Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 LCD HDTV Review - Blacks & Whites

Blacks & Whites Summary
• Excellent black level • Very good contrast ratio • Problems with uniformity • Gamma curve slightly off, but not significantly • Tests done using DisplayMate
	Calibration	Page 4 of 16	Color Accuracy

Black Level (8.23)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 posted an excellent black level at only 0.09 candelas per meter squared (cd/m2). This is a measure of how much light the screen is emitting when it is totally black. Obviously you want this to be as low as possible and the KDL-52V5100 delivers with a black level that is one-third our average. Below you can see how the KDL-52V5100 compares to three other televisions, note that a lower number is better.

Peak Brightness (7.94)

In this test we look at how bright the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's display can get, basically the opposite of black level. The KDL-52V5100's performance in this test was average, with a peak brightness of 269.03 cd/m2. This is just slightly below average for all televisions. Below you can see how it compares with three other televisions. You'll note that the KDL-52V5100 is right in between the two other LCD televisions, while the Samsung PN50A760, the lone Plasma, is significantly below the other three, as is typical of Plasma televisions.

Contrast (8.01)

Contrast ratio is a measure of the difference between the darkest black a television can produce and the brightest white. The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's contrast ratio is 2989:1, which is well above average. This is not surprising given the very good black level of the television combined with an average peak brightness. Below you can see how the KDL-52V5100 compares to other televisions.

A good contrast ratio is important because the human eye likes to see strong differences between shades of grey and color on the display. The larger the contrast ratio the clearer those difference will be.

Tunnel Contrast (8.51)

In this test we see what happens to the black level as progressively more white is added to the display. On some televisions the black level will rise considerably as this happens. On the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 we saw a slight increase, from .09 to .3 cd/m2, which is enough to notice but not enough to ruin your viewing experience. You can see below a graph of the actuall difference and you can see that it's very slight.

White Falloff (9.99)

This is the opposite of the previous test. Here we look at what happens to the peak brightness as the amount of white on the screen falls. Generally this isn't a problem with LCD televisions, and the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's performance here bears that out. You can see from the graph below that the peak brightness is almost a straight line, indicating no significant change.

Uniformity (7.38)

In this test we look at how uniform the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's display is. We look at a black and white screen and for each we want to see areas of excessive brightness, dimming and general blotchiness. The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 did have a couple of problems in this area, especially when we looked at the black screen. We saw some significant leakage around the corners and some noticeable blotches around the screen. Thankfully the performance of the white screen was nowhere near as poor, with only some very slight dimming at the corners.

Greyscale Gamma (8.28)

Greyscale gamma refers to the curve along which a television transitions greys from black all the way up to white. Ideally the gamma should measure between 2.1 and 2.2, and the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's performance wasn't too far off at 2.49. Below you can see the actual curve of gamma across all intensities. You can see that the curve is smooth and slightly concave, which is what we want to see.

The curve above, however, doesn't tell the whole story as our eyes actually detect differences in light as they increase exponentially. As such we plot the same data logarithmically below, which gives you a better idea of how the curve will actually represent changes perceptible by the human eye.

Resolution Scaling (8.33)

Content today comes in all kinds of different formats, ranging from standard definition and various forms of high definition. In this section we look at how well the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 handlese these different formats. If you don't want to bother reading the specifics below we'll just let you know right off that it does a generally good job.

480p (8.5)
This is the format in which content from a DVD is delivered. It's standard definition, but unlike broadcast standard definition it uses a progressive scan rather than interlaced. When displaying 480p content on the Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 we noticed that we lost about 2.5 percent of the screen on all sides due to an overscan problem. we did not notice any significant problems with legibility or resolution, and there were no problems with moire patterns.

720p (8.0)
This format technically qualifies as high definition, although it's the lowest resolution of high definition officially recognized. 720p is used by some broadcast sporting events as the progressive display offers better handling of motion than the 1080i interlaced format that is used for most HD broadcasts. 720p is also quickly becoming the standard of high definition content delivered via the internet.

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100's handling of 720p content showed the same overscan issues we saw with 480p, with 2.5 percent of the screen being cut off on every side. You can address this by using the Scan setting, however this also reduces the total amount of the screen being used so the content is surrounded by a large amount of black space. We didn't notice any problems with moire patterns or legibility in 720p mode, but we did notice that the KDL-52V5100 had a bit more trouble with resolution in 720p than it did in 480p, for example we weren't ble to make out very closely alternating black and white lines.

1080i (8.5)
This is the standard used for broadcast HD television. If you get HD from your cable or satellite provider chances are that they are using 1080i. The i in the name refers to the term interlaced. What this means is that instead of displaying all 1080 lines of content on the screen at once (as is done with 1080p content) the lines are instead alternated, so you'll get the 540 even lines and then the 540 odd lines. The attraction for broadcasters is obvious as this cuts the amount of data you need to send in half.

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 did a very good job with 1080i content. There were no overscan issues, as you would expect since 1080i uses the same total number of pixels as 1080p. We were also quite happy with the resolution and legibility of the display and there were no moire patterns. We should note, however, that we did notice a problem when we switched the zoom mode away from Scan. In these cases we noticed some significant problems with patterns, if you see these problems we recommend you adjust the zoom mode until they go away.