Pioneer Brand's Products

FEBRUARY 2009 www.hometheatermag.com

raditions are front and

center this time of year:

e tinsel and lights will

have been put away by

the time you read this,

and the new year will have rung

in. Nevertheless, Super Bowl

Sunday and March Madness are

fast approaching. As is the

February 2009 transition to

digital-only broadcasting. Even in

these dicey economic times,

many of you will want to update

your cranky old CRT set or even

your three-year-old rear-projec-

tion model, hoping that the

change will bring you to video

nirvana. is brings us to another

grand tradition: Home eater’s

annual HDTV Face O.

We held our bake-o in early

November. As the pastry chef, it

was my job to mix the test ingred-

ients in a way that was as fair and

revealing as possible. is was my

rst crack at setting up a HDTV

Face O for Home eater, but it

wasn’t my rst attempt at

organizing such an event. Back in

the 1990s, I ran a number of

loudspeaker panel tests as the

tech editor of Stereophile

magazine. So I was well aware of

the issues and pitfalls involved in

running a blind comparison with

multiple products and multiple

judges.

The Candidates

is year, we restricted the test to

four high-end designs, which

made this more of a “best of the

best” than a typical Face O. is

approach was inspired by

previous individual reviews. We

found these particular plasmas

and local-dimming LCDs to be

too superior in performance to

other at-panel sets currently on

the market for a fair compar-

ison. Also, while “Twelve Sets

Compared” sounds splashy on a

magazine cover, when fewer sets

are involved, we can give more

attention to each one in the

process.

e candidates included two

50-inch plasmas and two 55-inch

LCDs. ree of the four entrants

are very pricey compared with

most other sets on the market,

but they promise the most

up-to-date technology that their

manufacturers oer. is includes

standard-setting black levels on

the Pioneer, LED local-dimming

backlighting on the Samsung and

Sony, and THX certication on

the Panasonic (the most aord-

able set in the group, which

makes it a test case for how a less

expensive set might stack up in

the company of credit card

busters).

The Panel

e panel consisted of Shane

Buettner, editor of Home eater;

Claire Lloyd, Home eater’s

executive editor; Home eater

contributors Michael J. Nelson

and Barb Gonzalez; and Scott

Wilkinson, editor of our online

sister publication, Ultimate AV.

is created a nice balance of

perspective between video tweaks

like Scott and Shane and more

casual viewers like Mike and

Claire. Barb, as our resident

self-styled “Simple Tech Guru,”

ts comfortably in between. A

longstanding distinction of the

Face O has been giving a voice

to the less techie among us. And

the tradition holds here, perhaps

casting a dierent light on the sets

featured here that have already

been reviewed.

As the test’s show runner and

disc jockey, I had extensive know-

ledge of each set (two of which I

have already reviewed separately)

and also knew which display was

which, so I did not act as a judge.

The Venue and Setup

I arranged the four sets in a row,

with the 55-inch sets in the mid-

dle and the 50-inch sets on the

outside (angled in very slightly). I

positioned the viewing seats at a

distance of about four screen

heights from the sets. All of the

seats were in the same row, which

put them a little further from the

angled 50-inch models, but the

angling of the latter helped com-

pensate for the dierence.

I encouraged the judges to

swap seats frequently, to judge

both on-axis and o-axis per-

formance, and all did so. ey

also had the opportunity to sit

closer or further away. No one

chose to sit closer, but most of the

judges checked out the sets from

further away several times during

the test.

All of the sets were driven via

HDMI during the panel testing.

e technical measurements

presented here are generally

limited to HDMI as well, except

for the 480i-to-1080p processing

(over component video) and

otherwise as noted.

I used two Panasonic Blu-ray

players for the tests, a DMP-BD35

and a DMP-BD55 (reviewed in

the December 2008 issue). Both

of these players oer identical

video performance. ey only

dier in the DMP-BD55’s

multichannel analog outputs. e

sources ran through a four-in/

eight-out HDMI switcher-splitter

from Accell. All of the HDMI

cables were from UltraLink, with

2-meter runs from the source to

the switcher-splitter and an

additional 5-meter length from

the switcher-splitter to each set.

One of the sets (the Pioneer)

showed some subtle HDMI

artifacts (white ecks) when I

attempted to pass 1080p/60

through this chain. e Panason-

ic’s picture also ickered badly

when only it and the Sony were

turned on (the Sony did not

icker). is icker disappeared

when I disconnected the HDMI

lead from the Sony or turned on

all the sets. But the setup worked

awlessly with all the sets on in all

the resolutions I used in the test,

including 1080p/24.

e tests took place over a

single day in early November. e

venue was completely nished

(walls, ceilings, and oor) in a

deep, neutral gray. For the

morning tests, the judges

evaluated the sets in total

darkness. For the aernoon

session, we used four identical

D6500 Ideal-Lume Standard

uorescent backlights from

CinemaQuest.

While all of the sets performed

reasonably well out of the box in

their Movie/Cinema/Pure modes

in their warmest color tempera-

ture settings, I calibrated all of

them prior to judging. I also set

them up for roughly similar peak

brightness levels, ranging from 35

to 40 foot-lamberts. e two LCD

sets can be driven to signicantly

higher output. is might be

useful in some high-ambient-

light viewing situations, but it was

unsuitable for this test—and in

my opinion for most home

The LED local dimming feature is a

revolutionary development. All LCD

ﬂat panels require a light source that’s

separate from the LCD panel itself (in

contrast to a plasma, in which the

light comes from excited phosphors

embedded in the panel). Until now, LCD

backlights have largely consisted of cold

cathode ﬂuorescents (CCFLs) driven at

a constant brightness. In such a display,

the LCD panel itself does all the work

in reproducing the black levels that the

source requires. It does this by reorienting

the LCDs as needed to pass or block the

illumination from the ﬁxed backlight.

But LCDs alone cannot completely

block the unchanging output of the CCFL

backlight. The result, in dark scenes, is

a black level that never drops below a

medium gray, rather than a true- or

near-black. While the adjustable back-

light setting that most LCDs offer can help,

it’s no cure.

However, LEDs can be turned on

and off almost instantaneously. You

can substitute dozens of clusters of red,

green, and blue LEDs (colored LEDs or

white LEDs with colored ﬁlters) for the

old, ﬁxed-output CCFL and drive each

of these clusters separately in response

to the brightness the source requires in

that area of the screen. To a degree, this

can compensate for the light-blocking

limitations of the LCD panel. Of course,

the panel is still largely responsible for

the brightness gradations in the image.

It operates directly from the source on

the level of nearly 2,000,000 separate

pixels in a 1080p display, several orders of

magnitude more than the number of LED

clusters (dozens, or at best, hundreds).

But the dynamic, zone-addressed LED

backlights can nevertheless produce a

dramatic improvement in an LCD’s black

level—and shadow detail—with minimal

side effects.

LED LocaL Dimming