Setting The Best Picture Quality

You can easily see with your own eyes the difference between good and poor picture quality. However, the technical definitions of image quality are rather complicated: image quality is a mix of contrast ratio, color saturation, accuracy and resolution.

Contrast ratio is the ratio between the darkest and the brightest color your HDTV can produce. Obviously, the higher the contrast ratio is, the better your system is. Low contrast ratio means washed out pictures, dull images and lost details. In the recent years contrast ratio had been greatly improved. Best contrast ratios have a price premium, but technology is getting cheaper. At this time, even the low-end HDTV’s have decent contrast ratios.

Black levels are also very important for good picture quality. Good black levels mean you see absolute blacks, not greyish blacks. Poor black levels can be especially annoying in dim light conditions, because this is when your eyes are very sensitive about blacks. Lot of people achieve absolute black by setting the black levels too low: by doing this you may have absolute blacks, but black shadow details will be lost. Another important aspect of picture quality are the high white levels.

High white levels make images vivid and lively, and it is also makes daytime viewing more pleasant. Just as with the blacks, it is not a good idea to set the white levels too high, because details can be lost.

Color temperature, saturation and accuracy are also important elements of picture quality. The natural light temperature is 6500K, and this is the standard for setting the color temperature. Color temperature is below this will be yellowish or reddish, if above, will be bluish. Setting color temperature correctly is important because this can influence every color on your screen.

Color saturation can be adjusted by using color patterns that come with calibrations discs or TV channels. On the other hand, color accuracy depends mostly on the way your system decodes the image data. This is a very wast topic, and you will be OK if you know only that for an accurate reproduction the color encoding used in film production should match the decoders of your TV.

Grayscale and display characteristic (gamma) are also important for good color reproduction, but again, these issues are for those who want to have professional image calibration. A specialist can help you to adjust grayscale and display characteristic, or you can do it yourself, but you should do your homework first and read some serious guides about image calibration.

There are 5 times more pixels in the latest HD resolution than in the Standard Definition. The difference is astonishing: with HD, you can notice details you never knew that existed. Today, 1080 capable HDTVs represent the best money can buy.

The term of percieved sharpness relates to resolution. It means users can sharpen artificially the image without modifying the resolution by creating a crisp edge along the border of the image. This also gives the impression of better image quality.

Edward McKellen is an HDTV expert who writes HDTV reviews for HDTVreviewlab.com. To check out the latest Samsung HDTV reviews or learn more about Plasma TV visit HDTVreviewlab.com