything in between. Nothing looks odd or
obviously off, even if the Kuro has not been professionally calibrated. Out of the
box, the Low color-temperature setting is closest to the 6500K standard of neutral gray,
but it’s a little too yellow. The next highest color-temperature setting, Mid-Low, is
far too blue, which makes all colors inaccurate. With professional calibration, however,
you can achieve an essentially perfect 6500K color temperature, and it looks fantastic.
Pioneer Kuros are expensive, especially the Elite series, but you get what you pay for:
amazing images that finally achieve black levels that are as good as or better than the
blacks of the best video displays in history.
The Samsung plasmas are this year’s surprise displays.
In past years, Samsungs were nothing special, and right out of the box, the 2008 models
are only average performers. What makes these Samsungs special are their low prices and
the incredible array of adjustments available to the calibrator, which can be used to make
images remarkably close to perfect. In fact, Samsung has included controls unavailable
even on the far more expensive Pioneer Kuro displays.
The Samsungs’ first advantage is adjustable Gamma, or
the shape of the curve between the black (0%) and white (100%) points. A straight line
would have a Gamma of 1. Video mastering and monitoring are done at a Gamma of 2.5, so
your home display should have the same setting. However, few current displays can actually
achieve that. Pioneer Kuros, great as they are, can get to only about 2.25-2.35. The
Samsung plasmas can almost always achieve a Gamma of 2.4 or 2.5 right out of the box, and
a professional calibrator can tweak them up to 2.5 or even higher -- an amazing
achievement. I’ve measured other plasmas that couldn’t even reach a Gamma of
2.1; their midtones were too bright, their images flat.
 Samsung’s Blue Only mode turns
off the red and green colors completely. This lets the owner or calibrator precisely set
the Color and Tint controls with complete confidence, without having to rely on blue
filters, which are rarely accurate. Very few displays have a Blue Only mode, which is
reserved for a few expensive boutique brands and high-end displays.
Samsung provides an unprecedented number of adjustments for
each primary (red, green, blue) and secondary (cyan, magenta, yellow) color. Each color
has three sliders labeled Red, Green, and Blue. For example, the Red slider controls the
brightness (luminance) of Red: with the three sliders provided, almost any degree of Red
error can be corrected. This degree of adjustment is not only a brilliant move in the
direction of being able to provide amazingly accurate images, it is unavailable in any
other mainstream consumer-video display, and is shocking to find in a 50" 1080p model
selling for as little as $1600 USD (PN50A550), or in a 58" model selling for under
$2700 (PN58A550). It takes a professional calibrator to unlock these displays’
remarkable performance, but it’s well worth the cost (typically $250-$450, depending
on the calibrator, geographic area, etc.).
The Samsungs have only average black levels -- that’s
one thing the Pioneer Kuros do better. Their gray-scale tracking is great from 30% to
100%, but at the 10% and 20% steps you see a significant increase in blue and a
significant decrease in red. Fortunately, these shortcomings are at the dark end of the
scale; while easy to see in a test pattern, they’re not noticeable when watching
movies or TV. Those are about the only two things keeping the Samsungs from überplasma
status.
In short, these plasma displays from Samsung and Pioneer
are finally good enough to get those who were waiting for something better to start
shopping.
. . . Doug Blackburn
db@hometheatersound.com |
