Perfection comes in many shapes and sizes. A snowflake, for example, is a tiny spot of elegance not much bigger than a pencil point. At the opposite end of the scale, the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101, explodes into the sky as a series of cascading tiers stretching 101 stories to a spire that ends on a point not much bigger than a snowflake. Both are perfect in their own right, and both stand as monuments to the best the world has to offer.
So, too, do the HDTVs assembled here amount to monuments of sorts. Each is among its maker’s best work and reaches for the state of the art in TV design. Pioneer’s Elite PR0-1130HD ($6,500) is the top 50-incher from a company that many believe is the best plasma TV manufacturer on the planet. Mitsubishi, long a respected name in rear-projection big screens, shows off in the 62-inch WD-62827 ($5,299), a high-end 1080p DLP set with a built in high-def video recorder. And JVC, which helped blaze the trail for today’s LCoS-based displays with its HD-ILA technology, now has its own 1080p models to brag about, including the new 70-inch HD-70FH96 ($6,000).
|
What We Think
|
||
| Pioneer PRO-1130HD |
Mitsubishi WD-62827 |
JVC HD-70FH96 |
| Great looks and an even better picture make this pricey plasma worth every penny. | With a big screen, good color, and plenty of detail in dark scenes, this HDTV is a strong contender. | JVC's 70-inch flagship rear projector delivers one of the best pictures we’ve seen yet on a 1080p HDTV. |
Can these TVs achieve perfection? Well, in reality, nothing is perfect. But read on, and you're at least bound to find an HDTV that's perfect for you.
Pioneer Elite
50-inch Plasma HDTV
by Al Griffin
The downward slope in plasma TV prices over the past two years has been dramatic — you can now find a handful of 50-inch models selling for less than $3,000. That's exciting for shoppers, but just as compelling is that some plasma TV makers still strive to improve image quality in this competitive environment. Pioneer, long one of the most respected names in plasma, is one of them. At $6,500 the Pioneer Elite PRO-1130HD is far from the cheapest 50-inch plasma on the block. But if you're more interested in video performance than getting the best possible deal, you'll want to know what the company's been up to.
The key new development in Pioneer's plasma line is the addition of what the company calls a "crystal emissive layer" that sits between the panel’s glass surface and the matrix of plasma cells that create the image. This is said to help the panel transmit light more efficiently, speeding up its response to changes in the video signal and driving down the set’s power consumption. The long and short of this is deeper, more CRT-like blacks, more solid pictures in scenes with quick motion, and, presumably, a lower electric bill.
The PRO-1130HD also boasts several other special features. One is Advanced Pure Cinema, a video processing mode that combines a 3:3 pulldown sequence for film-based programs with an unusually fast (72-Hz) screen refresh rate to deliver more natural motion. Another is an Enhanced ISF C3 mode developed in conjunction with the Imaging Science Foundation, which lets professional video calibrators set up special picture presets that you can access along with the regular ones like Movie and Game.
In addition to high-end videophile stuff, the Pioneer offers amenities like a built-in digital cable-ready tuner with a CableCARD slot, the TV Guide On Screen program guide, and a special menu called Home Gallery for viewing digital pictures via the set’s PC Card slot. All cool perks, but the real draw here is the PRO-1130HD's sleek looks. Its glossy black bezel is much thinner than that on most plasma TVs, giving the screen a "floating" effect. It comes with a sturdy stand that also swivels. For good measure, Pioneer throws in a pair of matching side-mounted speakers.
Many new plasmas have integrated tuners, but Pioneer still uses a separate media receiver (shown), about the size of a typical DVD player, for hooking up video sources. There are definite advantages to this design — the receiver sits in your rack like an ordinary component, with a single cable running to the TV rather than an unruly tangle of wires. You get a wide range of connection options, including two HDMI inputs, two i.Link ports for hooking up a D-VHS recorder, and an optical digital audio output for routing Dolby Digital soundtracks to your home theater rig.
Beneath the front panel’s flip-up door there's a VGA-style input that lets you connect a computer and the PC Card slot, which accepts virtually all flash-memory formats via an adapter. Also of note: a front-panel component-video input so you can plug in your new Xbox 360 and play games in high-def.Pioneer's well-designed remote control has not only a clean button layout and backlit keypad, but also two rows of input buttons near the top for switching sources. Sweet! Punching the Size button lets you select from the TV’s display modes: 4:3, Full (16:9), Zoom, Cinema, and Wide (a stretch mode). Most of these can be selected for both standard and high-def signals. One strange thing I noticed was that selecting Auto Sidemask, a feature that automatically varies the brightness of the gray side panels when the set’s 4:3 display mode is active, caused a distracting black and white "ghost" version of the main image to appear within the panels. Pioneer says this isn't a bug but a feature to help reduce uneven phosphor wear, or burn-in, on the screen! Just set this mode to the Fixed option, which eliminates the "ghosts," and forget it.
|
The Short Form
|
| $6,500 ($10,000 LIST) / 48.25 x 28.25 x 3.5 IN / 70 LBS / pioneerelectronics.com / 800-421-1404 |
|
Plus
|
| •Very crisp pictures from HDTV and DVD. •Deep blacks and fine shadow detail. •Extra-sensitive built-in tuner. •Great looks and feature package. |
|
Minus
|
| •Expensive. |
|
Key Features
|
| •1,280 x 768-resolution plasma display •Built-in HDTV tuner •Digital cable-ready with TV Guide On Screen •inputs CableCARD slot; PC Card slot; 2 i.Link; 2 HDMI; VGA, 3 component-video, and 3 A/V with composite- and S-video, all with analog stereo audio; 2 RF cable/antenna •outputs optical digital audio; composite video with analog stereo audio; minijack headphone •PRICE $6,500 ($10,000 list) |
|
Test Bench
|
| The Pioneer's Mid-Low color-temperature mode measured close to the 6,500-K standard, but the set displayed a mild shift toward green at both ends of its grayscale, which I was able to correct using the high and low red, green, and blue adjustments in the Manual color-temperature submenu — no service menus needed. Color-decoder error was minimal, and picture uniformity was excellent. The set also cleanly resolved 720p-format multiburst test patterns at full resolution via its HDMI and component-video inputs. Click here for full lab results |
The Pioneer's extensive picture adjustments let me really dive in and tweak the picture. It has a total of six picture presets, all of which can be adjusted and stored in memory with your changes. One preset, Pure, eliminates virtually all picture processing so you can watch the incoming program "as is." You can also modify the User preset separately for each video input, tweaking the picture for each source you've connected.
Among the other highlights are a suite of six color-temperature modes along with a manual mode where you can independently tweak red, green, and blue levels; a Color Management menu that also lets you adjust secondary colors like yellow, magenta, and cyan; gamma and black-level adjustments; and a Pure Cinema menu featuring the Advanced Pure Cinema display mode described earlier. And I’m just scratching the surface here. Even before you look at the picture, the 1130HD is a videophile's dream.
PICTURE QUALITY To give the Pioneer a workout, I pulled out the new DVD of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the early scenes that take place in Charlie’s dark, ramshackle home, the Pioneer’s solid blacks and impressive shadow detail let me easily detect fine textures and hues in the grandparents’ dark earth-toned clothing as they lazed about in bed. Picture highlights also showed very good detail, with a variety of creamy white tones coming through in a close-up of Charlie’s toothpaste-cap model of the Wonka factory.
The Pioneer's color, too, was exceptionally clean and rich. For example, in a scene where the Golden Ticket winners are exposed to a pyrotechnical puppet show, the bright hues of the puppets and the spinning contraptions surrounding them looked just as vivid as they did in the theater. The skin tones of the kids and their parents also looked perfectly natural in this sunlit scene.
Turning next to an episode of ABC’s Alias in 720p-format HDTV, I found that the Pioneer did a great job of displaying the high-contrast environment inside a command center. The dark suits worn by the agents retained detail as they moved through the bright, open space with its floor-to-ceiling windows. Overall, the picture was extremely sharp: as an agent peered at a long row of monitors displaying data, I could both see the creases around his eyes and read fine text flowing across the screens. ABC shoots Alias on film, and the Pioneer cleanly rendered the medium’s grainy image texture. Some flat-panel sets, in comparison, overemphasize film grain, giving the picture a noisy or coarse quality, but the Pioneer’s picture in this case was at once crisp and smooth.
BOTTOM LINE Plasma TV price wars ultimately benefit consumers. But if you have the luxury to look beyond the cheapest models, I strongly urge you to check out Pioneer's Elite PRO-1130HD. Not only does this set's image quality blow away most other flat TVs I've tested by a large margin, but its picture adjustments, connectivity, and all-around feature package are virtually unparalleled in the plasma TV world. And I can guarantee that it will look very cool on your wall or TV stand.
Mitsubishi
62-inch 1080p DLP HDTV
by Philip Ryan
Mitsubishi has built a reputation as one of the "go-to" brands for big-screen televisions. Its high-end Diamond series rear-projection TVs have long been among the best RPTVs on the market. So it's no surprise that the company’s current crop of Diamond RPTVs are all 1080p DLP sets with "wobulating" chips that effectively offer the potential for 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution (see "Pixel Magic"). That makes them tops in their ability to display detail.
Of course, resolution and picture quality aren't everything. Mitsubishi also packs its TVs with features, and the model reviewed here — the 62-inch WD-62827 — is no exception. Key among the extras are the company’s NetCommand system for controlling multiple A/V components onscreen and TV Disc — a built-in 160-gigabyte hard drive that can hold up to 16 hours of high-def programs from your CableCARD connection or an off-air antenna.
Compared with some DLP-based RPTVs, the WD-62827's cabinet is fairly deep (20 inches). But its elegant, understated style works in its favor. The cabinet is completely black, which helps improve perceived contrast. The fully backlit remote control, with large, easy-to-read labels, is wider than most but still fit comfortably in my hand.
SETUP Inputs abound on the WD-62827's rear panel, but the dual HDMI ports are the sexiest. Both accept regular signals up to 1080i resolution, and one also accepts PC input up to 720p resolution. There are also three HD-compatible component-video inputs. A CableCARD slot lets you watch digital cable without an external cable box, in which case the free TV Guide On Screen replaces your cable carrier's onscreen guide. But as we've noted before, it doesn't load reliably in every locale and will require you to manually reorder the channels to match your cable system's lineup.
I didn't love the Mitsubishi's menus. There are convenient Video and Audio menu buttons on the remote, but you then have to press the button repeatedly to step through the adjustment options. I prefer scrolling through lists that let you see all your options up front.
Out of the box, I selected the WD-62827's Natural preset and Low color temperature as providing the most accurate picture, but the image still had a slightly red cast overall, which was most obvious in white or gray sections of the picture. I was able to eliminate that with a few tweaks in the service menu. Once fixed, the set’s ability to maintain this neutral baseline across a series of increasingly brighter images — what’s called its grayscale tracking — was excellent.
More problematic were the red parts of the picture, which were oversaturated compared with other colors. Though I was able to minimize that effect using the PerfectColor feature in the user menu — which allows individual adjustment of the red, green, blue primary colors as well as secondary colors — it couldn't be fully tamed, and there were no service-menu controls to fall back on. Still, this issue wasn’t severe enough to be a problem for most viewers.
Mitsubishi's SharpEdge should be kept off to avoid artificial edge enhancement, as should the Deep Field Imager function, which is supposed to optimize contrast as image content changes but sometimes ended up brightening the blacks. The video noise-reduction feature worked surprisingly well, so I left it on.
|
The Short Form
|
| $5,299 ($5,599 LIST) / mitsubishi-tv.com / 800-332-2119 / 59.75 x 40.5 x 20.25 IN / 146 LBS |
|
Plus
|
| •Superb detail in dark shadows and bright highlights. •Clearly labeled, backlit remote control. •Built-in DVR. |
|
Minus
|
| •Slightly oversaturated reds. |
|
Key Features
|
| •62-inch (diagonal) screen with effective 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution •Wobulating DLP light engine •Digital cable-ready tuner with TV Guide On Screen •Front inputs IEEE 1394; composite/S-video with analog stereo audio •Rear inputs CableCARD slot; 2 HDMI; 2 IEEE 1394; 3 HDTV-compatible component video and 2 composite/S-video, all with analog stereo audio; 2 RF antenna/cable •Rear outputs composite-video; coaxial digital audio; 2 analog stereo audio |
|
Test Bench
|
| Color temperature was slightly warm out of the box with the Natural picture preset and Low color-temperature preset but was easily fixed in the service menu. Grayscale tracking was within ±100 K of the standard 6,500 K after calibration. Color decoding showed +15% red and –10% green errors, which I was able to minimize, but not eliminate, with user menu controls. The TV couldn't fully resolve a 1080i multiburst test pattern, but I didn’t detect any softness in high-def programs. Click here for full lab results |
Most remarkable was the set's ability to deliver plenty of detail in dark areas of the picture. In the opening chapters, as Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team explore the shipwrecked Titanic on the murky ocean floor, every last barnacle was visible on the railings of the sunken vessel — on many TVs they would have disappeared into the darkness. When the dive team searches the stateroom for the safe thought to be holding a rare diamond necklace, I could see details on the small combination dial despite its being cast in shadow.
Equally impressive was the set's ability to retain detail in bright highlights. As Rose's mother (Frances Fisher) boards the Titanic in Chapter 9, she turns her head toward the sun. Even though her pale face is awash in harsh light, I was able to see all its distinctive features. On many lesser displays, especially flat panels, her face would have been badly washed out, almost a white blob. But this TV handled the film’s many bright outdoor scenes beautifully.
For the most part, color was vivid and accurate. As Rose (Kate Winslet) unpacks her collection of modern art in her stateroom, the vibrant purples, oranges, and yellows practically jumped off the canvases. Still, the oversaturation of red detected earlier was sometimes visible, as in Chapter 12 when DiCaprio screams "I'm king of the world!" — he looks like he's been in the sun a bit too long. Otherwise, colors looked very natural. I did encounter the occasional rainbow effect associated with the multicolor filter wheel found in all DLP rear projectors, but no more than on any other set.
Although the WD-62827 didn't fully resolve every last line of a 1080i resolution pattern from our signal generator, I couldn’t detect any softness in the image. It certainly served up plenty of detail on a 1080i broadcast of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, faithfully conveying the subtle texture of the black foam padding on the tripod Detective Grissom uses to photograph the corpse he and Warrick are investigating. Besides showing off the TV’s excellent resolution, that’s another testament to its exemplary reproduction of black — many sets would have been unable to extract any fine detail at all from the dimly lit black padding.
ABC's 720p broadcast of a recent Texas vs. Colorado college football game had just as much detail. I could make out individual blades of grass as Texas steamrollered over Colorado to victory with a 67-point margin (ouch!). If any Colorado fans were watching on a WD-62827, they’d have felt the agony of this defeat even more keenly.
Mitsubishi's TV Disc recording feature adheres faithfully to the restrictions placed on digital video transmission. In other words, you can’t record HD from sources like a cable or satellite TV box through the TV's HDMI or component inputs. However, it did record every last line of resolution from our HD signal generator connected through the digital tuner input. So with an off-air antenna or CableCARD, you can make good high-def recordings, and even pause live TV, TiVo-style, with the built-in hard drive.
Generally, the TV Disc was easy to use. With a properly loaded TV Guide On Screen EPG you can just scroll to and select programs to record, but I was also able to quickly and easily schedule a recording through the TV's NetCommand menu. Or you can instantly start recording a live show by pressing the Record button on the remote.
BOTTOM LINE After proper calibration, the Mitsubishi WD-62827 did a great job of delivering any content I could throw at it. Supercritical viewers may not like its modest bias toward red, but the TV’s otherwise excellent color, superb detail in very dark and bright areas of the picture, and high resolution far outweigh any of the minor issues I came across. All in all, this HDTV will make a wonderful centerpiece for most any home theater.
JVC 70-inch HD-ILA HDTV
Exclusive First Look!
by David Katzmaier
I’ve been impressed by the image quality of many of the 1080p HDTVs I’ve seen lately, but to me the biggest surprise over the last year has been the excellent pictures produced by variants on LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology. LCoS uses light reflected from silicon chips covered with liquid crystals — 1080p models boast more than 2 million pixels’ worth. Sony scored big among videophiles with its SXRD version of LCoS in 70-, 60-, and 50-inch rear projection TVs, and now JVC has produced the HD-70FH96, a 70-inch 1080p HDTV using what it calls HD-ILA technology. It costs about half as much as Sony’s 70-inch flagship, and its image quality is a huge step up from JVC’s earlier HD-ILA big screens that offered only 720p resolution.
To judge from this and other HDTVs we’ve seen recently, black is the new silver among TV designers. This massive box is all the same color of matte black, and a thin bezel surrounds the screen on all sides to give it more of a floating effect. If compact could possibly describe a 70-inch HDTV, this set would qualify. Its textured metal front plate bears a big JVC logo, and the power button glows blue when the set is turned on.
While the outside of the TV looks great, I can’t say the same for its menu system. The HD-70FH96’s blocky onscreen display is unrefined by today’s standards, and the menus aren’t as well thought out or easy to navigate as on other HDTVs I’ve tested lately. Nor was I really fond of the remote, which has heavily used buttons scattered haphazardly. But I did appreciate the easy access to picture modes via the Video Status key as well as the full backlighting.
|
The Short Form
|
| WWW.JVC.COM / 800-526-5308 / $6,000 ($7,000 LIST) / 64.125 x 38.125 x 20.5 IN / 159 LBS |
|
Plus
|
| •Reproduces deep blacks. •Fully resolves 1080i signals. •Rich, accurate colors. |
|
Minus
|
| •Occasionally visible screen texture. •Picture memories not fully independent. |
|
Key Features
|
| •1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution HD-ILA (LCoS) 70-inch display •Digital cable-ready •Theater Pro picture preset with automatic iris control •inputs CableCARD slot; 2 HDMI; VGA; 2 i.Link; SD/xD and PC Card slots; 2 component-video and 3 composite/S-video, all with stereo analog audio •PRICE $6,000 ($7,000 list) |
|
Test Bench
|
| The JVC HD-70HF96’s out-of-the-box color temperature came close to the standard of 6,500 K. Grayscale tracking was relatively linear, and calibration brought it much closer to the standard, varying by an average of 90 K — good performance. Multiburst resolution patterns were among the best I’ve ever seen. Via HDMI and component video, the JVC fully resolved 1080i sources and scaled lesser resolutions extremely well. Since the Theater Pro picture mode limited peak brightness, contrast ratio wasn’t as high as on DLP 1080p sets I’ve tested, though the JVC’s average black level was the best I’ve seen yet. Full lab results |
For most of my critical viewing I selected the JVC’s excellent Theater Pro picture mode, which engages a mechanical iris to limit the TV’s overall light output and improve the quality of dark areas of the picture. I couldn’t simultaneously optimize it for each source, however, because the JVC doesn’t memorize custom picture settings independently for every one of its inputs. Picture adjustments for the HDMI 1 input, for example, are shared by Component Video 1; ditto for HDMI 2 and Component Video 2. Probably not a big deal for the average joe, but this isn’t an issue with most new HDTVs.
I also ended up disengaging a couple of the JVC’s automatic picture features, Smart Picture and Dynamic Gamma, since both seemed to hinder performance in my darkened room.
PICTURE QUALITY Once the image was looking its best with test patterns, I sat back for some DVD and high-def programming on the big 70-inch screen. Immediately after I slipped Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith into my Denon DVD-5910 upconverting DVD player, it became apparent that the big problem in previous iterations of JVC’s HD-ILA technology — namely, an inability to produce a convincingly dark “black” — is a thing of the past. The starscape behind the film’s rolling introduction (“War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord...”) was a rich black, neither too bright nor discolored greenish or reddish as on some HDTVs. I also appreciated, for example, the depth of black in Annakin’s robe as he and Obi Wan stood before the elevator door — none of the folds in the fabric were lost in murk.
I didn’t expect a 1080p HDTV to have any trouble resolving the detail from a DVD, and the JVC did not. As a ship battling above Coruscant passed by the virtual camera, its hull — with tiny blue porthole windows and lifeboat-style protrusions — looked real enough to touch.
Yes, the opening sequences of the film looked as good as I’d seen in a long time, but I have some caveats. All rear-projection HDTVs use a screen designed to heighten light output, which also introduces a subtle, stationary texture over the picture that’s sometimes obvious during pans or with other moving images. But the JVC’s screen texture was more visible than on most HDTVs I’ve seen. When the droid General Grevious orders the ray shields activated, for example, I clearly saw the texture in the white light and its reflections off Senator Palpatine’s head.
Unlike just about every other DLP, LCD, or LCoS rear projector I’ve tested, the JVC doesn’t get blindingly bright in its optimized-for-cinema preset, in this case Theater Pro. The tamer white areas looked great in our darkened home theater, and people who prefer a brighter image can use another picture preset — although the others don’t reproduce dark areas nearly as well. In fact, the JVC’s depth of black was the best I’ve seen from a rear-projection HDTV this past year.
JVC’s previous-generation HD-ILA sets also exhibited discolorations in white fields, and while this set improves upon that fault immensely, its picture is still not as uniform across the screen as on the best DLP models I’ve seen. As the front half of the droid ship plunged through Coruscant’s clouds, for example, I saw a faint hint of yellow discoloration along the right edge of the screen and an even fainter reddish tint in the corners. But to be fair, these discolorations were totally invisible in most situations.
Turning next to HDNet from my Dish Network DVR-942 satellite receiver, I watched the Harvard vs. Yale football game. The suberb detail of the 1080i HDTV picture was obvious from the first close-up of the announcers’ craggy faces on the huge screen, and during the pregame I saw row upon row of crisply defined (albeit empty) bleachers in the background. If you’re counting, the JVC HD-70FH96 is one of the few 1080p HDTVs I’ve reviewed that can actually resolve every line of a high-def 1080i test pattern.
In the afternoon sun the field took on a deep, natural green, and other colors appeared equally accurate. While field-side reporter Kandace Kruger’s face certainly had its share of makeup, made obvious in HD, her skin tone looked even and wasn’t tinged with too much red. The sky faded smoothly from deep blue toward the top to near-white along the horizon, with minimal noise and no hint of false contouring — the jarring stairstep gradations between dark and light areas that plague some digital televisions.
BOTTOM LINE It’s hard to sweat the small stuff when an HDTV performs as well as the JVC HD-70FH96. This giant HDTV manages to combine the high resolution of 1080p with most of the other characteristics that make a great-looking image. Its biggest shortcomings — a clunky user interface and the couple of missing features noted above — shouldn’t deter anybody who values picture quality above all else.
Test Bench for Web
Pioneer Elite PRO-1130HD 50-inch Plasma HDTV
by Al Griffin
Color temperature (Mid/Low mode before/Manual mode after calibration):
Low window (20-IRE): 6,545/6,670 K
High window (80-IRE): 6,443/6,571 K
Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 37.1/35.5 ftL
The Pioneer PRO-1130HD's Mid-Low color-temperature mode measured close to the 6,500-K standard, but the set displayed a mild shift toward green at both ends of its grayscale. I was able to correct this, however, using the high and low red, green, and blue adjustments in the Manual color temperature mode submenu without having to enter any special service menus. After calibration, grayscale tracking was ±100 K from 20 to 100 IRE - an above-average level of performance. (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or contact the Imaging Science Foundation at imagingscience.com or 561-997-9073.)
Color-decoder error measured +2.5 red and green via the set's HDMI input and +5 red and green via the component-video input - minor amounts that could also be corrected using the set's Color Management user menu. After I corrected a minor picture offset using the horizontal and vertical centering controls, overscan averaged 1 to 2% for all inputs, a bit less than average. Screen uniformity was excellent, with pictures appearing evenly bright at off-center viewing positions. A horizontal-ramp test pattern also looked impressively smooth, showing virtually no trace of the contouring effects that are common in lesser plasma TVs. The set cleanly displayed a 720p-format multiburst pattern at full resolution via both its HDMI and component-video inputs.
Test Bench for Web
Mitsubishi WD-62827 62-inch DLP HDTV
by Philip Ryan
Color temperature (Natural picture and Low color-temperature presets before/after calibration)
Low window (20-IRE): 6,077/6,493 K
High window (80-IRE): 6,198/6,504 K
Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 113.6/72.9 ftL
Mitsubishi's WD-62827 certainly benefited from service-menu calibration. The color temperature was noticeably warm out of the box. After calibration, I was able to bring it within 100 K of the 6,500-K standard for almost the entire grayscale. Overall grayscale linearity improved from ±347 K before calibration to ±90 K afterwards (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or contact the Imaging Science Foundation at imagingscience.com or 561-997-9073.)
Before calibration, the TV measured a bright 113.6 ftL. After calibration, it measured a tamer 79.9 ftL in the Natural picture mode - still very bright for a dark viewing room. Uniformity was good, with only minor hotspotting. If you plan to use the component-video inputs for most of your viewing, note that the TV doesn't pass below-black picture information through these inputs. This may make it harder to set black level (that is, brightness) yourself using a test DVD such as Sound & Vision Home Theater Tune-Up or Digital Video Essentials.
A slight bowing of lines toward the corners was visible on the left and right sides of geometry test patterns but not with normal programming. Out of the box, the picture had a very minor shift to the right and top of the screen. This shift was easily corrected in the service menu. Overscan measured 2.5%, about average.
Color decoding wasn't very accurate prior to calibration. I measured a +15% red error and -10% green error in the Natural mode with the Avia DVD's color-decoding-error test pattern. I was able to compensate for this using the TV's Perfect Picture feature, which lets you individually adjust the red, green, and blue primary colors as well as the cyan, magenta, and yellow secondary colors. Adjusting for more natural reds had a noticeable impact on secondary colors, however, preventing me from fully taming the red push. The result wasn't as bad as the initial errors but still not dead-on.
The WD-62827 was unable to fully display all the detail in the 1080i multiburst test pattern from our Sencore VP403 signal generator. The finest grouping of lines in the pattern merged completely into a single gray bar. Still, I couldn't see any appreciable softness in normal program material compared with TVs that can fully resolve this pattern. Plus, the TV did a perfect job with 720p and lower-resolution multiburst patterns, something not always seen with 1080p sets, which prefer 1080i signals because they require a less complex conversion to fill the screen.
Test Bench for Web
JVC HD-70FH96 70-inch LCoS projection HDTV
by David Katzmaier
Unless indicated otherwise, all tests were conducted with 1080i-format signals via the TV’s HDMI input.
Color temperature (Low color temperature, Theater Pro mode before/after calibration)
Low window (20-IRE): 6,678/6,791 K
High window (80-IRE): 6,227/6,529 K
Brightness (100-IRE window before/after calibration): 95.6/24.8 ftL
The JVC HD-70HF96’s out-of-the-box color temperature in Theater Pro mode came reasonably close to the standard of 6,500 K, although it was a bit less accurate than other 1080p TVs I’ve tested recently, with the darkest areas the closest and the majority of the grayscale measuring too warm. Grayscale tracking was relatively linear, trending toward red as the image grew brighter. Calibration brought the entire scale much closer to the standard, varying by an average of only 90 K, which is excellent performance. (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or contact the Imaging Science Foundation at imagingscience.com or 561-997-9073.)
I was surprised to discover that the Theater Pro preset limited peak brightness to just 26 footlamberts (ftL), perfect for a completely darkened home theater (the 24.8-ftL peak brightness number above was measured with the Dynamic preset). As a result, the contrast ratio I measured after calibration wasn’t as high as on typical DLP 1080p sets, though the JVC’s average black level, measured on the checkerboard pattern from the Sencore VP403, was the best I’ve seen yet at 0.101 ftL. The set clipped detail in brighter areas at a contrast setting higher than 0 but was fine at –1 and lower.
The Smart Picture setting dynamically adjusted contrast according to picture content, so I left it off after setup. The Dynamic Gamma setting actually made blacks brighter in dim scenes, so I left it off as well. The HD-70FH96 failed to hold a constant level of black in all picture situations but did maintain it well in most cases. With standard-def sources, the VNR noise-reduction settings worked well to cut down on mosquito noise in lower-quality broadcasts, but I couldn’t detect any effect when I engaged the MPEG noise-reduction feature. Deinterlacing showed evidence of 2:3 pulldown but took longer than normal to detect film-based material.
The JVC was among the best TVs I’ve seen in its reproduction of multiburst resolution patterns. It fully resolved 1080i sources through its HDMI input and scaled lesser resolutions extremely well. Even more impressively, component-video sources looked almost as good — it was very difficult to tell the difference. Like most other 1080p HDTVs I’ve reviewed in the past year, the JVC couldn’t accept 1080p sources via any input.
Artificial edge enhancement was nonexistent with sharpness reduced to all the way to –30. The ramp pattern was very smooth from brightest to darkest. Color decoding was accurate for both HDTV and standard-def, although there was a slight overaccentuation of red with HD. There was a significant amount of red and green fringing along fine lines both horizontally and vertically, which worsened toward the edges of the screen. This wouldn’t be visible from normal seating distances with regular program material and will vary between individual televisions. Focus also became noticeably fuzzier toward the screen edges. Geometry was very good on my review sample, with a minor trapezoid effect that made the bottom of the image a few pixels wider than the top. Overscan was minimal, averaging about 2% on all sides, but the entire image was shifted about 2% to the right and therefore off-center. Uniformity was much improved over previous LCoS HDTVs, although I did notice a faint yellowish discoloration along the right edge of the screen and even fainter darker red areas toward the corners at all light levels. These would be invisible with most content.
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V