The difference between good and poor picture quality can be seen by anybody. However, it is not very easy to understand the technical issues that make a picture look good. One very important element of picture quality is contrast ratio. Other aspects are the color saturation and color accuracy, and resolution is also very important.
The ratio between the darkest and brightest color your HDTV can produce is called contrast ratio. Your HDTV has high performance if the contrast ratio is high. Low color ratio means a dull experience: pictures will be washed out and details can be lost. However, it is unlikely you will buy an HDTV with poor contrast ratio. In recent years technology has improved greatly, which means even cheaper systems have fairly decent contrast ratios. Obviously best contrast ratios are expensive, but this is also getting cheaper.
Another important aspect of image quality are the black levels. Systems with poor black levels will have grayish blacks when absolute black is expected. Poor black levels can be especially annoying in dim light conditions, because in this type of light the human eye is very sensitive to dark images. Lot of users set black levels very low, to achieve absolute black. This is a mistake: by doing this, black shadow details can be lost.
High white levels make the images on the screen appear vivid and lively. This makes the viewing more pleasant. Again, lot of people make a mistake by setting the white levels too high: this way certain details and bright highlights can be lost.
Important characteristics of the images on your display are color temperature, saturation and accuracy. 6500K, corresponding to daytime illumination, is the standard for color temperature. This is the natural light temperature. Everything above this is bluish, and everything below is yellow or reddish. If the color temperature is not set properly, every color will be bluish or reddish.
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.
The best HD resolutions today have 5 times more pixels than the old Standard Definition. The old format can not be compared to HD images: today, every detail of the image can be seen sharply. If you want to have the best technology available today, buy a 1080 capable HDTV.
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 LCD TVs visit HDTVreviewlab.com
