HDTeleVision Review

Samsung LN19A331 19-Inch 720p LCD HDTV, White

For anyone looking for a great value on a 720p HDTV, Samsung’sentry-level 19- and 22-inch Series 3 LCD HDTVs are an excellent way to fit high-defiintion clarity into any room of your home. Crisp, clear 720p resolution offers outstanding HD image quality; the 3,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio ensures vivid colors and deep, dark blacks. An HDMI input provides hassle-free connection to your DVD player, Blu-ray player, or other devices. You can also use your LCD TV as a PC monitor and display photos and videos or even listen to your digital music collection – with your friends and family in the comfort of your living room. Call up a variety of on-screen menu options and preferences via a smart user interface. Samsung combines HD fun and functionality in an attractive design.

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Features

* Experience sharp, vibrant and life-like images with BRAVIA ENGINE picture enhancement technology
* Watch digital TV with the integrated standard definition digital terrestrial tuner (MPEG-2, also receives analogue)
* Watch cable TV with the integrated digital cable tuner (subject to country and with supported operators only)
* Three HDMI inputs (two on rear, one on side, all with CEC) make it even easier to connect to High Definition sources such as Blu-ray Disc and PLAYSTATION3
* Control your entire home cinema set-up with just one click on the TV remote thanks to BRAVIA Theatre Sync Read more…

By David Mackenzie

The V-Series has actually been around since the beginning of BRAVIA in 2005, and has traditionally taken its place in the comfortable mid-range spot (the first V-Series BRAVIAs were featured prominently in the company’s original memorable adverts). Although specifications have changed in order to move with the times, the same would appear to hold true today: the Sony KDL40V4000 features the now ubiquitous 1920×1080p LCD panel, but doesn’t feature a 100hz system or some of Sony’s fancier video processing or convenience features. Does this no-nonsense 40″ HDTV display do what it sets out to do well? Read on.

Detail & Resolution

Over HDMI, and with the [Full Pixel] mode turned on, the Sony KDL40V4000 successfully resolved each nuance of the horizontal and vertical 1920×1080 line patterns.

Video Processing

The Sony KDL40V4000’s standard-def video processing is average. At first, we were about to say that this television featured the worst standard definition scaling (upconversion) we’d ever seen, but fortunately, this turned out to be a bug. An explanation: when the TV is fed with 480i, 480p, 576i, or 576p video, and Sharpness is set to “Minimum”, the TV actually applies the maximum amount of sharpening, resulting in a very poor quality picture with a huge amount of ringing.

Picture Quality

High Definition (Blu-ray)

For testing the 1080p performance of the Sony KDL40V4000 LCD television, I picked out Resident Evil: Extinction, a video transfer which looks beautiful from start to finish (yes, even during the scenes of zombie splattering). The superb contrast being offered by the LCD panel rendered a dark scene near the end in a particularly stunning fashion. On other displays, particularly those that share the same S-PVA panel type (which can suffer from response time issues when not carefully implemented), the shadows around Milla Jovovich drag and blend into her face noticeably as she walks around, but the effect was absolutely minimal here.

the KDL40V4000’s design is unmistakably Sony. Resembling a slightly less prestigious W4000 series, the company’s “Draw the LINE” design concept is in effect, visible as an indentation between the area below the screen and the dotted speaker grille. The indentation here is covered in gloss black plastic rather than the glass-like perspex of the W-Series model, but the result is still appealing, despite the inclusion of a glossy finish (which can be distracting and reflective in certain rooms).

The back of the chassis features recessed handgrips, which eased the process of unboxing the LCD HDTV, fitting it onto its stand, and finally placing it into position.

Connections

A single back panel houses two HDMI inputs (there’s a third on the side), a set of Component video and stereo audio inputs, two SCART terminals (which can each accept RGB, Composite, and on the second input, also S-Video), an aerial input, and a VGA/PC input. In addition to the third HDMI input, the recessed side panel also features a Composite video input and accompanying stereo audio jacks. In common with several other recent European HDTVs, there is no traditional S-Video jack, but we can’t imagine anyone really missing it. If you have S-Video equipment that you absolutely must use, you can do so by feeding it through the S-Video compatible SCART terminal with an adapter.

Unlike older Sony displays which have featured the blue and yellow “WEGA GATE” style menu, the Sony KDL40V4000 instead features elegant menus which resemble a slightly cut-down version of the premium “Xross Media Bar” design, which incidentally leaves out the Xross Media Bar in favour of a standard list. Whilst accessing menus, the entire screen is covered in transparent blue. Upon making a picture adjustment, the transparent blue gives way to reveal the TV picture below, allowing the user to see the effects of the change.

Sony’s EPG design does not appear to have undergone any radical changes since the previous models, but this isn’t a problem, because it’s easy on the eyes, suitably responsive, and easy to use. The information banner is nice and small, and appears momentarily at the top of the screen after changing channels.

Benchmark Test Results

Power Consumption

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By David Mackenzie

The TH50PZ800B’s bezel design is more or less consistent with Panasonic’s other Plasma displays. Its stand-out feature is the rather attractive silver curve at the bottom of the display, which features a unique “curved” Power button, as well as a rugged-feeling flap which lifts smoothly upwards to reveal front-mounted HDMI, legacy video, and SD card inputs, and some buttons. Panasonic dubs this arrangement the “Horizontal Arch design”, and we have to say, we like it quite a lot.

Panasonic TH50PZ800B is a 50″ plasma television positioned at the high end of the company’s lineup. Key features of this model include the Full HD 1920×1080p resolution, a quoted contrast ratio of 30,000:1, and the company’s V-REAL PRO 3 processing engine

Connections

The Panasonic TH50PZ800B plasma TV includes connectivity options to suit most purposes. The back panel features two SCART terminals (one of which can also accept S-Video feeds), analogue Component video and stereo audio inputs, three HDMIs, and a VGA PC input.

The fourth HDMI port is located under the flap on the front of the Panasonic TH50PZ800B (alongside the SD Card input and legacy S-Video and Composite video inputs).

The top-level adjustment in the Picture menu is for the [Viewing Mode], which allows selection of [Dynamic], [Normal], [Cinema] or [Eco]. The Panasonic TH50PZ800B plasma television does not feature per-input settings; but these four modes can be applied to inputs to partially address the problem (however, there are subtle differences in the video output between the modes, even if both are configured identically in the menu).

[Colour Balance] controls the Greyscale, with options for blue-tinted video [Cool], less-blue tinted video (oddly labeled as [Normal]), and [Warm], which we selected. [Colour Management] makes an almost unnoticeable change to the saturation of certain colours, and is not a Colour Management System like the name suggests. Finally, [P-NR] uses spatial noise reduction in an attempt to soften areas of the picture where noise often lies. This is a relatively ineffective noise reduction technique, as most objectionable noise is fast moving and would be better tackled with a temporal filter.

The [Setup] menu houses additional video tweaks, with options to toggle the [Intelligent Frame Creation] interpolation feature, [Picture Overscan] (which can be used to achieve 1:1 mapping on 1080i/1080p sources), and the [Side Panel] option to change the intensity of the side-bars for 4:3 content (the default option is [High] which uses grey-coloured bars, to help avoid image retention).

The Panasonic TH50PZ800B HDTV will certainly please gamers with its low level of input lag (which we measured at around 10-20ms). However, as most next-generation console games do not contain consistent frame rates, we assumed that users might like to turn on the [Intelligent Frame Creation] mode to improve fluidity. This created two adverse effects: firstly, the level of input lag was upped to 30ms, and secondly, scanline-esque jaggedness and jitter were introduced, suggesting that IFC function converts internally to 1080i for its operation.

Benchmark Test Results

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