Samsung LN32A450

Black Level (7.27)
In this test we look at the deepest black that the Samsung LN32A450 was able to produce. We measured the deepest black at 0.14 candelas per meter squared (cd/m2). This is a solid score, slightly worse than the JVC LT-32P679 but slightly better than the Samsung LN46A750, the Samsung LN32A450's big brother. Especially for an LCD HDTV, where the backlight is always on and as such will always leak a little bit of light, we were pleased to see this performance. Peak Brightness (8.42)
Here we look at the brightest white that the Samsung LN32A450 using our calibrated settings. We measured the peak brightness at 308.94 cd/m2. This is significantly brighter than the JVC LT-32P679, as you can see below, although it falls a bit short of the Samsung LN46A750. Overall its right about average for all the HDTVs we've reviewed to date. Contrast (7.4)
Contrast is measured as the ratio of the brightest white to the darkest black. With a little bit of math you can figure this out yourself using our previous two scores, but we'll save you the annoyance of pulling out that remote and just tell you that we measured the Samsung LN32A450's contrast ratio to be 2207:1. This is an above average contrast ratio, as you can see below. It's significantly higher than the JVC LT-32P679, although it falls short of the Samsung LN46A750. Tunnel Contrast (9.85)
In real life you don't just watch a blank black screen, of course, so we also look at what happens to the black level as we add more and more white to the display. Below you can see a graph of the black level with the varying percentages of white on the display. You can see that there's very little variation in the black level, even when the screen was 95% white the black level was only one hundredth of a cd/m2 higher. This is an excellent performance and exactly what we want to see from an HDTV. White Falloff (9.69)
This is the opposite of the previous test, here we want to see what happens to the peak brightness as we add more black to the screen. Once again we're looking for consistency and as with our previous test the Samsung LN32A450 performed admirably. Below you can see graphically what happens to the peak brightness as more black is added to the display. The fact that there's a flat white line there means there's very little variance, which is exactly what we wanted. Uniformity (6.75)
In this test we look at how uniform the blacks and whites are displayed on the Samsung LN32A450's screen. With an all white screen we were generally pleased by the uniformity. The center displayed no significant problems. We did note some dimming along the bottom edge and corners, but this is not uncommon. The black screen, however, was less impressive. We noted some significant blotches across the display as well as along the edges and corners. Greyscale Gamma (8.44)
Update: We have rescaled our scoring for this section. The original score was 10.0.

In this test we look at how smoothly the Samsung LN32A450 makes adjustments along a curve from white to black. Below you can see the Samsung LN32A450's performance plotted exponentially. We do this because the human eye is more sensitive to exponential changes than to discrete ones. The Samsung LN32A450's gamma curve is plotted in black while the blue line represents the line we test against.

You can see that the Samsung LN32A450's greyscale gamma curve fits almost exactly along the blue line, indicating that gradients from white to black are displayed accurately. There is a little bit of noise in the graph, which you can see better by looking at the actual greyscale gamma curve below.

What this indicates is that some of those shifts may happen a bit more granurarly than we'd like, we'll revisit this in the color section when we look at what happens to the red, green and blue as they shift between intensities. We don't pay attention to that granularity in this test, however, instead we look at the overall performance and in that the Samsung LN32A450's performance is exemplary.

Resolution Scaling (7.55)
The Samsung LN32A450 natively displays 720p content, but of course video content comes in many different resolutions. As such we fed different resolution signals to the Samsung LN32A450 to see how well it handles them.

480p (7.65)
480p is the resolution of standard definition television and DVDs. The Samsung LN32A450's biggest problem with 480p content is with overscan, which means how well it can fit the content onto the screen. We noticed that content was overscanned by about 7% vertically and 5% horiztonally, so you'll lose that information at the edges of your screen. We were not able to get rid of the overscan completely but if you put the television into 4:3 format you can get rid of the horizontal overscan. Legibility was good at 480p, with even the smallest text legible and resolution was also good.

1080i (7.5)
Much of the high definition content broadcast by television stations comes in 1080i format. With a 720p television like the Samsung LN32A450 it needs to downsample this content to fit it into the fewer pixels on the display. Despite this we found the Samsung LN32A450 did very well with 1080i content. Text was not as legible as 480p, with only 10 point font and above easily readable, but resolution was good and it scanned perfectly. We also did not notice any moire patterns, which appear in some complex patterns on some displays.

1080p (7.5)
The highest quality HD content currently available is 1080p, which is the same resolution as 1080i but produces the content progressively rather than interlacing the signal. 1080p content is much rarer, however, as it is currently only available from Blu-Ray discs. As with 1080i the Samsung LN32A450 has to downsample to fit this content into the lower resolution display, but once again we saw few issues. Text was once again only legible at about 10 point and above, but there were no problems with overscan, resolution or moire patterns.