LG 37LH30 LCD HDTV Review - Blacks & Whites

Blacks & Whites Summary
• Poor black level, good peak brightness, and a weak overall contrast ratio. • Did well on our tunnel contrast and white falloff tests. • Screen seems uniform. • Good (not great) greyscale gamma. • Did well with different formats. • Calibrated using DisplayMate.
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Black Level (5.47)

The LG 37LH30 had a poor black level. We measured it at 0.32 cd/m², which is really high. A good black level might be under 0.10 cd/m². This means the TV won't be capable of producing deep blacks. This is often the case for LCD HDTVs, since they employ backlights.
 

Black Level

A poor black level basically means the TV will lose detail in dark scenes. Since it's not capable of producing deep blacks, a night scene might look like an evenly-colored blob of black.

Peak Brightness (8.79)

The 37LH30 was capable of outputting 344.15 cd/m². This is a good peak brightness. Peak brightness is important because it helps prevent the screen from looking washed out, especially when external lights are shining on it.

Peak Brightness

Contrast (6.14)

Due to its poor black level, the 37LH30 didn't do well on this test. We measured its contrast ratio at about 1075:1. This is about half our current average. Contrast is something our eyes are very sensitive to, so a poor ratio can make it more difficult for us to pick up details in a scene.

Contrast

Tunnel Contrast (9.94)

The 37LH30 had a good tunnel contrast result. This means the black level won't be affected by the percentage of white on the screen. Typically plasmas have issues on this test: when the majority of the screen is white, they aren't capable of maintaining their black level.

Tunnel Contrast

White Falloff (9.81)

The TV also did well on our white falloff test. This means peak brightness isn't affected by the ammount of white on the screen. Again, plasmas have trouble maintaining either brightness or darkness when it makes up a minority of the screen. LCDs, like the 37LH30, typically don't have issues on this test.

White Falloff

Uniformity (8.5)

The 37LH30 has a pretty uniform screen. We noticed some minor flashlighting/dimming in the corners and along the sides, but that was it. The screen doesn't have any blotches or color casts.

Greyscale Gamma (7.36)

Greyscale gamma describes how the TV emulates all its greys. Since we see logarythmically (intensity needs to increment exponentially to get us to notice an equivalent change), gamma needs to scale in a specific way to be the most effective. For the most part, the 37LH30 has a good greyscale gamma. The transition between some shades of grey is a bit choppy, which could lead to a very minor loss of detail.

The main area where the 37LH30 lost points was in its intensity scaling. Towards the white end, the intensity didn't increment as much as it should, leading to changes that aren't as perceptible as they should be.

Greyscale Gamma

Resolution Scaling (7.85)

The 37LH30 had uniform resolution scaling. It wasn't perfect at any resolution, but it wasn't bad either.

480p (7.55)
The 37LH30 had the most trouble with 480p, but it still did fairly well. The main issues we saw were with Moire patterns and resolution issues. Fine patterns will get smudged together into dot matrices, acquire a slight rainbow cast, or blur together slightly. We also saw a 2% overscan, which is relatively small.

720p (8.0)
Basically, we saw the same issues on 720p as we did with 480p, only to lesser degrees. The only area where the TV actually did worse than on 480p was with legibility. We found smaller font ran together somewhat in 720p.

1080i (8.0)
The differences between 720p and 1080i were minor. Fine patterns seemed to shimmer at times, which was a bit annoying, but had better resolution overall.