The Perfect Vision
JVC 58S998 Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
Among the technical features touted by JVC is a newly redesigned optical engine, which, I suspect, could be the reason why horizontal lines were not straight. Also onboard is an ATSC/QAM tuner, which pulls in over-the-air and non-encrypted digital cable channels.
The video processing is performed by fifth-generation D.I.S.T. (Digital Image Scaling Technology) running on a Genessa Picture Processing chip. Looking at test discs, the processing is adequate but not stellar.
Adjustment Notes
Out of the box, Dynamic picture mode (what JVC calls Video Status) is selected, which is way too bright. Video Status is not in the menu but selected with a dedicated button on the remote. Standard and Theater modes both set picture controls to 0 and color temperature to Low, but grayscale test patterns look distinctly different; Theater mode is closest to the correct color temperature, though it exhibits a slight green bias.
User controls are associated with Video Status modes, not inputs; thus, setting up the TV for different source devices is more difficult than it should be, especially since the color temperature seems to be so different between Theater and Standard modes. For example, the Denon DVD-5910 DVD player and Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player required very different picture settings. It does no good to assign Standard mode to one input and Theater mode to the other and adjust each accordingly because the color temperature is so different between them, even though the color-temp setting is Low in both cases.
Test Discs
On the HQV Benchmark DVD, detail was excellent, though jaggies on low-angle diagonals were moderate and clearly visible on the waving American flag. The set's Digital Video Noise Reduction control was very effective, but it softened the picture at its Max setting. The MPEG Noise Reduction control didn't seem to do much at all. The processor never picked up 3:2 pulldown at 480i in Auto mode, though it did pick it up slowly (>1 second) when forced on.
Turning to the HQV Benchmark HD DVD, jaggies were nearly non-existent, and the processor did pick up 3:2 pulldown at 1080i in its Auto mode. A test disc provided by Microsoft engineer Stacey Spears revealed that the optical system crops more than 30 pixels from each side, 20 from the top, and 28 from the bottom. Also, there were a few jaggies in the diagonal edge of ice hockey safety glass in the montage of images.
Technical Ratings
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