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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.'"
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.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
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.
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
Han shot first.
Experts also go into these reviews with their own 'professional' bias against specific companies, models and brands while a lay-consumer, like myself, doesn't care if it's a Hitachi, RCA, Samsung or Sony.
Regardless of HOW it gets a 'sharper picture', if it appears to be a sharper picture to my eyes, then of course it's going to get a higher score over something with possibly better technology that SHOULD create a sharper image but creates other problems in it's 'excellency.'
Do you buy a name brand TV that has all of the gizmos and gadgets to make it perfect, or do you buy the Walmart brand TV that looks good and sounds good (to your eyes anyways) until your TV expert friends comes in and poo-poos on everything?
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
You mean to tell me that people unqualified to make a judgment call about something don't necessarily make the best decision?!?
This guy's the limit!
The problem is that a 64kb stream sounds the same (roughly) as 192kb when you're using $5 wal-mart headphones or the free bundled speakers that came with your $299 after-rebate-special PC.
Mackie HR824s or some Sennheiser cans would still blow those peoples minds. But then again, i've seen people who STILL can't tell the difference...
Han shot first.
Many consumer sets are tuned to be strongly oversharpened. I was at circuit city and some guy was doing consumer research for whatever big company he worked for, asked me to compare some DLP and Plasma units. Since I was doing that for myself anyways, I was happy to oblidge in some discussion.
The JVC at first looked really eye catching and noticable from the rest, but staring at it for three minutes made me realize it was because they cranked the crap out of the sharpness filter. Everything looks sharp and bold for a couple minutes, very eye catching, but after three minutes it gets really exhausting and thoroughly artificial. I cant remember the other set that did this. Way too much post-processing, but it catches your eye.
I told the guy this, he says I was defiantely the first person to ever describe anything as "oversharp" to him. Suprising, considering how much filtering some of these units do.
It is really too bad Sony wouldn't send out a unit. Their SXRD line-up, right now, is probably the best consumer grade TV out on the market.
I have been in awe of LCoS since it came out, when Toshiba's failed attempt at releasing it. Toshiba had some major problems out of the gate and I don't think it helped their price tag was $8,000 for the 50 some inch and $10,000 for the 60 some inch. They did look great though, dispite the problems.
Then JVC hit the market with one, re-naming it to HD-ILA. Not exactly sure why they renamed it, maybe to disassociate themselves from the failed Toshiba LCoS sets? They looked great when compared to DLP, LCD and even plasma, though they still were on the pricier side. My only complaint with them is they were JVC, a company that I would put in the middle of the road as far as quality. I also hate this new trend for silver TVs, but those two were only minor issues with one just being a personal preference.
Then Sony came out with their renamed LCoS, the SXRD. Sites like AVSForum were all the buzz with these new sets. When I finally got to see one in person, it was a dream come true. LCoS overall is a better technology that DLP and especially LCD. DLP maybe able to make a surge in taking LCoS's crown once we see 3 chip DLPs sets and at "affordable" prices. I use affordable loosely, as $4,000 for 50" and ~$5,000 for 60" isn't exactly "affordable" for everyone, but for videophiles, it is.
I have not heard of the other companies that they listed, and to my fault, I haven't been on AVSForum much recently. I would not trust them until I see some reviews, off-brands tend to not do well. Especially like startup companies like Brilla, they usually just don't have the funding or experience to make quality sets their first time around. The one company I would love to see make a LCoS set would be Mitsubishi. I am loyal to them, to a degree. They have been making big screen TVs for many years now, actually almost 3 decades now. They know what is up, when they truely entered the DLP market. I am not talking about thier first sets when DLP was brand new and never took off, but rather about two years ago when them and Toshiba challenged Samsung DLP crown only because they were the only one making DLP sets. Mitsu did it right, beating out Samsung sets hands down. Only downside, you were paying a little more for a Mitsu DLP. Toshiba also did a great job at DLP, I would rank them Mitsu, Toshiba and then Samsung in overall DLP quality, though the new pseudo DLP/LCD 3 driver 1080p Samsung set is pretty impressive.
The sad thing is, I think LCoS is only going to have a short life as the technology to get. SED and OLED are on their way. SED is suppose to actually rival CRT picture quality for about the same price with out the size and weight of CRT. Something plasma and flat panel LCD is unable to do and probably will never be able to do. Though, for the time being, LCoS is the way to go and if you can't afford the Sony SXRD set. JVC's are still great sets and for much less. I think their ~50" is going for about $2,500 or maybe even less.
Agreed (and I made that point in another post here, albeit a much less concise one)
However, consumers can make better purchasing decisions with the help of experts. Tell us more about test patterns. Tell us what to look for in general, not just which TV out of a handful won a shootout. Talk more about the differences between the experts and the consumers and how they view the TV. Better yet, show the lay people what they didn't see in the images by demonstrating the test patterns that clearly show the artifacts. Help them understand what they're looking at, and then have them judge again.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
One possible explanation for the consumer ratings is that JVC is simply giving consumers exactly what they think they want.
This statement hits the nail on the head...JVC knew what they were doing when they made a technically crappy screen, just like Microsoft cares more about how much users like clippy the office assistant than they do about a buffer overflow. They know what they need to do to sell their product, most other things are irrelevant. Why should JVC give a flying rat's if 100,000 geeks see artifacts when 1,000,000 non-geeks see "sharpness and texture"? They'll probably make more off the geeks by selling them some model they deem "higher-end" than the consumer version for 20% extra, because the geeks will percieve it as being so much better than the "inferior consumer" model. Someone at JVC really knows how to play the consumer perception card real well, and I bet this particular example comes at a manufacturing cost savings as well.
He actually comments on this point in the previous article in the series http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1923419 ,00.asp--so you're both right!:
"Why are these TVs so bright? Why are the manufacturers putting in bigger lamps and special higher gain screens to make these already way-too-bright TVs even brighter? I know they've all read the earlier articles, so why are they doing this? Sadly, the reason is that in a retail setting, brightness is frequently a deciding sales factor. So, like it or not, the manufacturers have to build their sets to be as bright as possible in order to be commercially successful.
I spoke at length about this with Steven Lopez, manager of the Nashua New Hampshire store of Cambridge SoundWorks (a specialty AV chain based in New England). Steven expanded upon what the manufacturers had already told me, "The unfortunate truth to selling TVs on the sales floor is that bright sets attract the mass consumer. The most accurate sets may not be the most appealing. The brightest units simply make the other nearby sets look anemic and old, kind of like the tired CRT they are replacing. Often that's enough to tip the scales in a sale, regardless of the price range involved."
Liquid Crystal on Silicon. It's a reflective (as opposedt to transmissive) LCD technology. You basically get all these liquid crystal mirrors to play with, where the rest of the logic on the silicon switches the mirrors rapidly between "reflect" and "absorb" thousands of times a second. (Similar to how DLP works, but instead of actual mirrors rocking back and forth, it's just LCD switching on and off, playing with light polarization.)
Program Intellivision!
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...
Latter-Day Church of Scientology ;)
Most consumers don't want a realistic looking picture, they want the picture they've seen all of their lives. Even with televisions; many of my wife's family and friends upon hearing about my background, asked me to look at their televisions. Most needed minor convergance/pincushion adjustment, all needed brightness/contrast/color/tint adjustment. I made them all look (IMHO) pretty good.
Virtually every set I touched was changed within a week. The single control that was most nudged: color (think saturation). Everybody is used to the cartoon-level, LSD-induced superbright colors of a children's room. Real skin doesn't look like that!. I could even hold my bare arm up next to a character on TV, show my relatives and friends that this is what the picture should look like (gee, flesh looks like flesh. Grass looks like grass), and within ten minutes they'd be cranking up the color.
I gave up. Nowadays, I tell people "I don't do Windows, and that includes televisions". Yes, I get some wierd looks for it, but I also get bothered a lot less.
Buy the television which matches your pocketbook and your expectation of picture quality. Most of you will never miss the extra quality that a 200-300% increase in price will bring; worse, you'll probably adjust the extra quality right out of the set in a quest to get the lurid color balance you want. By the way, on a new set you should have a pretty good picture if both brightness and contrast are set to mid-range. Cranking both of them to max may look like what you want, but you're just cutting the lifespan of your picture tube in half (applies to CRT's only - I have no idea what the effect is on LCD/Plasma displays).
A couple minor, minor corrrections. First off, so called "single-pulse PWM" digital LCoS displays running at 120Hz actually pulse the mirrors only 240 times a second. (One pulse to switch to "reflect", one pulse to switch to "absorb", repeated 120 times a second gives 240 pulses.) Older PWM schemes would pulse the mirrors multiple times per refresh, sending out each bit plane one at a time.
Second, "reflect" and "absorb" aren't quite exactly what's going on. The material underlying the crystal is inherently reflective. Liquid crystal works by rotating the light that passes through it, based on how "twisted" the crystal is. An electric field applies force to the crystal to twist it. Pass in polarized light, and you can rotate the light's polarization with the liquid crystal. So basically, the way you switch between "reflect" and "absorb" is by varying the electrostatic charge that exerts force on a given pixel's crystal. You can get states between "reflect" and "absorb" by applying varying amounts of charge. The amount of light transmitted through a polarizer is given roughly by k * cos(theta) where theta is the difference angle between the planes of polarization. It's a tricky proposition, though, since the material itself has all sorts of fun properties, such as hysteresis and whatnot. Plus, in the case of LCoS, the light passes through the crystal twice (in contrast to transmissive LCD), so you're operating over a much narrower range of crystal twist to begin with.
This article has some pretty pictures, as long as you ignore the "Silicone" typo. :-)
I wonder how these LCoS screens look if you have polarizing sun glasses on. Also, does it make a difference if you tilt your head? A fun experiment to try: Put on polarizing glasses, and then look at an LCD display. Now tilt your head 90 degrees. Notice any differences?
This was one detail GM missed when they developed the head-up display for their cars. Because the light reflects off of the tilted windshield, it picks up some horizontal polarization. Polarized sun glassesd have vertical polarization, because most glare has horizontal polarization after reflecting off of a flat surface. Thus, the head-up display information almost completely disappears when I have polarized glasses on. *doh*
--JoeProgram Intellivision!