3D
When we reviewed one of Samsung’s Series 6 LCDs last year, we were
the first review source to break the news that the supposed “Full HD 3D”
LCD was, in fact, only displaying tri-dimensional images at half
resolution (we developed our own 3D test materials for assessing
resolution and motion performance). Fortunately, the UE40ES6300 does not
follow the same route, and offers a full resolution 3-D image.
Motion is still not perfect, though. As with many LCD 3D designs, the
Samsung UE40ES6300′s is 60hz-centric, which makes sense, given that
Samsung is based in South Korea. 50hz 3D content plays back with
stutter, as does 24p 3D content from Blu-ray. That’s unfortunate,
because European users will probably be feeding 24p and 50hz
extra-dimensional material almost exclusively. There is some relief,
though: the [Motion Plus] controls can be configured in a way that
causes the 3DTV to perform motion interpolation, which solves the judder
problem. Of course, that does mean that movies will appear with the
“soap opera effect”, which, to purist users, might be more of a problem
than the original judder. The user has some degree of control here,
although there’s no perfect solution to simply display 3D motion “as-is”
unless it’s in the 60hz format.
Watching Hugo on the UE40ES6300, we were happy with the
level of brightness being offered – typically a strong point or LCD
technology – but did note some crosstalk visible around high contrast
areas. Like most things about the TV, the performance is good overall,
but leaves room for improvement.
Motion Resolution
The UE40ES6300 manages to resolve about 600 lines from the scrolling test chart on the FPD Benchmark Software
disc. That 600 lines observation is based on the black-on-grey lines;
the grey-on-grey lines became blurry and hard to discern sooner.
Samsung’s [Motion Plus] menu allows the user to configure differing
amounts of de-blur and de-judder processing, meaning that it’s possible
to gain higher motion clarity without having to take the video-like
“soap opera effect” with 24fps movie material. In practice, we found
that the benefits of the [Blur Reduction] control topped out about “7″
(out of a possible “10″), and we left [Judder Reduction] at 0.
In real world usage, this means that the 40ES6300 has decent motion
performance with video-based material. If most of your viewing is of
content like high-motion sports, you’ll likely want to go with a panel
capable of higher motion resolution. On the other hand, the ES6300′s
performance here is more than enough for blur-free portrayal of current
console video games (most of which run at only 30fps) and movies
(24fps/25fps depending on the source).
Standard Definition
The ES6300 doesn’t feature Samsung’s own video processing chip (which
has excellent scaling performance), and the difference can be seen with
graphics on news channels, which aren’t quite as crisp and free of
static aliasing (mild jaggedness) when compared to the company’s best
displays. Video mode deinterlacing is of a similar standard – good, but
not exceptional, with jaggedness being visible during motion with
video-based SD content.
What the UE40ES6300 does get right is film mode deinterlacing.
Sending a film transferred to PAL video resulted in the TV automatically
recognising the nature of the content and adjusting its deinterlacing
mode accordingly, resulting in full vertical resolution with no jaggies –
provided the [Film Mode] wasn’t turned off in the menu, of course.
Black Level
Since it uses a VA-type LCD panel, good black-level performance (by
LCD standards) is almost a certainty on the Samsung UE40ES6300. Keep in
mind that the black level and peak light output on an LCD go
hand-in-hand; if you raise the [Backlight] control for ultra bright
whites, you’ll need to tolerate greyer blacks; likewise, you can get
deeper blacks if you’re happy to settle for less brilliant whites. The
[LED Motion Plus] setting, which enhances motion clarity a little, does
have a small effect on light output as well. With full video white set
to produce 120 cd/m2 of light output from the screen, black measured at a decent 0.069 cd/m2
in the centre of the panel. Of course, that’s viewed face on – as with
everything else with LCD technology, moving to the sides results in
poorer performance.
This is fairly good performance by LCD standards, although isn’t the
best we’ve ever measured from an LCD-based television (in fact, black
levels seemed to be better in the final days of CCFL backlit sets, the
move to LED as a light source has set things back a little). It’s also
considerably better than the 0.11+ cd/m2 readings we’ve taken from competing LCD panel types, such as IPS.
High Definition
As we’ve alluded to previously in this review, the biggest weakness
of the 40ES6300 is probably its off-axis viewing quality, which is a
consistent problem for VA-type LCD panels (and other LCD types, too, to
different extents). Viewed from the sides, the overall image becomes
blue-tinted and greyish. As always, you have to match the HDTV carefully
to the room: if you can watch the screen from a constant position (and
don’t have family members or housemates who’ll want to sit in the best
seat) then the limitation won’t really be an issue. For bigger rooms
intended to sit many viewers, it’s another reason to consider a plasma
TV – although plasma isn’t a perfect technology either.
If you’re using the Samsung UE40ES6300 in a situation where that
won’t be a problem, the rest of the news is all good. Pre-calibration,
the image in our review sample suffered from a blue tint, although most
users will probably not notice the inaccuracy unless they’re in the
position of watching only calibrated screens. Post-calibration, it was
essentially perfect when we were sitting on-axis. The ES6300 doesn’t
feature the undefeatable noise reduction found on some more expensive
Samsung TVs, which is great. The response time of the LCD panel does
reduce motion clarity a little, although that’s an inevitability of the
components used, and unlike the displays which feature always-on noise
reduction, there’s no texture “stretching” or other oddities during film
content. That allowed the gritty 16mm scenes from Babel to be displayed intact, without any in-TV’s attempts to “improve” the picture. Likewise, it allows as much motion detail as the panel can show
to be displayed from any source: there are no in-TV attempts at motion
averaging (provided all those controls are shut off), but some very fast
moving details can still fall foul of LCD panel blur.
The UE40ES6300 can also reproduce nearly all of the HDTV Rec.709
colour gamut, with only a slightly off-colour blue point and a mildly
desaturated red being the only notable limitations. Again, these errors
won’t be visible unless you’re running the television side by side with a
perfect display.
Console Gaming
Halo 4 was released during the time the Samsung UE40ES6300
was with us, so we ended up playing a good amount of this game online
during the review period. We never had any complaints, provided we were
in one of the two “fast response” processing modes (the “Game” mode, or
using the “PC input label” trick, which involves pressing the TOOLS
button with the HDMI input selected and changing the name to “PC”).
In either of those configurations, the 40ES6300 gave us just 31ms of
input lag, staying on the right side of acceptability. That’s an
improvement over the 46ms we measured from a similar 6000-series Samsung
LCD last year. What’s more, although we missed the absolute picture
quality of a plasma TV, it was nice to be able to play this game for
many hours without image retention issues for a while afterwards
(Panasonic’s plasmas, and Samsung’s 51″ ones, can retain static or
near-static ghost images of score counters and other on-screen displays
for a while).
Conclusion
The Samsung UE40ES6300 is a good LCD-based HDTV. Having reviewed
countless LCD panels over the years, its performance is not really
surprising. Its out-of-the-box performance in the best preset, the
“Movie” mode, is adequate but leaves room for improvement (our review
sample had a blue tint, but this will vary from panel to panel). For
users with access to calibration devices, or for users who are going
down the professional calibration route, the ES6300 has a great
selection of controls which allow quirks like this to be eradicated,
with all the controls for performance finetuning by an ISF/THX
calibrator included. On top of this, it has a good selection of
internet-based Smart TV features.
Speaking bluntly, every different type of LCD display (VA, IPS, TN)
on the market today has problems of one sort or another, while competing
display technologies (for example, Plasma) also have their quirks.
Plasma is where Samsung are really exciting us lately, though, with
year-on-year improvements – in comparison, we don’t feel LCD’s picture
quality has improved much at all over the last few years. So we can end
on a high note, though, input lag for video gaming has been decreased
from last year, allowing a better sense of immersion with fast-paced
games (for example, online first person shooters). The charges levied
against the UE40ES6300 consist of less-than-perfect screen uniformity,
and the usual VA-LCD problem of poor contrast and colour saturation when
the screen is viewed off-axis. Commonly for LCDs operating in 3D mode,
there is some motion stuttering with 24p (Blu-ray 3D) and 50hz (European
broadcast) 3D material.
On the positive side, the 3D display mode is full resolution (unlike a
Series 6 LCD we saw last year!), motion performance is good (although
not top-tier), and the same goes for the panel’s contrast performance.
Provided you comply with the usual LCD rule of only sitting face-on with
the display, the 40ES6300 is capable of putting out high quality video,
and as such, comes recommended for anyone looking for an LCD TV in this
price range.
Source : hdtvtest.co.uk
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