The Perfect Vision
NuVision 52LEDLP Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
LED Illumination Explained | Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
LED Illumination Explained
Recent developments in LED (light-emitting diode) technology have produced LEDs with much more light output than previous designs, allowing them to be used as the illumination source in rear-projection TVs. Instead of an incandescent lamp whose white light must be split into red, green, and blue components, separate red, green, and blue LEDs are used.
In LCD and LCoS sets, each color illuminates a separate imaging chip, and the three images are combined and projected onto the screen. This is also how a 3-chip DLP set would work, but there are no such sets available at this time. In a single-chip DLP set, the red, green, and blue LEDs are illuminated sequentially, one after another, and the DMD (Digital Micromirror Device) chip forms the image for each color in turn. The sequencing of colors occurs at a much faster rate than a white lamp and color-filter wheel can manage, eliminating the "rainbow effect" that some people see when watching a conventional DLP TV.
LEDs offer a number of advantages over conventional incandescent lamps in rear-projection TVs. First and foremost, they last a lot longer than lamps -- many tens of thousands of hours instead of a few thousand hours. Also, they generate a lot less heat, meaning less fan noise, and they can be turned on and off almost instantly, reducing the time it takes to show an image on the screen after power up. Finally, they're more environmentally friendly, using less power and eliminating mercury-filled lamps. LEDs are the future of RPTVs, and the future looks bright.
Under the Hood
The NuVision 52LEDLP uses PhlatLight LEDs from a company called Luminus to illuminate the imaging chip and light up the screen. Only one LED of each color (red, green, and blue) is required -- these suckers are bright! The three LEDs are activated sequentially about 2500 times per second, performing the same function as the color wheel in a conventional single-chip DLP RPTV. However, the LED colors are sequenced much faster than the filters in a color wheel, eliminating the "rainbow" artifact to which some people are sensitive.
The LEDs have a rated lifespan of more than 50,000 hours, which corresponds to more than 17 years at 8 hours per day. Not only that, the light engine performs an automatic self-calibration every 4000 hours to ensure consistent light performance.
I was thrilled to learn that the 52LEDLP can accept 1080p/24 from Blu-ray and HD DVD players and display the signal at 72Hz, repeating each frame three times. This completely eliminates any jerkiness in movie playback that arises from converting 1080p/24 on the disc to 1080p/60 for most video displays.
NuVision touts its DSDB (Digital Switching Deep Black) technology, which, in conjunction with Texas Instruments' DarkChip3 enhancements, is said to result in -- you guessed it -- deep blacks. When I engaged the Deep Black setting, the entire picture took on a distinct magenta hue, so I left it off, which I would normally do anyway, preferring to disable any image trickery.
With an emphasis on custom installation, the 52LEDLP includes a bi-directional RS232 port called NuControl, which is said to make easy to integrate the set into any sophisticated control system.
Adjustment Notes
Out of the box, brightness was too high, contrast was a bit too low. Color was likewise low, but tint was correct. Sharpness seemed to have little effect on edge enhancement, which was always present, so I set it to 0. The Warm color-temp preset was closest to correct, but still blue for the most part. I was able to bring grayscale closer to correct by adjusting the red, green, and blue level controls in the user menu, but consumers have no way to adjust these reliably without a professional calibration, so I took grayscale measurements with these controls at their default settings.
The TV's response to the AccuPel signal generator was strange: with the DVI output, the set's DVI Mode had to be set to Graphics for proper color; in Video mode, only the green channel seemed to be active. Another weirdness: 1-to-1 mode did not work with Denon DVD-5910 DVD player set to 1080i output, which looked like it was not syncing properly to the TV. The 16:9 aspect ratio does some scaling; fortunately, there is a 1-to-1 mode, which should always be used for 1080i/p material.
Test Discs
The optical engine cropped 14 pixels from the top, 9 from the bottom, 16 from the left, and 23 from the right. The set's processor never picked up 3:2 pulldown at 1080i, though it picked it up fine at 480i. Low-angle jaggies were fairly pronounced on the HQV Benchmark DVD, while noise reduction was quite effective without softening the picture. The component input appeared to crush whites; nothing could be distinguished above 239 no matter how low the contrast control was set. Another problem with the component input was that the 16:9 setting did not render circles correctly; I needed to set the aspect ratio to Fill All. Bottom line: I don't recommend this set for component sources.
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