Quote:
Originally Posted by mj79
i sell both and own 2 sammys .. IDK where your viewing but series 6 and up samsungs produce blackouts.... even my LCD is pitch black..
And anti glare doesnt compensate enough for the sq01 panels on the samsung.. they come out crystal clear like glass , but glare quite a bit... And the panel i believe is a good chunk on samsungs PQ and crispness
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I've been viewing TV's all over the place for months now and in dark settings the Panny's are darker. With the lights on the Samsung's preserve black better and I've seen these TV's side by side. This is also the consensus in all of the professional reviews. Aside from Pioneer there are no other TV's that have been reviewed that out blacked the new Panny's, and that goes for the XBR8 as well. You can check the Cnet reviews and you can check avsforum and look at what the pro's have stated. Black level measurements have been posted and they measure .005fL whereas the new Sammy's measure about the same as last year's Panny's.
Chad B from avsforum Samsung 8 series review from review:
"This is a continuation of the review I started on the 63B550, which can be found here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post16465584
This time I will review the new super slim B860 plasma, see how it compares to the B550, and provide measurements of the B860 and contrast ratio results for both. I had the opportunity to perform a full ISF calibration on both these new plasmas and watch some demo material on both calibrated sets.
I decided to take some out of the box measurements of the B860 before any changes were made. Attached are the results for standard, eco, and movie modes. Standard was pretty bad; anything watched in uncalibrated standard mode is not going to be close to accurate. It wasn't even blazingly bright at 42 fL. Movie mode was quite accurate; the gamma and grayscale were not too far off target, and the color primary points were just a little narrow. It put out 38.5 fL with a 100% white window, which is adequate but a little on the low side for most living rooms. Overall movie mode looked very good for a set prior to calibration, but it did look a little dull to me.
I started the calibration of the B860 and checked out the service menu. It was disappointingly sparse, just as it was on the B550. No secret goodies here. I decided to just do the calibration in the user menu.
Unlike the B550, the B860 has full CMS adjustments; it's possible get amazing color accuracy from this set. Unlike the wannabe CMS adjustments in some other TV brands, it looks like Samsung did a great job implementing this.
The grayscale and gamma both improved, though the set was still a little too dark and a little too blue with very dark images. These are very minor criticisms, though; the gamma and grayscale performance were both very, very good.
Light output improved to 45.5 fL, which added more punch to the picture.
Overall, I was very happy with how the B860 calibrated. Measurements are attached. Curiously, though, I found that I was able to coax slightly more light output from the B550 than the B860. I could not take the contrast (picture) control as high on the B860 without compromising performance. The advantage here goes to the B550, because it's slightly higher light output will make it suitable for brighter living rooms. It's a small difference, though, only equivalent to 3-4 clicks of the contrast control. However, the B860 had better measuring colors than the B550 due to it's more thorough picture controls. Would the differences be enough to be visible?
Next I measured the contrast ratio of both sets. I used a meter that is very accurate at low light (Milori Trichromat-1) and had a black blanket draped over the set while the measurement was taken. The full on/off contrast ratio (after calibration with a small window for 100% white), which gives an indication of how black the set can go in a fade-to-black scene in a movie or show, was 2481 on the B860 and 2546 on the B550.
The modified ANSI measurement, which gives a better idea of real world contrast, was 883 on the B860 and 1067 on the B550. The higher numbers for the B550 are due mainly to it's higher light output.
I have measured the contrast ratios for the Panasonic 800u, Panasonic G10, and Samsung B7100 LED backlit LCD in prior reviews. I will be measuring a 9g Pioneer Kuro (the contrast King of plasmas) soon and will add it's numbers as soon as I can.
After calibration, I looked at the same program material on both sets one right after the other. I looked for differences between the two Samsungs as well as how they compared to the Pioneer 9G Elite Kuro, going from memory of the 111FD I had done earlier that day and the dozens of 111FD's and 151FD's I've done in the last several months.
They were viewed in a living room with moderate light, though the light decreased as the evening wore on.
The first thing that struck me about the B860 was how rich the colors were. Faces didn't look sunburnt, but the colors were very vibrant. That color vibrancy and richness is what manufacturers are going for when they add red push, but here it was achieved accurately. The colors looked more vibrant than with the Pioneer Kuro's ISF modes.
It also looked very contrasty; dark images looked a little too dark, and shadow detail was a little hard to see. That was not the result of poor black level retention as I might suspect (it had no problem in that regard), so I believe it was due to the very slightly high gamma at the low end. It was not enough to make the image look bad; in fact, many people would prefer it. It's the opposite presentation of a Panasonic 800u, which in THX mode comes out of black faster and looks a bit washed out to some people because of it. The Pioneer Kuro ISF modes are in the middle (and most accurate) in this regard, and also have the most accurate measuring gamma.
Both the B550 and the B860 looked absolutely grain free and smooth, in a good way. Scenes that look noisy and grainy on many sets look cleaner and clearer on the Samsungs. The Pioneer Kuros have a noisier look to their color, and the Panasonic 800u and G10 seems to be in between the Kuro and the Samsungs in this regard.
Blacks looked very deep in this environment; from the measurements I know the blacks are not quite as deep as the G10 and Kuros, but in a typical living room it's hard to tell. In a dark theater room the Kuro would live up to it's stellar reputation, though, and I don't think it would be subtle.
I was able to see some minor differences between the B860 and B550, but they definately looked more similar than different. The slightly higher light output of the B550 was just barely visible. The color of the B550 was just a bit different, as expected; sometimes I felt yellows were pushed a bit more on the B550 and sometimes I thought flesh tones looked a bit more natural on the B860, but it was hard to tell.
Overall I feel that the B860 is an excellent display, with textbook measurements and a grain free picture that is rich in both in contrast and color. Since the Kuros have been discontinued, it will be up to Samsung and Panasonic to keep advancing the plasma state of the art."
Chad B's G10 review:
"Thanks to Chris at Cleveland Plasma I had a chance to spend about 4 hours with the brand new TC-P50G10 last night. I have calibrated many 800us, and am very familiar with them; I was pleasantly surprised at some of the changes in the G10, while other changes left me scratching my head. According to my wife, I have a tendency to be too technical when I talk about TVs, so please bear with me. The main calibration was done with an i1Pro meter and CalMAN Professional 3.3.
From the factory:
Build date was Feb '09. I first measured the out of the box performance in THX mode and Custom mode with default settings. Attachment 1 is the THX results. Black was crushed quite a bit more than on the 800us due to too low of a black level. The THX mode defaulted to picture at 100, and light output was on the high side compared to most 800us before calibration. That, of course, is a good thing IMO. Grayscale measured cool, with red being de-emphasized. That's unexpected since all the 800us I've worked with have had a blue deficiency rather than a red deficiency in the grayscale. Gamma was about what I expected. However, when I measured the color gamut, I was surprised by a high dE in the magenta and very uneven color luminance, neither of which I've seen before in THX mode. Magenta was pulled strongly toward blue, and trying to compensate too much with the tint control pulled the yellow and cyan off target. The uneven luminance had blue much stronger than any other color. Turning the color up to 72 made most colors about right with blue being severely pushed. I was so surprised by this I pulled out the DVE color filters, and sure enough, looking through the filters blue was too strong while red and green were too weak.
Before calibration, custom mode looked promising. See attachment 2. The gamma, though it showed white crush, was not nearly as bad as the gamma on the 800u's Custom mode. The color primaries were too wide, but not to the extent that I see on many other displays. Light output was strong, but it was also very dependent on the measurement window size. Looking at a high APL contrast pattern, whites were not crushed; however, they were crushed on a low APL pattern. Looking through the DVE color filters showed perfect color decoding, though I prefer to trust either measurements or color isolation (these sets can not do color isolation) over the filters.
Just as in the 800u, the 48 Hz mode still flickers. They should have gone with 72 Hz instead of 48.
Calibration:
The service menu appeared unchanged from the 800u. I started by calibrating the warm 2 color temp preset using THX mode. After raising brightness to the point where the background was not lit up but everything above black was shown, I made some easy adjustments to the grayscale. I then exited the SM and did a full set of measurements. Things measured well in THX mode except for the high magenta dE and the color decoding issues. Gamma was a bit low, but still respectable. Light output was in the 37 ft-l range, which is good for THX mode. My opinion is that while 37 ft-l is adequate for darkened theaters, it is dull and hard to see in a typical living room environment.
I also calibrated Custom mode user controls using the same Warm 2 color temp preset. After calibration, Custom mode showed no signs of the terrible gamma it has in the 800u, though it was still on the low side. In the 800u, the gamma in Custom mode is dramatically different in the service menu than it is out of the SM. You may think the gamma is not bad on the 800u's Custom mode if you measure it while you are in the SM, but when you measure it in normal conditions (outside the SM), it deteriorates dramatically. The G10's gamma was acceptable (though not perfect) even out of the SM. While the filters suggested a color setting of 50 (default), the measurements suggested a color setting of 36, which I used. White crush on a low APL test pattern started with a picture setting in the mid 70's, so I backed it off to well before that point. Attachment 3 (pic at 56) and 4 (pic at 70) are the measurements for after calibration Custom mode.
I started viewing in THX mode. I looked at some familiar demo material on my DVE Blu-Ray, and immediately was groping for the remote to turn down the color. It was pretty much unwatchable at 72. After looking at many flesh tone scenes that I look at on every set I calibrate, a setting of 55 looked most natural. However, the picture had a slightly yellowish, "antique" cast. Tint was centered, but I thought a slight red bias helped a bit. Contrast ratio and black levels looked great, however.
The real surprise was how stunning Custom mode looked! In addition to the great contrast, Custom had much more natural looking color. It was brighter and more vibrant, also, and the yellowish, antique look was gone. It was so good that my only criticism was that I thought I saw a bit of pumping action and brightness instability. That was minor and could probably be minimized further by reducing the picture control.
I decided to re-measure and see what effects my new THX color settings (color 55, tint R2) would have on the measurements, and I wanted to re-measure the grayscale to make sure the yellowish cast was not caused by a lack of blue in the grayscale.
Attachment 5 is the after calibration THX results with my new color settings. Grayscale was still perfect. The new color settings really didn't do anything to improve the disappointing color decoding, but they made the set much more watchable.
Contrast ratio measurements:
I took the contrast ratio measurements in a totally dark room and with a meter that is very stable and consistent with extremely dark measurements (my Milori Trichromat-1). I set it's exposure time to the longest setting to further maximize accuracy.
The G10 simply blew the 800u away with the contrast ratio measurements! By eye, I knew the blacks and contrast were going to be great and much improved, and the measurements backed that up.
800u: full on/off 2387, modified ANSI 551 (calibrated THX mode)
G10: full on/off 7399, modified ANSI 3892 (calibrated Custom mode)
Wow! That's very impressive! Just a few years ago I was getting 1200-1500 full on/off from Panasonic plasmas and 400-500 full on/off from LG and Sony (yes, they made plasmas). 2-3 years ago ANSI results in the 100-200 range were common.
Comparison to a calibrated Samsung UN55B7100:
Please see my review of the Samsung for more info on it.
The G10 was in Custom mode. The Samsung's blacks were darker, but not to the same extent as with the 800u. It was easily noticeable in a totally dark room, but not a glaring difference. Ignoring totally black screens and concentrating on black areas of real pictures (what the modified ANSI measurements simulate) showed they were essentially even and both excellent in this regard in the middle and right side of the screen. On the left side, the Samsung's blacks looked a bit washed out with the ANSI checkerboard (due to the cloudiness, but this was not visible very often). The Samsung had more accurate looking color; flesh tones looked richer (without being overcooked) and more lifelike. Both were extremely sharp and detailed, and both had tremendous "pop". I noticed a tiny bit of pumping and brightness instability with the Panny, but it was not objectionable. They handled shadow detail similarly. If it were not for the slight pumping, the Panny's shadow detail would be much more apparent than the Samsung's. I think that characteristic is built in to the Custom mode, but again turning the picture control down a bit could help. The Panasonic was much better off to the side. This was a very close comparison, but I did prefer the Samsung overall. However, your environment, viewing angles, finances, etc may make the Panasonic a better choice for you, and I am very happy with the improvements to the contrast ratio and Custom mode in the G10."
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