 |
| The LN46A750 had a decent angle of view in our tests, but the glossy screen showed reflections that proved to be somewhat distracting. The various image processing features it offers did little to improve the image quality; we don't reccomend that you use them. |
 |
Viewing Angle (9.82) 
The viewing angle of a display is a critical part of its performance. Only one person typically gets to sit right in front of the display (or two people if you are good friends); the rest get to sit at an angle to either side of the screen. So, we test how the display performs at a variety of angles, right up to 85 degrees from straight on. The graph on the right shows how the luminance of the screen holds up; as the angle increases, the brightness of the screen decreases.
 |
 |
The manufacturers produce ratings for the viewing angle of displays based on a number of different measurements (based on brightness, contrast, etc), but we look at the angle at which the contrast of the screen falls by half. With the LN46A750, we found that this angle was 55 degrees off axis, for a total viewing angle of 110 degrees. That's not bad, but it is a bit less than some; the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U had a wider angle of 139 degrees. However, 110 degrees is more than enough for most situations, and we saw no problems at wider angles; the screen was not bright, but it was watchable. Some screens have problems at wide angles with colors being reversed or otherwise mangled, but we didn't see any evidence of this with the LN46A750.
Note: we made an error in calculating the score for this section and have corrected it. The original score was 6.16.
Reflectance (6.5)
The LN46A750 has a shiny glass edge around the screen, and this is very prone to picking up reflections (as well as fingerprints). But the screen itself is less reflective; although reflections can be seen, they are somewhat softened by the matte coating of the screen. With proper positioning of the lights, the LN46A750 should not have a big issue with reflections.
Video Processing (2.5)
TV manufacturers try and tempt people in by offering features that they claim will enhance the image quality by processing the image in various ways. In this section of the review, we look at these processing features and how effective they are.
| Processing Type |
What They Claim |
What We Saw |
| Black adjust |
"select the black level to adjust the screen depth" |
Knocks down the black for a gothic look. Has three levels (low, medium, high), which turn dark greys into blacks. |
| Dynamic Contrast |
"adjust the screen controls so that the optimal contrast is provided" |
Boosts the whites. Has three levels (low, medium high) which push some light greys towards white |
| Gamma |
"adjust the primary color (Red, Green, Blue) Intensity (-3 ~ +3) |
Adjusts the gamma curve to boost brightness. |
| Color Space |
"select your favorite color space" |
Allows for tweaking of the color space. Can turn your TV into garish cartoons if not used properly. |
| Flesh Tone |
"emphasize the 'pink flesh tone' in the picture" |
Turns your friends into either the undead (by removing most skin tone) or tomatoes (by boosting skin tones hideously). |
| Edge Enhancement |
"emphasize object boundaries" |
No discernable difference. |
None of these are particularly useful or helpful. The color space might be useful if you are working with a particularly poor signal and want to boost the color, but the rest are either pretty much useless or positively harmful. You might, for instance, think that the black adjust might help produce a darker, gloomier feel for a horror film, but all it really does is to loose shadow detail and make it harder to see. Rather than try and use these to make your display look better, calibrate it properly and it will look a lot better all around.
|
