Samsung LN32A450 LCD HDTV Review - Performance: Color

The Samsung LN32A450 did a good job in our color tests, producing accurate color temperatures across intensities of white and good reds, greens and blues. We did notice some serious innacuracies in the color gamut, however.

Color Temperature (9.09)
Whites come in many variations, from the brightest white all the way to deep greys. When looking at whites want we want to see is for the color temperature of that white to stay constant regardless of the intensity. The Samsung LN32A450 did a very good job with this. Below you see a graph with the different intensities of whites graphed on the bottom and the color temperature along the left. You can see some variation, especially with darker whites, but not a lot.

To get a better idea of how serious changes in color temperature are look at our second graph below. Here the same data points from the graph above are plotted into a color space. Since the human eye is not sensitive to any variation in color temperature we draw a circle on the graph that tells us when changes become visible. Any points inside the circle represent shifts that are not apparent to the human eye, while those outside the graph are.

You can see that the vast majority of data points fall within the circle, with only a few trailing off outside. What this means is that the vast majority of variation we saw in our first graph was not significant enough to make a difference for the viewer. Those that were visible were fairly small and effected darker greys. What this means in practice is that most whites will look exactly the way they should, while darker whites may have a very subtle bluish cast to them. Contrast this performance with the JVC LT-32P679, where the variation in the darker greys was much more pronounced and you can see why we were happy with the Samsung LN32A450 results here.

RGB Curve (8.04)
Colors on any HDTV are made up of pixels that can each produce different intensities of red, blue and green. These three colors are mixed together to produce the whole range of colors that you see, so how accurate the colors are is very important. In this test we graph the luminance of each of these three colors against the intensity. We specificallly look for three things, the smoothness of the curve, peaking and artifcats. Below you can see the graphs for red, blue and green.

First, let's talk about smoothness. Ideally we'd like to see each curve almost perfectly smooth and slightly concave like a slide. You can see that all three curves are relatively smooth, but there are some noticeable bumps. What this means is that occasionally the Samsung LN32A450 doesn't make the smoothest transition as intensity increases. Now we don't see any major notches or plateaus, which would be a major problem, but the granularity we did see made us take a close look at our test images for artifacts that can appear. Thankfully we did not see any major problems, so in practice this granularity doesn't have a big impact.

The last thing we look at is peaking. On some HDTVs like the JVC LT-32P679 you see these curves end in a plateau or start to flatten toward the higher end. In these situations the result is that you lose a lot of detail with brigher colors as the HDTV is unable to make significant adjustments in luminance as colors get bright. Thankfully we did not see any sign of this problem with the Samsung LN32A450. You can see from the graphs that the graph remains smooth and increasing for all three colors right up to the highest intensity. This, combined with the lack of artifacts and minimal granularity, produces a solid color score for the Samsung LN32A450.

Color Gamut (5.36)
Color Gamut refers to the range of colors that an HDTV can produce. HDTVs should conform to the international standard known as ITU Recommendation .709. This is important because the color gamut will effect how HDTVs produce colors given information from a broadcast. If the color gamut does not match this standard then you will see innacuracies in color production. Below you can see the international standard in a solid line with the Samsung LN32A450's color gamut marked with a dotted line.

You can see that there are some serious innacuracies in the Samsung LN32A450's color gamut, particularly in the blues and reds. What this means is that the Samsung LN32A450 will have trouble accurately reproducing reds and greens, especially stronger versions of each color. Below you can see the exact color coordinates of both the international standard and the Samsung LN32A450, along with the recorded error between the two.