Color temperature (Movie Mode/Warm Color Temperature before/after calibration):
20 IRE: 7,596 / 6,513 K
30 IRE: 7,145 / 6,483 K
40 IRE: 6,914 / 6,363 K
50 IRE: 7,166 / 6,461 K
60 IRE: 7,121 / 6,527 K
70 IRE: 7,189 / 6,463 K
80 IRE: 7,218 / 6,478 K
90 IRE: 7,180 / 6,465 K
100 IRE: 7,169 / 6,908 K
Brightness (100-IRE window, before/after): 133 / 113 ftL

Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard

Color	Target X	Measured X	Target Y	Measured Y
Red	0.63	0.634	0.34	0.330
Green	0.31	0.287	0.60	0.568
Blue	0.155	0.149	0.07	0.065

With the 52LEDLP's Movie and Warm color-temperature presets selected, grayscale tracked very tightly across the brightness scale but mostly centered between 7,100 and 7,200 degrees kelvin, well to the blue side of the neutral 6,500-K standard. Individual user menu adjustments for red, green, and blue brought it to within ±140 K from 20 to 90 IRE, though a slight lean toward red at 40 IRE could not be eliminated (only shifted), and re-centering the grayscale around 6,500 K across most of the brightness range introduced a leap toward blue in the full-on 100 IRE window. Still, it remained below 7,000 K, and discounting the minor anomaly at 40 IRE the set tracked just ±66 K from 20 to 90 IRE.

Post-calibration 100-IRE brightness of 113 foot-lamberts, which I arrived at using test patterns followed by subjective viewing of program material, was notably high. Although I lean toward a punchy image generally, this level of light output from a rear projector in a dimly-lit room would normally have me running to clamp down the contrast control. I can only conjecture that the lack of eye fatigue may be attributable in some way to the evenness of the red-green-blue LED light source vs. a traditional white lamp or was perhaps a function of the Nuvision's exceptionally tame reds (see below). But I'm really shooting in the dark here (so to speak).

The NuVision's primary red, green, and blue color points were the closest to the SMPTE HD spec of any TV I've measured, with red essentially dead on and the others close. Color decoder tests showed no error on blue, -10% on red, and -17% on green, but at no time did either red or green look noticeably undersaturated or less than natural on program material. We've encountered green decoder errors in the negative double digits on the HDMI input fairly frequently in our tests lately — some manufacturers appear to engineer sets this way keep the greens from looking artificially pungent. And in this case, I found that the accurate red color point combined with its decoding made for a welcome relief from the screaming reds that call attention to themselves on most HDTVs I've tested. In fact, this TV's reds were a standout for their accuracy and neutrality.

Overscan measured 0% with HD signals in 1-to-1 display mode and 3% in the regular 16:9 mode. (Other display modes included Zoom, Panorama, and Fill All, which expands any signal to fill out the entire screen.) Full-frame gray raster patterns showed excellent uniformity at all brightness levels, with essentially no hotspotting, and crosshatch grids showed accurate geometry. Horizontal viewing angle was fairly wide and should present no problems with brightness drop-off or hotspotting for normal off-axis seating arrangements, though fairly modest variations in vertical viewing angle manifested themselves quickly in the image. The banding-check pattern from the Avia Pro test disc showed barely detectable evidence of false contouring on the gray and green portions of the pattern and even less on the red and blue sections, though minor banding was occasionally visible in program material.

The NuVision fully and cleanly resolved 1080i and 720p multiburst test patterns but exhibited noise in the highest-frequency portion of the patterns via the component inputs. The set accepted and cleanly displayed 1080p/60-fps signals from both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players, but I lacked a suitable source to check its claim of accepting 1080p/24-fps signals.

The 52LEDLP handily passed the jaggies tests on the Silicon Optix HQV DVD and HD DVD discs. A small amount of jitter was detectable in some portions of the main menu of both the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the HQV disc when the signal was delivered as 1080i, however, and my sample also showed signs of moire distortion and instability (jumping) of horizontal lines (such as the mortar lines in brick or stone walls) when deinterlacing some movie scenes in this format. These issues cleared up fully when the player outputs were reset to 1080p. The set solidly passed the 2:3 film pulldown cadence tests when fed 480i/p from the standard-definition HQV DVD.

The 52LEDLP also fared very well in the video noise tests on both the DVD and high-def HQV discs, even with the noise-reduction menu option turned off. Turning it on nicely smoothed out random noise even further without robbing noticeable detail, but the circuit had no effect on the compression-related mosquito noise that appears in many DVDs and standard-def broadcasts as fuzzy halos around the edges of objects.

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