LCoS Shoot-Out Results

mikemuch writes "DisplayMate founder Ray Soniera has revealed the results of his LCoS HDTV Shoot-Out. He puts five HDTV's through a slew of test pattern measurements, and then lets 34 real people, including home-theater lay people and experts, conduct jury tests and make comments. There was one case where the experts gave low marks to a display that the lay people loved. From the article: 'We spent some time trying to understand why the consumer panelists rated the JVC Consumer unit so highly. It had the lowest objective on-screen resolution of all of the units, because of internal signal processing, but a number of consumer panelists commented on how sharp it looked. The copious artifacts and significant edge enhancement produced so much artificial texture in the image that some panelists interpreted it as superior sharpness. All of the Video Experts recognized this effect and gave the unit the lowest score.'"

Comments

Expert textpert choking smokers

[ExE122]

I actually think this result is just a matter of a having a trained eye... just as a real musician would probably cringe at the sound of most pop songs on the radio, despite the fact that a large number of people actually enjoyed that kind of "music". [flamebait warning]

But seriously, I wouldn't expect a "lay person" to be able to understand the technology involved in these units and to be able to make any intelligent\educated distinctions about their quality. IMHO, there's a reason we call them experts and they are the only ones we should really be paying attention to.

Re:Expert textpert choking smokers

[Anonymous Coward]

This effect has been observed even with the "trained" eye. Professional photographers have repeatedly chosen images produced by digital cameras that contain noise as being "sharper" than images that contain less or no noise. Human vision interprets edge contrast as an indication of "sharpness", therefore their initial viewing of the images lead them to "believe" that the noise images where actually sharper. When the researchers "came clean" and demonstrated to the photographers the true difference in the images, they then could look past the noise and edge contrast and see the true "sharpness" of the noiseless photos. I would guess then same is true with the "expert" and "consumer" members of the reviewers, and if the same understanding of the image being viewed was shared by all involve there would be less differnce in opinoin.

Re:Expert textpert choking smokers

[brunson]

It's like the difference between me and my audiophile friends with their >$12K sound systems... I listen to music, they listen to their stereos.

No surprise

[Tx]

I know people who watch 4:3 content stretched out to 16:9, and are apparently immune to the completely distorted aspect ratio, they just think whatever they're watching should fill the screen regardless. If a consumer panel contains people like that, I don't wanna know what they think.

Re:No surprise

[ksattic]

Has anyone noticed the HBO black outline phenomenon? HBO will play shows like BBC's "Extras" with black bars on all four sides. They broadcast the 16:9 material in 4:3 (broadcasting black bars on the top and bottom to maintain the aspect ratio), and then when the 4:3 content is shown on my 16:9 TV, I also get black bars on the left and right! In 720p and 1080i, my TV's zoom function does not operate, so I have no choice but to watch with a large proportion of my TV area black.

Brighter == Better

[engagebot]

To the average Best Buy shopper, the brightest screen in the lineup wins. Doesn't matter if the red tones are blown out, doesn't matter about artifacting.

Just turn the brightness control down a few notches on a particular TV in the lineup, and watch the Best Buy sales numbers change.

Same thing with audio equipment. Room-shaking bass and razorblade sharp piercing highs sell gear. Doesn't matter if its a balanced sound, or if there's any separation between the elements in the mix. More bass? check. Killer sharp highs? check. Go to the checkout counter.

Re:Brighter == Better

[Kadin2048]

I think in retail it's a combination of brightness and contrast/color saturation. If you look at the TVs people are drooling over at Best Buy, they're often the ones that have the contrast and saturation jacked up ridiculously high, also. Sometimes to the point where flesh tones start to look really distorted, everyone looks like they're wearing a lot of blush on their cheeks and stuff. It's pretty bad.

But this same thing happens with photos. A few years ago there was a sort of "contrast war" between the makers of different high end digital minilab equipment (principally Agfa and Fuji). In order to create pictures that "look best," they each would come out with new software for the minilab system that would pre-process the digital image coming from the film scan before it went to the printer. Generally the "automatic" options (on either brand) would compress the dynamic range horribly, then proceed to drive the saturation up to almost unbelievable levels. But customers loved it because it made their vacation photos look like postcards, so what the hell. Nobody really cares about 'accuracy' in the real world -- or rather, not accuracy to the physical world or to the film, they want a product that's accurate to their memory of something, which often is nearly unrelated to reality. Give them that, and you'll get rich.

Same thing with the "bass boosters" or "sound enhancers" on low end stereos. It mucks the music up, but people think it's better that way.

The television thing is the same. People don't really want to see what the actual football field looks like, they want to see what they think the football field looks like, and that means the grass ought to be bright, hunter green, the white uniforms should be almost shiny, and the yellow lines should be just about ready to pop off the screen, walk across the room, and rip your eyeballs out. Being true to the video signal that's coming into them isn't a factor.

This is why if you want accuracy, you generally have to pay for it or expend some effort. With a photo, you have to tell the lab operator to run it though without corrections. With audio, you have to get "nearfield monitors" instead of regular consumer stereo speakers, and with televisions, it's why there are video monitors that are actually made to display what they're being fed, instead of an idealized version.

It's all about giving people what they think they want.

Re:"Experts"

[poot_rootbeer]

Experts also go into these reviews with their own 'professional' bias against specific companies, models and brands

If the tests were properly conducted as double-blind tests where the experts didn't know the specific company, model and brand of the TV set they were judging, a lot of that bias could be discounted.

(Of course, this isn't entirely possible -- even if you put a piece of electrical tape over the insignia, a consumer electronics expert is going to be able to recognize the make from as little as the design of the cabinet, or the font used by the on screen display. But still -- they should TRY.)

Subjective quality?

[VON-MAN]

Well, I always thought "quality" to be an objective descriptor. And in the case of displays quality is synonymous with lack of distortion. Or how "natural" the image is. The JVC consumer model probably conforms to what the non-professional expects from a tv, but that doesn't make it a high quality picture.

I'd would like to see the units myself, actually, and see how "bad" this consumer model is. And I would *really* like to see the professional unit. I was was thinking to myself when reading the description; "I could like with that display!". And then I saw the price...

Re:Subjective quality?

[Red Flayer]

"The definition of quality in production is "as close as possible to the set measurements."

This isn't about quality in production, it's about quality of design. What's the better design, one that best meets your customers' wants, or one that best meets 'expert' ideas of benchmarks?

Keep in mind, these displays are consumer products.

Re:small wonder...

[kettch]

JVC isn't the only one who manipulates the customers. I went into the local Sears to look at displays, because they have the best selection in our area. I quickly noticed that the high priced, sexy, flat panel(read: "high commission") models had crystal clear feeds. The slightly older tv's, and the crt models had an obviously doped feed that was fuzzy and had a little bit of static.

I pointed out the poor picture quality to the person I was with, and the nearest sales droid jumped in and informed us that those weren't the tv's that we wanted. That we wanted to look at the ones on that wall. I looked him in the eye and said, "sure, but only if those ones are playing the same feed as these"

droid: "oh, well, yes they are. These just aren't as good as those"
me: "No, they aren't. This tv is getting a doped signal"
droid: "No it's not"
me: "If it's all the same, then swap the input cables of this "inferior" tv with that $5,000 72 inch over there"
droid: (turns red)"No, we can't do that. It's against store policy to mess with the cabling"

He turned his head to call over backup, and when he looked back we were around the corner and gone.

Re:small wonder...

[DiscoOnTheSide]

Having worked in a Sears in Toms River, NJ in the same department... it's not so much that they're doping the signal... it's that retards wire the displays. No TV shop is going to be able to show you the full quality of a TV using an HD signal. Sears had their feed from DirecTV... the non HDTVs were put to the plain ol' Discovery Channel. Now... the splitters they use for the HD screens... are pretty efficient... but there is still a quality loss at each split. The non-HDTVs were hooked up via run of the mill coax going through (as far as I could count) 80 RF splitters... these splits are NOT as efficient. Also, for some reason, some TVs took the split signal fine, others wouldn't touch it and a lot of the LCD TVs (~20 inches) put out the most god awful picture ever. The DirecTV sat box pushing the HD signal was set to 480p... nicer than regular TV but nowhere near the level that the TVs could produce.

I rewired a bit of the store (my manager didn't give a shit cause the better the TVs looked, the more likely we were to sell). All of the top-shelf TVs (particularly the Sony XBR LCoS line) were hooked up to Samsung or Sony upconversion DVD players via HDMI. Pretty much I could say "This is exactly how DVDs will look on your TV, and full HD service even better." And customers ate it up. Eventually I swapped DirecTV boxes out of the break room and into the display and low and behold 1080i went to all of the HDTVs.

The difference was immediately noticable and sales surged. I was then fired for not selling enough warranties, my 9.5% not up to their 10% "desired goal", regardless of the big increase of sales I brought in... If the way that store is run is any indication of how Sears as a whole opperate... I give it a decade until they're all K-Marts. They'd shut off the AC on 100 degree days at 8PM (closing time is 10) to save money. Older folks were about ready to have heat strokes, and as was I, surrounded by CRT and Plasma screens all day...

Re:What is Sony's deal?

[chiph]

I agree with the picture quality of the SXRD sets -- compared to any other projection set in it's price range, they top them all. But still, when I bought my first HD set the other month, I got a tube display (34" XBR) for two main reasons:

1. 50" (the smallest SXRD) is still far too large for my room. Maybe they'll come out with a 40" at some point.
2. The tube picture quality is still better than even the SXRD. There's a reason why Best Buy et.al. keep the tube sets far away from the projection models (lower margin on them!)

Interesting side-note: The XBR came with a GPL disclosure brochure because the CPU in it runs Linux and uses several libraries that are distributed under the GPL. Fun stuff!

Chip H.