Cheap HDTVs Bad. Expensive HDTVs...Bad?

Thanks to everyone for weighing in on the cheap flat-panel TV discussion I posted yesterday. As expected, reviews are quite mixed, all over the map. It seems you can get lucky with a good set, and that even among machines from the same vendor, quality can be variable. (Gizmodo picked up the story as well and has numerous comments to look through if you're considering buying an off-brand flat-panel TV.)

Well I also received an interesting note from a reader who turned me on to this deep analysis from Gary Merson (crazy glasses ahead!), who took 61 HDTVs—including almost all major name-brand machines—and put them through a series of sophisticated tests. His goal: To find out if these HDTVs were actually outputting video at HD quality.

The shocking answer: No, not really.

I won't go too deep into how Merson tested, but the primary test involves running a simple test pattern to determine if all 1080 lines in an 1080i broadcast are being displayed on screen like they're supposed to. If a TV drops down to showing only 540 lines, it fails the test. Merson also performed two additional tests that measure loss of detail.

How'd they do? Out of 61 new TVs, 33 failed the first test, or 54 percent of the sets. On his second test, 80 percent failed. Notables among the failures: All sets from LG and Philips failed both major tests. Pioneer passed both tests, as did JVC and Polaroid's set (the house brand for Circuit City). Other vendors (including Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung, and Sony) had mixed results, with some sets passing one or both tests and failing others. You can find the full chart of results on the linked page above.

So what does this mean? Well, failing these tests doesn't mean you have a crummy TV, it just means that on some HD broadcasts you might not receive all the detail you should. You may not even notice the degradation, and it may not happen all the time. As the author notes, there are many other factors that affect picture quality besides the raw number of pixels you can see, "including contrast ratio, motion lag, and black level." When shopping, you should definitely use these results as a guide, but don't ignore what your eyes tell you.