Samsung LN52A750 1080P LCD
There is one feature of commercial displays that a lot of calibrators do not generally like to discuss, at least publicly. Not all displays are equally good candidates for calibration. A couple of variables come into play here.
For a display to be a good candidate for calibration, you have to consider both factors. Some displays (not very many) come from the factory fairly close to specification and frankly don't need much adjustment. A much more common problem is that the display needs calibration, but it lacks the controls necessary to make a good calibration possible.
Having said this, I can now honestly say that Samsung displays, both plasma and LCD, are perhaps the best candidates for calibration currently on the market. First, like most commercial displays they are not well adjusted out-of-the-box. As is common for most manufacturers, the default settings on the Samsungs are designed to give the display more visibility on a well-lit showroom floor than they are for good performance. Second, and more importantly, they have an unusual wealth of properly functioning controls easily accessible in the user menu. Third, they are also very consumer friendly in that for those who don't wish to get the set professionally calibrated, Samsungs offer presets that are quite good. Finally, they use a common set of menu options and preset labels, so once you become accustomed to one Samsung, all the rest look very familiar. Using the available controls a calibrator who has the right equipment and who knows what he is doing can dial in a nearly perfect image. I calibrated one of the Samsung LCDs recently, and have to admit that I was surprised with what I saw when completed. I have always preferred plasmas because, on balance, I thought that they have offered superior performance, but this may be changing. Let's review the respective advantages of these two display technologies:
Plasma
LCD
Recent developments have seen the better LCDs close the gap with plasmas with respect to black level/contrast ratios. The LED backlit LCDs offer nearly infinite contrast, though they are still quite expensive and often exhibit haloing artifacts on light/dark borders. However, the exciting development from my point of view is that conventionally backlit LCDs, such as the Samsung 750, have achieved a black level that is competitive with the current crop of plasmas, except the Pioneer Kuros, which will no longer be produced after this year in any case. Furthermore, the LN52A750's within a reasonable viewing cone this display seemed relatively immune from obvious color shifts and other artifacts that have plagued so many other LCD designs.
Feature set
What particularly impressed me about this display was that the user menu contains controls for just about every aspect of image performance that a calibrator cares about, including:
Special mention is owed to the Samsung's color management system (CMS). It allows a calibrator with the right equipment to accurately adjust all aspects of the primary and secondary color performance. The human interface is a little more difficult to use than similar systems found on the Sharp and Epson 1080p projectors, but the result is the same: beautiful and accurate color. To my eyes, this one of the most important aspects of image quality, right there along with contrast and sharpness.
Contrast and light output
Out of the box the image was very bright, in fact too bright for comfortable viewing. I measured just over an eye-searing 100 fL. This may look appealing on a brightly-lit showroom floor, but under normal viewing conditions at home, this torch mode will lead to eye strain and excessive noise. I backed this down to a more comfortable level of 35 fL by lowering the backlight setting to 3. This provided a much better black level without depriving the image of any pop.
Even the black level, which has been a traditional weakness of LCD technology, was quite good on this panel. I measured a post-calibration black level of approximately 0.02 fL for a contrast ratio at about 1800:1. This is not as good as the current Panasonic plasmas, which tend to measure in the 2-3000:1 range, but it is (surprisingly) better than Samsung's own current generation of plasmas, which generally measure around 1500:1. How Samsung manages to obtain a black level this low on a conventionally illuminated LCD I do not know. LCDs have had a problem with this because they must maintain a constant backlight source in order to generate light output, and it is a technical challenge to block this light source when dark scenes require it.
Gamma
Having a gamma response that is reasonably flat and that falls within the desired range is extremely important the display's ability to provide the proper mix of deep blacks, good shadow detail, and reasonable depth. Post-calibration, the Samsung gave little away in this regard. It rises a little near black and and falls a little near white, but generally its performance is quite good.
At the low end the gamma was a little higher than I would like to see, indicating a possible problem with lack of shadow detail. However, I saw no obvious indication of this in regular program material.
Grayscale tracking
As is usually the case, out of the box, the grayscale, which is the color of white from the brightest white to the dimmest gray, was much too blue. After calibration I was able to get it into the desired window of 0-4 dE from 30-100%. At 20% the white balance became a little too red. dE is an indispensable measurement of color error for both the grayscale and the color gamut.
Color Accuracy
Here is where the Samsung really showed what it can do. Its color accuracy post-calibration is as good as any commercially-available display and much, much better than many of the most expensive and popular displays. Please do not attempt to use the CMS to adjust the color unless you have the right equipment and training. You will likely just screw up the image. However, if you do that you can always revert to one of the color space presets that the Samsung provides. Movie mode is the most accurate.
However, by putting the Color space into Custom mode, the display's CMS controls become available and a calibrator can individually adjust the brightness, hue, and saturation of all of the primary and secondary colors.
You can see from this data both that calibration made an enormous improvement to the display's color accuracy and how effective the included CMS really is. Only green showed a post-calibration dE that was higher than I would like to see, and this was by a very small amount. In all other cases, the color errors were below or slightly over the threshold of visibility.
Subjective impressions
The bottom line is that after I set back and watched some HD broadcast content on the LN52A750 I was stunned and surprised how much I liked what I saw. LCD technology has made enormous strides in recent years. This is first LCD I have seen whose performance met or exceed what I was accustomed to seeing on equivalent plasmas. The combination of deep blacks, accurate color, low noise, flat and accurate gamma, and high resolution was a beautiful, seductive image. Yes, the gamma and grayscale were a little off in the low end, but this is little more than nit-picking. If I were in the market for a sub-$2000 50" HD flat panel, I think that this is the one I would get. Highly recommended.