Samsung LN32B360 LCD HDTV Review - Color Accuracy |
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Published on June 05, 2009 Comment on this |
Color Temperature (8.56) As part of our calibration process, we set the color temperature of the brightest white to as close to 6500 degrees Kelvin as possible; for the LN32B360 this was at 6761k. But this is only part of the story; some TVs shift the color temperature as the brightness of the white falls, which can lead to color casts in the grays. That's what we test here, but we didn't find many problems; the color temperature of the LN32B360 remained mostly constant as the whites shifted from white to gray.The green line on the graph below shows the distance at which most people would begin to notice the color temperature shift, and the LN32B360 remains within these limits for most of the range. However, it does go outside of these limits at the lower end of the range, which means that some darker greys and near-blacks may have a bluish cast to them as the color temperature increases.
RGB Curves (8.16) HDTVs like the LN32B360 create colors by mixing the primary colors of red, green and blue. So, we test how smoothly these displays deal with the range of these primary colors by looking at how they process the entire range of shades of each, and plotting the results onto the graph below. A perfect TV would have a smooth, uniform slope for each of the 3 primary colors, by we often see bumps and jumps in the curves as the display processes the colors. The LN32B360 didn't have many issues here: the curves are mostly smooth, so the display manages to take the range of all three colors and display it well. It also had no problem with peaking, where the curve becomes flat at the top. If this happens, subtle details in bright parts of an image can be lost because the display can't reproduce the different levels of the signal, but this wasn't an issue with this display.
Color Gamut (4.49) When your local TV station transmits their HDTV signals, they are calibrated so that the colors are within a certain color gamut (a range of colors) , which is set by an international standard called Rec.709. Your HDTV should then take this signal and display the colors within the same range, which is what we test here. If the color gamut of the display is different to the standard, colors on your screen won't look the same as the ones that are transmitted. The LN32B360 had a few issues here: all three of the corners of the gamut were a little off. The red was too far in, which means that reds will look a little flat and under saturated. The green and blue had the opposite problem, though; the measured gamut was farther out than the standard, which means that greens could look a little over saturated. Think of an image of a British telephone box in a field with a blue sky; the grass would look a bit too green, the sky a bit too blue, while the phone box would look a bit too pale.
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• Color termperature stays relatively constant 
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