WD-73735 Video Measurements & Testing

For calibration I'm using both the Sencore ColorPro5000 and Colormetre HCFR software. Basically, Sencore is great for calibrating your set but doesn't give you the pretty graphs that we like to show in our reviews. That's where Colormetre comes in. Measuring this set, I found that it constantly defaulted to the "High" Color Temp. This literally set the color temp off the scale for all defaults at over 15000k. Bright was particularly bad with whites looking like iceberg blue. As far as contrast ratios, from the default settings, I measured:

• Brilliant - 2058:1 ANSI contrast ratio
• Bright - 2094:1 ANSI contrast ratio
• Natural - 1523:1 ANSI contrast ratio

The key here is to switch the Lamp Mode to "Standard" (it defaults to "Bright"), the Picture Mode to "Natural," and the Color Temp to "Low." Brightness I found really varied based on the input with anything from 25% (around 18) to 50% being acceptable. Contrast didn't seem to really do much other than lower the overall brightness of the picture so I left it alone. Sharpness was a problem in that too little and the picture was extremely soft and too much and there was excessive ghosting, blooming, and artifacts. I ended up around 20 as an acceptable compromise. In the end, I measured 650:1 contrast ratio with an average Color Temp around 7200k.

Color Temp (left); CIE (right)

Luminance (left); RGB (right)

As you can see, these measurements aren't the best but they are far from the worst. There is a bit too much blue and reds tended to be subdued. Still, with minimal work you end up with a decent picture that subjectively looks OK most of the time. It would be nice if Mitsubishi gave users more accurate default color options, but rest assured that you can get excellent results by hiring an ISF-certified calibrator to get into the service menu. Just plan on adding a little over $200 (per calibrated input) to get your display to that level.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130

Mitsubishi WD-73735 Benchmark total score: 51/130. All tests were run through the HDMI input.

Comments on Audioholics DVD Torture Tests

I ran the HQV tests through the HDMI input from the Oppo DV-970HD for the standard definition tests and the Toshiba HD-A2 for the high definition. The two problem areas are jaggies and some of the resolution results of the HD HQV tests. First the latter. The resolution problem was not that the WD-73735 couldn't display the resolution - it could. But where the boxes for this test are located is up in the corners of the display and the WD-73735 wasn't capable of displaying this level of detail in those locations (most likely due to the methods used to get the projected image to the extreme corners of the screen). The same boxes in the center of the screen were rendered correctly. Jaggies were a problem for the Mitsubishi overall especially noticeable with fast motion but only with SD material. The HD test was passed with flying colors. The WD-73735 had great noise reduction but it created so much smearing (hence the partial credit on the Motion Adaptive Noise Reduction) that in real world applications it was unusable. The Film Detail test revealed that the SD picture was overall pretty soft. I was actually surprised it passed the scrolling tests as I noticed tearing on channels like ESPN and the news channels (standard and high definition).