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Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000 LCD HDTV Review - Color Accuracy

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Published on June 05, 2009
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Color Accuracy Summary
• Variable color temperature
• Good RGB performance
• Above average color gamut
Calibrated using DisplayMate software
Blacks & Whites Page 5 of 18 Motion

Color Temperature (6.89)


All light emitting bodies give off light at a certain temperature, for example stars can range from blue to red. The same is true for an HDTV. Most important is that this color temperature stay constant across the range from light to dark. Variations in the color temperature can cause the television to cast a bluish or yellowish hue on scenes, depending on how dark or bright they are, something that you want to avoid. Below you can see the graph of the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's color temperature across the greyscale from light to dark.

Color Temperature

 

You can see that although the color temperature doesn't deviate a lot across most of the range, it does deviate enough to be visible for a significant portion of the darker end. This means that with darker scenes on the KDL-32L5000 you'll see a yellowish cast.

RGB Curves (7.57)


Here we look at the response of red green and blue from the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000. These three colors are important because all colors on the television are created by mixing these three together. Below you can see the color curves for each graphed against intensity, which can be thought of as brightness.

RGB Curves

 

Two things that we look for are smooth, slightly concave curves and a steady increase all the way from left to right. This is exactly what we see from the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000, with no significant plateauing that we see from some HDTVs. This means that you will continue to see visible changes in color all the way from the darkest to the brightest versions of these colors.

We also look for artifacts in photos caused by difficulty dealing with colors. The Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000 showed no significant problems here, with only some minor false contouring when making fine gradiations.

Color Gamut (6.17)


Every television must meet a standard for how colors are displayed on the screen. This color gamut, which can be thought of as a map of colors, are suposed to ensure that the red you see in a particular movie is the same on every television. The international standard that HDTVs must match is known as Rec.709. In this test we look at the KDL-32L5000's color gamut to see how well it matches this standard. Below you can see a graph of the standard against the KDL-32L5000's performance.

Color Gamut

 

You can see that the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000 does a reasonable job matching the standard in reds and blues, but shows some obvious error in the greens. This is actually significantly better than most HDTVs, this is an area where televisions don't generally perform well. As such the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000's score is actually above average. For those who are geeky enough to care the exact measured color coordinates can be found in the table below.

  u' (rec.709/measured) v' (rec.709/measured) Error
Red 0.4507 / 0.4471 0.5229 / 0.5237 0.003687818
Green 0.125 / 0.1158 0.5625 / 0.5613 0.009277931
Blue 0.1754 / 0.1729 0.1579 / 0.1508 0.007527284
D65
(white point)
0.1978 / 0.2007 0.4683 / 0.469 0.002983287

 

 

Compare the Sony Bravia KDL-32L5000 to other HDTVs
JVC LT-32J300
32 inches
Samsung LN32A450
32 inches
Sony KDL-46W4100
46 inches

 

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