Samsung LA46A650 Series 6 LCD TV

Set-up and Performance
Setting up and calibrating the LCD can be quite a lengthy but fruitful task. First things first, you need to change the mode (in the main menu) from Shop to User. This is a new concept and a useful one, as the settings in shops are known to be notoriously high in brightness and contrast. We were using a direct 1080p signal from our video board, connected via HDMI to keep things HD throughout.

There are four presets, called Cinema, Game, Dynamic, and User mode. This is where we come in and try to make some sense of the settings. The brightness needs to be set a little over 55, in an ambient lit room. For me the contrast finds a sweet spot around the 70 setting.

The final image is crisp; our calibration patterns had about 24 levels of black, out of which two were easily seen without over-enhancement. This means the TV has very good brightness/contrast. Colors too are beautiful and neutral, except cooler colors like blue come out a little strong, overshooting their borders.

There is one major flaw with the TV, or at least in the model I received. The detail and sharpness has some problem; halos and streaks were observed in moving images and stills. The issue is when different levels of intensity exist on neighbouring pixels and the electronics have to push hard to keep accuracy.

Sometimes the halos take on a different hue too, so the best solution I found was to turn the sharpness all the way down to zero. This works fine; the picture looks way better. There is the obvious tradeoff that occurs (of detail) and the image looks a little washed-out at close viewing. But this is not half as much of a problem as the ghosting.

Besides the boring calibration discs and softwares, I also saw a dozen full HD trailers, which is always fun, and the Independence Day Blu-ray disc, with all its film grain. Moving pictures are pretty clean, with little moiré and jaggies. This is the beauty of full HD; the TV does a good job once the artificial sharpness is killed. I saw a DVD of I Am Legend, to see what upscaling this TV can do. The "border blur" was a bit more pronounced here, but the rendering was still pretty accurate.

Conclusion
This is a high-end TV, so I was expecting a hefty price tag – and that’s exactly what it is: Rs 2,00,000. It has one of the most beautiful bezels I have ever seen – if not the most beautiful – and the brightness and color are spectacular. But I’m afraid a point or two will have to be deducted for the detail issue.