XHD3000 Calibration and Bench Testing
I was excited going into this review that someone had finally combined the best of both worlds: a slamming computer monitor and a high-quality display. Once the honeymoon was over I settled down to do some evaluations
I began by configuring white and black levels. There is no backlighting control (ouch) so you can't dim the panel to allow for deeper, darker blacks. This would be very useful – especially for nighttime viewing (see below) I also played with the Video Adjust settings to see how they interacted with the different inputs. I do this to see what, if any, controls are shared and which are independently controlled by each of the inputs. What I found was that the Theme Mode and Color Temperature are shared by the composite, S-video, component and HDMI inputs. Settings like Film Mode detection are separate for each input.
You can set the Red Green and Blue levels on the display, so fine tuning is possible and you can eventually dial in the color temperature. I found that the 'Warm' setting worked best for me as a starting point. Overall the system is easy to use and has enough calibration options to make it effective.
Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results
Perfect
SD Score is 130
Perfect
HD Score is 123
(nearly perfect)
Gateway
XHD3000 Benchmark SD Score: 80
(you are going to get an excellent picture)
Gateway
XHD3000 Benchmark HD Score: 80
(you are going to get an excellent HD picture)
| SD Test | Max Points |
Results | Pass/Fail |
| Color Bar | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Jaggies #1 | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Jaggies #2 | 5 | 3 | Pass |
| Flag | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Detail | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Noise | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Motion adaptive Noise Reduction | 10 | 5 | Pass |
| Film Detail | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Cadence 2:2 Video | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 2:2:2:4 DV Cam | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 2:3:3:2 DV Cam | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 3:2:3:2:2 Vari-speed | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 5:5 Animation | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 6:4 Animation | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 8:7 animation | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Cadence 3:2 24fps film | 5 | 5 | Pass |
| Scrolling Horizontal | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Scrolling Rolling | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Total Points | 130 | 123 |
The XHD3000 was sent 480i via component from a Helios HVD2085.
| HD Test | Max Points |
Results | Pass/Fail |
| HD Noise Reduction A & B | 25 | 25 | Pass |
| HD Video Resolution Loss | 20 | 20 | Pass |
| Jaggies A & B | 20 | 20 | Pass |
| Film Resolution Loss | 25 | 25 | Pass |
| Film Resolution Loss Stadium | 10 | 10 | Pass |
| Total Points | 100 | 100 |
The XHD3000 was sent 1080i via HDMI from a Sony PS3 Blu-ray player.
Comments on HQV Testing
There were few surprises with the results of the onboard HQV Realta video processing. The only question I had going in was how well the scaling would work since the native resolution of this monitor was so high. It turns out that my fears were unfounded – mostly. The patterns technically passed both jaggy tests as well as the flag test, however it was apparent that scaling to 1600p wasn't as smooth as many 1080p monitors I've seen. I utilized both 1:1 mode as well as Wide (we recommend 1:1 if you want the correct aspect ratios.) Those extra scaling steps to 1600p yield the occasional rough edge. The other anomaly involved Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction, which I know HQV's Realta is proficient at. We noticed some minor streaking in the picture and felt that we could quite give it a full score. I'd hesitate to assign a reason for this, but we wanted to note it.
