When it comes to enjoying movies and TV, audio performance is at least as important as picture quality. After all, you can get the gist of a movie or TV show just by listening, whereas watching pictures with no sound can be pretty frustrating. Yet in the push to get that “all picture” look on newer flat-panel TVs, the built-in speakers have become little more than an afterthought.

I reviewed another Mitsubishi 46-inch LCD HDTV, the LT-46144, in the January issue, and found its audio performance disappointing. The company must have had similar feelings, because this new model, the LT-46149, has a surround soundbar built right into the set — the first I’ve encountered on a flat-panel TV. Mitsubishi calls this bottom-mounted soundbar an Integrated Sound Projector (iSP), and it adds less than 2 inches to the overall height of the set (which otherwise has a super-slim gloss-black frame).

The iSP has 16 small drivers spanning the TV’s width. To generate a surround effect, an advanced algorithm takes the five individual channels of the audio signal and focuses each into a narrow steerable beam by manipulating its phase across the driver array. By reflecting each beam of sound off the walls of the room in a controlled manner, the iSP can deliver a pretty credible surround effect. On the downside, the tiny drivers don’t offer much in the way of bass, although the TV’s variable subwoofer pre-out makes it simple to add a sub.

While it’s the soundbar that sets the LT-46149 apart from other LCD TVs, that doesn’t mean Mitsubishi has skimped on picture quality. With a 120-Hz display option (and an associated circuit for film-judder removal) as well as an adjustable backlight, this TV is bang up to date with many of the latest LCD video-performance features.

The set’s four HDMI 1.3 inputs make it compatible with both Deep Color display and the wider x.v.Color space. You also get up to three component-video inputs. The main jack pack is located toward the left side of the back panel, while a flip-open panel on the set’s left edge gives easy access to an A/V input with combined composite- and component-video jacks and a USB port for displaying photos.

The remote is intuitive and uncluttered, and it has a partially backlit keypad. Six picture-size options are available for standard-def images. Depending on the signal format, there are only three or four size options available for high-def, including a direct pixel-mapping mode that displays 1080i/p pictures with no overscan.

SETUP

The LT-46149’s out-of-box picture was set so the TV would make an impression on a store’s brightly lit sales floor. But I found that simply changing the picture mode from Brilliant to Natural and the color temperature from High to Low did much to improve its picture. As with many other LCDs, the backlight setting proved critical in balancing light output and black-level performance.
The manual states that the set’s Warm color-temperature setting conforms to the 6,500-K NTSC standard, but my measurements showed that it was much cooler (see Test Bench). And the user menu doesn’t offer any white-balance adjustments beyond selecting the Cool or Warm mode. On the plus side, each input has its own picture settings, allowing you to tweak the setup for each connected source.

The iSP has a setup menu where you first enter the TV’s position in the room, and then the lengths of the surrounding walls. This gets things in the ballpark, and you can fine-tune each channel using a pink-noise signal, listening for the reflected high-frequency sound as you tweak the direction of each channel’s sound beam using an onscreen diagram. To extend the bass, I hooked up a Sunfire Super Junior subwoofer, which I could easily switch in and out as needed.

PERFORMANCE

S&V’s lab facility is just a few short blocks from the Empire State Building, so I usually like to hook up our antenna and enjoy the many pristine over-the-air HD signals being broadcast from there. NBC Nightly News looked particularly good on the Mitsubishi during studio scenes, with every crease in Brian Williams’s face clearly defined. Moving from my central seating position, I found that image uniformity held up well until I was about 40º to one side, beyond which the contrast started to deteriorate.

A live concert by the rock group Orson on the Mojo HD channel demonstrated the Mitsubishi LCD’s strong handling of shadows — as long as there were also bright elements in the picture. Shadow detail was quite good overall, if ultimately lacking some of the smoothness and depth you can get from the best plasmas.

The Orson concert also provided an opportunity to try the various iSP settings, and I found it uncanny how this single speaker array could deliver such enveloping sound. Performance varied quite a lot between the stereo and surround modes, with stereo providing a good deal more impact and warmth, even though the sonic image was anchored to the TV. Switching to surround caused the sound to open up tremendously, but it also became less dynamic and somewhat hollow. Blending in the subwoofer minimized this effect, and after some careful tweaking it was hard to believe that I wasn’t listening to a big surround rig.

Firing up a Blu-ray Disc player, I loaded 21. In the scene where Jill (Kate Bosworth) visits Ben (Jim Sturgess) in the clothing store, there was good shadow detail visible in the folded shirts on the shelves behind them. Skin tones were well differentiated between the two actors, but the color at times looked slightly oversaturated.

Mitsubishi seems to have really stepped up its game in video processing; improvements were evident on the LT-46149 compared with last year’s model. Aerial views of Las Vegas in 21 were amazingly detailed and colorful, while judder was notably absent with the set’s 120-Hz mode enabled. But upconverted images were fairly soft, even by SD standards. Switching back and forth between HD and SD channels caused a lag of several seconds before a picture appeared.

BOTTOM LINE

The pressure to make flat-panel TVs sleeker has made it tough for manufacturers to squeeze in good speakers. But Mitsubishi’s new 149 series delivers much-improved sonic performance with only a minimal increase in size. Luckily, the LT-46149 is no one-trick pony, and it can deliver the goods on the picture side of the equation as well.

TEST BENCH

Color temperature (Cinema Night Setting/6500° temperature before/ Cinema Night Setting/6500° temperature after calibration):
20-IRE: 7,317 K/6,398 K
30-IRE: 7,768 K/6,566 K
40-IRE: 7,287 K/6,619 K
50-IRE: 6,961 K/6,243 K
60-IRE: 7,166 K/6,306 K
70-IRE: 7,162 K/6,549 K
80-IRE: 7,268 K/6,547 K
90-IRE: 7,395 K/6,673 K
100-IRE: 7,607 K/6,754 K

Brightness (100-IRE full field): 12.3/17.4 ftL

Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard

The Mitsubishi’s out-of-box picture looked most accurate with its Natural mode and Low color-temperature option selected. Grayscale tracking was good overall but somewhat cooler than standard in that mode, ranging about 400 to 1,300 K above 6,500 K. No grayscale adjustments are provided in the User menu other than the Low and High presets. The TV’s red, green, and blue color points showed significant oversaturation, although this appears to be by design based on what Mitsubishi calls Full Spectrum Color. The color decoder showed a modest +5% red push and –10% blue pull. However, the Perfect Color adjustments in the set’s User menu, which let you individually tweak the level of different colors, give you some ability to compensate for any inaccuracies.

Overscan — the amount of picture area cut off at the edges of the TV’s screen — measured 0% for 1080i/p-format high-def signals using the Full Native display mode. With other modes enabled, overscan clocked in at 2%. Both 1080i and 720p test patterns were displayed with full resolution via the HDMI inputs, but the 1080i pattern showed some resolution loss at the highest frequency of a multiburst pattern when using a component-video connection. Even with the Sharpness control at its minimum setting, there was some slight edge enhancement via both the component-video and HDMI inputs. Full-gray fields revealed very good screen uniformity for an LCD. The sides of the screen looked brighter than the center below 50 IRE, but there were no major hotspots. Contrast remained strong up to about 40º off-axis, beyond which black levels would start to wash out.

The Mitsubishi did an excellent job with most of the tests on both the Silicon Optix HQV Blu-ray and DVD test discs. Its 2:3 pulldown processing was quick to lock in with film-based programs, and the 120-Hz mode did an excellent job of smoothing out judder in the slow stadium pan. The set’s digital noise reduction did a good job of cleaning up mosquito noise from pictures without eliminating detail, although I saw little difference between the three available presets.