Also, here is the results of a shootout............
Digital TV Shoot-Out
NEW YORK - Big-screen digital televisions built around new liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) engines have been generating techno-lust in homes across the land. By holiday season, it should be a full-blown frenzy. While we have heard that they look good, we have not heard just how good the new pictures look.
Ray Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, is a veteran video image quality expert. His company produces DisplayMate, a collection of software and test patterns used by more than 200 publications for nearly ten years. He has just completed a “shoot-out,” where he lined up five new LCOS digital TVs side by side, connected them to the same source material, and asked a mixed panel of 34 people, including novices and experts, to give a letter grade relative to the other TVs and also relative to what they could see at the local retailer. Five TVs were set up for the comparison.
This is cutting-edge video, so all units were prototypes except the JVC consumer unit. The group included both 720-line and 1,080-line designs. The five units tested were Brillian 720-line, JVC consumer 720-line, Brillian 1080-line, eLCoS 1080-line and JVC professional 1080-line.
The manufacturers were responsible for setting up the prototype units. SpatiaLight (nasdaq: HDTV - news - people ) agreed to participate but was unable to deliver its prototype in time for the shoot-out. Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) originally agreed to participate, but after waiting four months for the unit to arrive, it declined to participate.
All of the units were driven by some of the best all-digital A/V equipment you cannot even buy yet, including a Denon DVD-5910 DVD player with very impressive prototype Silicon Optix processors and DVDO scaler. Panelists watched the best HDTV material ever assembled for about an hour.
Since most individual sets look fabulous when viewed alone, being surrounded by other great sets with the same quality is a tough test. Most of the jury members were blown away by the picture quality they saw. Many were overwhelmed and said the units were too good to tell apart. Then, after about 20 minutes of viewing, they began to notice differences. Screen size, brightness and cabinet style were not considered.
Panelists scored the units on a school-like grading system. As a baseline, the best set in a store would get a B-, so a better unit would get a B and a worse unit would get a C+. All of the units were graded on the same scale, so the 720 units were expected to score lower than the 1080 units because they had roughly half the number of pixels. Therefore the images should appear a bit fuzzier, and they did.
The JVC Professional won with straight A averages in all six groups. The Brillian 1080 and eLCoS units came in mostly with A minuses and one B+ each. The Brillian 720 and JVC consumer units got mostly Bs, with two As each. The videophiles and video experts preferred the Brillian 720 on picture quality, while the nonexpert consumer groups preferred the JVC consumer unit.
Ray concludes, “In my opinion, LCOS is now the best display technology available.” Remember that he has been testing displays for decades. “I have done in-depth analysis of CRT, LCD, plasma and DLP, and LCOS is now the clear leader.”
Quite the endorsement! The full details of the shoot-out will be published in the November issue of Widescreen Review.
