How can you tell if one TV has a better picture than another?

caesar

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Most people look at the brightness, and choose to pay more for an LCD over plasma, even for a dark room. So what should you be looking at?
 

fas42

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Most people look at the brightness, and choose to pay more for an LCD over plasma, even for a dark room. So what should you be looking at?
Frankly, because I believe this is the most critical thing, what you want is a set where you can adjust all the colour parameters from the user menu, rather than having to go into the "secret" service menu which theoretically you're not supposed to fiddle with. A basic set with the colours adjusted correctly will always look superior and be more satisfying in the long run than the most expensive set where you can never get the colours quite right. For LCD, to be able to set the strength of the back light is very important, IMO.

Frank
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I have had all of my TV's ISF calibrated. What I was told at that time was that in large show rooms such as Circuit City, Best Buy etc, consumer eyes are drawn immediately to the screens which are burning the brightest so manufacturers tend to set them hot rather than correct and yes Frank, getting into those secret little menus is what makes the difference between what you can do externally vs using the internal menu.
 

amirm

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A few things:

1. Pay attention to reflectivity of the screen. Compare the sets against each other. I sometimes sit down so that I can look at the ceiling lights reflected into each set to see how they differ. Some are remarkably mirror like compared to others.

2. Viewing angle. If you won't be sitting straight on, and you will be shopping for LCDs, be sure to a) compare all the sets at the same angle and b) use the viewing angle you will be using, not what is in the set. When comparing LCDs, I stand in between two sets. That way, I am looking at both sets in the 30 to 45 degree angle. Standing in front of one at 0 degrees and the other at 45 to the left or right makes the comparison false.

3. Be sure to watch things that are not very bright. Colorful beach scenes look really nice on most displays. Ask to change the channel and the source to get there.

4. Look for anomalies such as uneven brightness. For Plasma, look to see if the screen dims if a bright patch shows up. Compare it to an LCD next to it if you can. On LCDs, pay attention to black bars above and below movie material and see if it is "pumping" (getting brighter and darker).

5. Similar to above, switch to an unused input and check to see if the whole screen is uniform. You may have to go in the menu and force the set to show black when there is no signal.

6. When comparing sets, you need to get them to be in similar settings. This is very hard to do in the store. But set them to movie/Warm2 mode and that should get them closer.

7. Evaluating sets with moving images is hard. Some people take flash cards with still images on them. Another trick is to pop up the menus and pay attention to the picture quality then.

8. Go to different stores. I finally found one that had my favorite plasma and LCD next to each other that made the comparison much easier.

9. Try to find the reviews and see what they find bad in them and then try to force that issue in person so that you can decide how bad it is.
 

JackD201

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I move this thread be made a Sticky.
 

RBFC

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There are a number of valuable set-up assistant discs available, such as the Spears & Munsil, Digital Video Essentials, and the new Disney calibration Blu-ray. These discs can help consumers make worthwhile adjustments on the "I can do this" level and get the picture closer to correct than before. I'd still recommend a professional ISF calibration for serious viewing, and professional setup for projectors as well.

Lee
 

caesar

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Frankly, because I believe this is the most critical thing, what you want is a set where you can adjust all the colour parameters from the user menu, rather than having to go into the "secret" service menu which theoretically you're not supposed to fiddle with. A basic set with the colours adjusted correctly will always look superior and be more satisfying in the long run than the most expensive set where you can never get the colours quite right. For LCD, to be able to set the strength of the back light is very important, IMO.

Frank

Thanks. But how do you know what the colors are supposed to look like? How do folks develop a reference for color?
 

caesar

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I remember everyone raving about the Pioneer Elite plasmas a few years ago. But every time I saw them, they had the most exaggerated colors. Watching baseball or football, the grass was so "super" green, you could sense the smell of the fertilizer. The reds and blues on the flag were just too much.

And this was in every show room that I saw it in.
 

RBFC

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I remember everyone raving about the Pioneer Elite plasmas a few years ago. But every time I saw them, they had the most exaggerated colors. Watching baseball or football, the grass was so "super" green, you could sense the smell of the fertilizer. The reds and blues on the flag were just too much.

And this was in every show room that I saw it in.

As Steve stated above, TV showrooms typically run their displays with the TV set to "torch" mode or "dynamic" mode. This mode presents contrast, brightness, and color beyond what a well-calibrated set shows. I'd guess that the Pioneer Kuros you saw were adjusted in this manner to catch the eye of uneducated customers. When properly adjusted, the Kuro plasmas are extremely impressive.

Lee
 

amirm

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Thanks. But how do you know what the colors are supposed to look like? How do folks develop a reference for color?
Let me explain the situation.

In video, we have specific definition for what is the "right" color. For HDTV, it is based on SMPTE 709 standard. When we produce video, we calibrate our source equipment (i.e. camera or "telecine" used to capture movies to video) to this standard using measurement equipment. So if you duplicate the exact same thing in the home, you will get the same image as was seen when the shot was originally captured.

You can perform the above test by eye or by instrument. Needless to say, instrument is the right way. Unfortunately, proper instrument with high sensitivity as the image gets darker gets very expensive. My Minolta light meter costs over $20,000! There are cheaper units in hundreds of dollars range but they use a different technology and are less accurate as brightness drops.

Now to perform the test by eye is not easy either. There is a SMPTE test pattern which looks like this:



Problem is, if you just look at the image, there is no reference. To get that reference, you need to be looking at each primary color (reg, green, blue) separately. If you could do that, then you will see an image that is entirely in that one color, but some patches will be different in intensity. If you then match them, then that color becomes right. This is an example of blue-only mode showing inaccuracies:



If your set has the ability to turn off the other two colors in the setup menu, then you are golden. Well kind of, read more later :). But you are far better off than if you didn't. This would be another good buying criteria. If you do not, the video test discs that you can buy very cheaply with the above pattern, come with a set of filters that you hold in front of your eye to block all the other colors. For reasons I won't go into, these filters are not very accurate for calibrating flat panels but for the purposes of a crude job, they will do.

Next challenge is how to correct the differences. Your standard tool are "color" and "tint" controls. Color changes the amplitude of the color: more intense, less intense. Tint changes the "phase" or what color it is. Using these dials you can try to correct the color errors. But since you have the same slider to use for all three primary colors, you will likely have to compromise as making one right, may make the others wrong.

Better sets have what is called CMS: Color Management System. They have individual controls for each color which you can then set without the above interactions (at least hope to do so, some CMS systems don't work as advertised).

If you think you are done, you are not! Sets shift in color as brightness level changes. So what might be right with full light, may shift to red in a darker scene. This necessitates calibrating the set at different brightness levels. As with the above problem, you will find that with one set of controls, you may get one level right and screw up another. This is where the intuition of a calibrator kicks in to figure out which trade off is best including looking at the image at the end and not just going by numbers.

Better sets have multipoint color controls. LG and Samsung LCDs for example can have 10 point "gray scale" calibration to help with this.

The ultimate system is one that is built into the set. Our Projection Design projector for example, puts up an image and you measure it. You then type that number into the projector and it calibrates itself! Quite fast and efficient that way although you still need a human to be sure what it did is right (including post measurement).

This topic can get complex quickly so hopefully this introduction wasn't so. :)
 

FrantzM

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I agree

That's why I have mine ISF calibrated after at least 100 hours of use before doing so

Well it can be a problem ... Sometimes one doesn't have access to calibrator ... I could not calibrate my SONY PJ in Haiti for example ... I could have it calibrated in the USA and brought to Haiti but I was told it wouldn't be good to calibrate without taking the room into account (room wasn't a bat cave) so I had to go to forums (mostly AVS) and try people calibration numbers through the "secret" menus ... Some sets are quite good out of the box. Samsung had a PJ that was designed by Joe Kane which I heard was very close to D6500 out of the box ...
And on the Elite... Out of "Torch" mode and properly set (not calibrated) mind you they can be truly superb .. Calibrated (which I did for mine despite the problem with the room ) they could look spectacular not in the exaggerated but in term of accuracy and color truth
 

fas42

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Thanks. But how do you know what the colors are supposed to look like? How do folks develop a reference for color?
As everyone is saying, it can be a very complex and/or expensive business. How I went about it is by using a Joe Kane DVE disk on a reasonable quality LCD, for which I was able to find the "naughty" codes for getting into the service menu. The disk comes with the colour filters which, as Amir mentioned above, weren't all that brilliant for getting the colour right. (Thanks for that insight, Amir, can you point me somewhere that explains the reasons why?). But the disk still allowed me to get very close to reasonable settings initially.

I then fine tuned the colours over the period of some days by what to me is using the best reference of all: the physical world around me. The ideal was a gardening show broadcast, I would have plants I could see through the window outside at the same time as they were showing on the screen, and I would aim to get the greens just right. This was an incremental thing, a little bit forward on this control, a little bit back on another, over some days, until I was happy.

This may seem a bit seat of the pants, but it worked out very well. Natural skin tone comes over excellently, when they push the colour on show promos and ads it looks obvious that someone in the studio has got finger happy, but all normal broadcasting, and DVDs and Blu Rays look spot on.

Frank
 

caesar

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May 30, 2010
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Thank you! Great stuff!!

Now the challenge is to find a normalized environment to make these comparisons at a retailer.
 

amirm

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The disk comes with the colour filters which, as Amir mentioned above, weren't all that brilliant for getting the colour right. (Thanks for that insight, Amir, can you point me somewhere that explains the reasons why?). But the disk still allowed me to get very close to reasonable settings initially.
Sorry for the late reply. The problem is this. The color charts are designed so that you only look at them with one color component only. The filters attempt to filter out all other lights. But you are not going to get a accurate filter for $1 or whatever it cost to throw them in these discs. LCDs and Plasmas can have strong and wild spectrum of light which the blue filter cannot successfully filter out. This wasn't as much of an issue with CRTs which were dimmer and didn't have as wide of a spectrum.

Also, the filters change with age and humidity, further making them inaccurate.

Net, net, they are a very coarse tool for the job and you ultimately need to use your eye to properly set them if you don't have access to a meter.
 

NorthStar

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This is the only "Sticky" thread in this TV Forum section.
The last post above is eight years and eight months old.
But this short video belongs right here, in the main topic of this thread.
So rather than starting a new thread I made the best decision...on topic.

How can you tell if one TV has a better picture than another?
Say OLED versus QLED, the top two best TV technologies today (end of 2019).


If I'm watching a film on 4K Blu-ray ... say a Star Wars movie with an infinite dark black galaxy populated by billion of stars. It's obvious above which TV is best, not one ounce of a doubt.
If you want the best that's the technology to get today.
And as a bonus they are now tremendously affordable.

Don't buy a cheap TV for less that few hundred bucks; a nice iPhone today costs more than a grand. Remember the first round cathode ray tube black and white TV you bought in the fifties?
She was inside a wood console and all your friends were a coming over to watch their favorite sports on a 25" diagonal round screen.
Today a TV will elevate that experience multifold and on a much higher emotional level; say watching Baraka and Samsara from Blu-ray on a 55" to 77" OLED TV screen.

There are films and world documentaries and music concerts and sports events and Netflix and HBO and Disney+ series that provide a level of visual and auditory emotions and sensations that no ultra high-end hi-fi stereo system in the whole world could even contemplate to approach.
Don't use the TV speakers, go on full aboard with a multichannel pre/pro and live life today the way it was meant to be...Dolby Cinema Vision & Atmos.

Another example (I know my movie taste is not the same as others); you don't know what Roma looks and sounds like with all the emotions if you never watched it. And even more so on a large OLED TV setup with a Dolby Atmos sound system.

We are not immortal, we don't live forever, we have only one fifth left of our lives to live (more or less). To deprive ourselves of the greatest films and documentaries and music concerts is missing some of the great cinematic art of this world, is to miss some of the most prestigious grand masters of cinematography and moving picture music score composers in the world's history.

It is impossible to assist live to those films and documentaries, zero possibility unless you have a nice quality picture TV and the sound to accompany it.
We are humans, made of emotional chords, with six senses; the sixth one is the balanced combination of the five...in the heart and soul of man, woman and child.

Don't watch Green Book and The Irishman on your phone or tablet, don't watch Lawrence of Arabia or a Terrence Malick's film on the same devices. Elevate your life's emotional level to a much higher dimension, get an OLED TV ... the larger the better, and with sound (film music scores) to match.

We are @ the end of this decade, the next one is THEE one...with a capital "A" ... Art of cinema.
Don't wait for the next life because there's no next life; this is the only life we have on this planet, this is it, and 4/5th of it is already gone. I remember three great members here, André and Ron and Rodney (I'm sure there are more); rest in peace among the stars above the clouds.
Don't deprive yourself of the history in Cinema; it's indispensable to be well connected with the grand masters and their contributions.

What's Best is everything that is higher than ourselves, get an OLED TV, a big one.
 
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