The changing nature of 4K Ultra HD and high dynamic range (HDR) televisions is such that it has become more important than ever to calibrate pictures for both daytime and nighttime viewing to derive the best quality images for the room environment.
That was the assessment of Kevin Miller, principal of professional display calibration business ISFTV and technical consultant to both Samsung and HD Guru.com, speaking at the QLED and HDR10 Summit presented by Insight Media and Samsung in Los Angeles, Tuesday.
Miller, speaking on a new consumer viewing habits study conducted for Samsung by Macromill Embrain, revealed that surprisingly few consumers watch television in completely dark rooms, although these are the conditions often used when calibrating a home theater.
In fact, 78 percent of U.S. households have their primary television installed in the living room, with the master bedroom ranking second at 16 percent and specialty A/V viewing rooms with controlled lighting environments representing just 3 percent.
While watching television in a living room, most survey respondents (59 percent) said they watch with 2 to 3 people on a 40-to-50-inch screen size set, seated about 9 feet away.
Read more on the consumer television viewing environment study after the jump:
The amount of ambient light on in a room while watching television was determined largely by the time of day most programming is watched. Overwhelmingly, most said they do most of their television watching at night under low/average level of light (1 or more lamps/ceiling lights), Miller said. Low- to- average room lighting is on when watching television in most locations of the home except the master bedroom, where most television viewing takes place in dark conditions.
Product support representatives from Samsung, the QLED and HDR10 Summit sponsor, pointed out during demos at the event that the company designed its 2017 QLED 4K Ultra HD LCD TV lineup with similar consumer research findings in mind.
New Samsung QLED sets produce the best picture quality with a modest degree of rooming lighting on, and viewers seated about 8 to 9 feet from the screen. Interestingly, the study said that the amount of ambient light in the TV viewing room was much lower in North American and European (125 lux during the day and 50 lux at night) homes compared with South Korean homes (250 lux during the day and 150 lux at night).
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The QLED technology this year also expands the viewing angle over most other Vertically Aligned LCD panel display technologies, in line with studies showing that most viewers watch television toward the center of the screen, with viewing angles rarely exceeding 30 degrees.
The models also have newly enhanced anti-glare technologies that significantly cut down the amount of reflection coming off the screen. Although ambient light on in the room affects contrast performance due to the impact on black level, the new QLEDs also help to minimize this effect.
Samsung also said it measured contrast using a 10 percent window pattern (per IEC62341-6) in a room with 75 lux of ambient room light and found QLED contrast exceed OLED contrast at that level, Miller said.
Miller reminded the audience of mostly advanced level engineers and experts that calibrators be providing separate sets of picture adjustments for the conditions when the owners view the television most often — at a minimum during the day and night.
The calibration should also take into account the new advances in television design, which as Samsung’s QLEDs, which quite differently from competitive OLED sets, are optimized to perform at their best level with some rooming light on and the audience seated about 9 feet from the screen.
By Greg Tarr
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