Sony KDL-32V2000
The Sony TV includes a technology that we’ve been expecting from Samsung, the famous new generation of CCFL tubes, or extended gamut. Sony speaks of WCG-CCFL technology (White Color Gamut – Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps), and more natural colors.
In fact, the biggest modification doesn´t come from the tubes themselves, but from their phosphorus coating. They were conceived to broaden the color spectrum and especially for red and green colors included in white light (colors that are difficult to be reproduced by LCD TVs, according to the manufacturer). Colors produced will be more natural and richer. There is also a home designed video treatment, the BRAVIA Engine that intervenes in real time on noise, contrast, and scaling.
So according to the manufacturer, this would be an incredible and fantastic monitor at least one generation ahead of standard LCD monitors. The thing is when we switched it on, this was less obvious. From our point of view, with current display quality (we use them all year long for our tests) we were less impressed by the deeper colors than by the gap with reality. Sony speaks of "more natural" colors but this wasn´t what we saw at all. This doesn´t mean however that they weren´t deeper as our colorimeter confirmed:
Just to remind you, we work with a value called DeltaE. It represents a measurement between the color requested and the one really displayed on the monitor. The higher the result obtained, the less true colors are. The value is also counter-balanced for human eye color sensitivity.
Delta E > 3 the desired color is noticeably different from the one on the screen.
2 < Delta E < 3 color quality is satisfactory but a graphic designer probably wouldn’t be content
1< Delta E <2 colors are accurate.
Delta E < 1, the result is perfect.
A standard LCD monitor sticks to the sRGB gamut, the orange triangle in the graph on the left. Here we clearly see a significant gain in reds and a less of one in blue shades. There are more shades in cyan but less in the intense blues. All in all, the bottom line is still positive. However, for red shades it’s rather the statut quo unlike what Sony claims.
In the end, the result isn´t better for everyone. For TVs there is no problem, colors are richer and everyone will be happy. Now if this technology was directly transposed to a monitor without modifications, only professionals would benefit. There would be a gammut much closer to their printer and almost perfect. Here is the proof with a pattern:
Compared to what we obtained in the previous page with a similar panel and normal tubes, here the improvement is impressive. It increases from 79% in cyan to 96%. The gain is 6% in yellow and now all reds, greens and blues are displayed when only 85% were with the Samsung. However, the panel – liquid crystals and electronic components- of the two monitors are very, very similar and are S-PVA 8 ms.
Not everyone is planning on working with the professional colorimetric space, the ISO FOGRA27. Digital cameras and general public printers will usually make do with sRGB. And this time, the TV gammut no longer covers all the space. There is a shift in blue shades, there are less green and even less red. Now, here is the result of the comparison of the monitor to the sRGB space:
With this test, the grey surface for standard monitors is usually smaller.
