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XHD3000 Calibration and Bench Testing

by Clint DeBoer last modified October 07, 2007 12:18

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.