When buying an HDTV set, the most important thing to consider is picture quality. This characteristic is subjective in nature and final judgment will depend on your actual test and evaluation. This article will offer some guidelines on what factors to consider in judging picture quality and how to do it. We will try to discuss only the important features that matters and avoid discussion on features that could just be marketing ploys. Let’s start on some real important features below.
Display technology type
One of the most important factors that could impact picture quality is the type of display technology. The four most popular in the market are CRT, plasma, LCD and DLP. Each type of technology has its strengths and weaknesses. CRT is the clear winner when it comes to image quality and price but size available is only up to 40 inches and bulky compared to the other types of display. The image quality of DLP displays comes close to CRT but this type is available and ideal for very large screen sizes only. For 50-inch screen sizes and above, the recommended choice is plasma. This type offers better color quality, black response and refresh rate than LCD that makes it ideal for home theater systems. LCD could be your average display type that offers satisfactory picture quality and ideal for 50 inches and below screen size requirements.
Resolution
Resolution refers to the number of pixels a TV monitor can display. This probably is the most mentioned HDTV set feature irregardless of the type of display. Here is a simple guideline – the higher the resolution, the better the quality of the picture. The usual alpha-numeric figures you will see for HDTV are 720p and 1080i. Theoretically, 720p is better because each picture displayed is a complete frame. In 1080i, two half-resolution images are interlaced to form a complete picture frame. This issue is a continuing debate among HDTV reviewers.
Viewing room conditions
Your viewing venue can be your living room, your bedroom or your own home theater. Each room has its own characteristics that affect picture (and sound) quality like lighting condition, room dimensions and room acoustics (discussed in detail in other articles). Lighting is usually brighter in the living room than in the bedroom and the home theater. Room dimension is also important because it determines how far a viewer could sit from the display and how many viewers there could be (also concerns viewing angle).
HDTV set picture settings
Proper calibration of HDTV displays to obtain good picture quality requires a good range and set of controls. Examples are controls for contrast, brightness, color temperature and backlight control (for LCD displays only). Picture mode presets for different types of content like movie, TV, sports and video games can also be helpful.
After knowing the important features that affect picture quality, the next step is to do an actual testing when you go to the store. Don’t just listen to the salesman’s sweet words, do the steps below yourself. To see is to believe.
- Ask the salesman to turn down the lights in the testing area to simulate lighting in a living room. Most showrooms have very bright lighting to cover-up imperfections on the HDTV sets displayed.
- This is related to the previous step. Another practice of stores to cover-up weaknesses of their HDTV sets is to set brightness and contrast settings to maximum to make the picture appear sharp. After setting the lighting of the showroom to almost the same level as in a living room, ask again the salesman to turn down the brightness and contrast controls to normal levels. You will have a more accurate evaluation of picture quality if you have the right room lighting and normal brightness and contrast settings.
- After setting the showroom lighting and HDTV display contrast and brightness controls to proper levels, you should check on the source of HDTV content for testing. The store usually has an HD DVD player or aerial digital TV source for the test. If you can bring your own HD DVD disc, the better.
- HDTV displays come with several picture presets stored like movie, TV, sports and video games. Try all these picture modes and see if the set is capable of displaying all with clarity.
It is not the intention of this article to come up with a must-conform-to set of standards on HDTV display picture quality. The final judgment will always be up to each and every buyer. We only discussed here the important features to check plus the different ways in doing the evaluation. Keep in mind that the best lighting conditions and best HDTV display picture calibrations set in showrooms are meant to impress buyers. This is not always the real-world condition when you bring that brand new set to your home. So we suggest you follow the guidelines in this article to spare yourself from frustration from not getting the expected performance from your new HDTV set when you bring it home.
