Calibration and Benchmark Testing

We used Datacolor's Colorfacts Professional 5.0 software to measure and help calibrate black and white levels on this plasma television. It allowed us to evaluate grayscale uniformity and contrast on the set as well as generate some telling histograms and CIE information. The interesting thing with this television is that you pretty much get what you get - at least in the user menus system. As I mentioned, we were able to set Black and White levels, but that's about it. Color and Tint were about as good as they were going to get and color temperature was not really adjustable. Since there wasn't much of a "before and after", I took the liberty of showing some extremes: namely, the default measurements on the analogue composite inputs and then the digital DVI-D inputs. We found that the DVI-D input had to have its Brightness control (black level) turned all the way down to get appropriate black levels from the AVIA Pro test disc.

One thing to rave about is that after calibrating the black and white levels on the HDMI inputs I was able to record an ANSI contrast ratio of 1391:1! This panel has some definite ability to show commendable dynamic range.

During the calibration process I noted that I could not get a full field of 100 IRE white on the plasma display. In fact, 70 IRE seemed to be the limit due to some kind of internal mechanism designed to protect the unit from burning in or otherwise damaging the panel. Switching to a windowed pattern allowed me to complete the calibration steps needed to evaluate grayscale uniformity. For those of you who planned on buying this plasma display so you could watch full fields of 100 IRE white all day long I'm afraid you'll need to look elsewhere... for those who plan normal use - I don't think this will ever come up.

CIE Chart - Color Reproduction & Saturation Potential

The Datacolor ColorFacts CIE Chart is used to display the colors the Optoma PD50A plasma television is able to reproduce. This appears as a white triangle overtop of a darker triangle which represents the gamut of colors in the HDTV-capable range. The full "shark fin" chart is a representation of everything we are capable of seeing with the human eye.

This color gamut triangle on the CIE chart determines how "deep" or "rich" the colors will be from a display. For instance, a Red primary that is too high on the chart will indicate that the display device may only be able to produce an orange-red instead of a deep red. Similarly, a Green primary that is too low may indicate that the display device will produce greens that are closer to yellow than what may be desirable. A wide color gamut indicates that the device is able to produce rich, saturated colors.

Please note that since the AVIA Pro calibration disc was used for this test, the results may be slightly different when run from a higher quality source such as a test signal generator. We chose to use AVIA Pro so that we could calibrate the entire system using the full DVD-to-television path.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Optoma PD50A Benchmark Score: 41 (don't expect this TV to do stellar deinterlacing or noise reduction, simply use it with a good quality source component)

Comments on HQV Testing

As you can see, the Optoma television does not contain a sophisticated deinterlacer or noise reduction engine. As such, we simply recommend that you use it with a high quality source component. If you could adjust color temperature, this display would be quite good when paired with a solid source. Obviously, you can also see that the internal video processing handles deinterlacing and mixed modes a bit differently on the HD1 inputs and the AV2 inputs. I tend to favor deinterlacing since I don't see a lot of mixed modes in real world use, so using the HD1 inputs would probably be best when using this display (even though it scored a bit lower). The HD1 input locked onto the unflagged 2:3 pull-down sequence in the film detail test (albeit slowly) whereas the AV2 inputs did not.