Nec Plasma Tv

Plasma displays have come a long, long way in the past few years. Early versions offered short lifespans and fairly dim images with poor color rendition--but still cost enough money to fill up the largest lumbering SUV for five years. Prices for larger plasma displays hasn't come down much, but the size factor has definitely gone up. More importantly, picture quality has improved dramatically.

Our most recent foray into reviewing a plasma TV was Gateway's 42-inch "HD-Ready" display. We found that set to be a less than robust for a $4,000 display. But, then again, Gateway typically buys up last year's tech and sells it at a lower cost. The NEC PlasmaSync 61XM2+/S is one of the largest plasma monitors you can buy today--only the Samsung 63-inch unit is larger. It's also a true HDTV, sporting a native pixel resolution of 1365 x 768, so the unit can natively display 720p and scale 1080i appropriately.

However, the price is high enough to turn those of us with normal means a paler shade of gray. At a cool $17,995 MSRP, it's the cost of a small car. NEC does make a slightly lower cost model, the 61XMS2/S, for about $1,000 less (you can actually find it online for less than $12,000). That's a lot of moolah, but less than you might expect.

Plasma displays, like CRTs, are phosphor-based, but that's where the similarity ends. Each pixel consists of a cell that's excited by applied current to light up the phosphor, rather than an electron gun that scans across a phosphor array. Plasma displays generally don't achieve the black levels of a good CRT, but they also tend to be better at black than LCD flat panels.

We'll first take a look at the feature set, then dive into objective measurements and close with our subjective thoughts after extended viewing of HD and DVD material.

If you buy one of these puppies, you should definitely spring for a couple hundred more dollars to have it installed. The unit weights 135 pounds and NEC recommends that at least three people unpack and set it up on the supplied stands. Hanging on the wall requires forethought and planning. Two of us were able to set it up in the ExtremeTech lab, but it would have been easier with a third person guiding the unit onto the two stand mounts.

As we noted, the 61XM2+/S offers a native resolution of 1365x768. Since this display is high definition monitor, it ships without any type of tuner. As with any display oriented towards consumer viewing habits, it sports a variety of inputs:

Input Number

Composite BNC 1

Composite RCA 1

S-Video (DIN) 1

Component, RCA 1

Component, 5NBC 1

RGB Analog (VGA) 1

RGB2 Analog (5BNC) 1

RGB3, DVI (HDCP) 1

Audio (RCA stereo) 3

Audio (Speaker Terminals) 1 pair

Note that this monitor has no built-in speakers, but does have a built-in, 9W stereo amplifier. This is about as useless as you can get for HDTV or movie viewing, but might be useful in a boardroom or kiosk type of application. Optional attachable speakers are available from NEC for that purpose. Since the NEC has no tuner, you'll need to supply the appropriate HD tuner to get the best possible picture.

The DVI input offers HDCP content protection, so you'll be able to watch the full range of HDTV broadcasts at full resolution. This model also offers picture-in-picture capability, though we weren't able to test that properly. In fact, the PiP option allows for easy setup of two side-by-side "windows," ostensibly for teleconferencing applications. This PlasmaSync also offers AccuCrimson color rendering technology, which supposedly allows for better color rendition.

The unit ships with a somewhat limited remote control that lacks a backlight. It's likely that anyone who buys this would program the NEC's functions into a universal remote. As with any display this expensive, each input offers individually customized settings. Typically, once you set up the display for each one, you'll probably leave it that way.

The onscreen menus offer the usual range of color, contrast, brightness and picture settings. The color temperature setting wasn't explicit, but we found that the color temperature 2 setting seemed to track closest to 6500 degrees K.

We used a Konica-Minolta CA-210 colorimeter equipped with the universal probe to acquire grayscale tracking, color fidelity, brightness uniformity, and contrast ratio measurements. The data was collected from the CA-210 using Milori ColorFacts software running on a Falcon Northwest FragBox Pro. The FragBox Pro is equipped with a Radeon 9800 Pro, which was connected to the display via the DVI input. The FragBox also was our source for putting up DisplayMate test patterns and images we used to look for any image quality issues.

We also used the PC to display HD content from Microsoft's WMV-HD sampler DVD. However, standard DVD playback chores were handled by a Yamaha DVD-S2300 Mark II, connected via the RCA component video inputs.

Prior to taking measurements, we used DisplayMate and the Digital Video Essentials DVD to set contrast and brightness to optimum levels. All measurements were taken at these contrast and brightness settings, which were close to the 50% level on the on-screen display. Sharpness was turned all the way down.

Contrast Ratio

We measured the contrast ratio using the ANSI checkerboard pattern at nine points on the screen. The average measured contrast ratio was 177:1, with the worst being 162:1 and the best at 190:1. Note that contrast ratios measured this way are almost always lower than the manufacturer's spec – 700:1 – since we had set the unit for contrast and brightness levels more conducive to actually viewing content.

We experimented with several color temperature settings available with the NEC onscreen display. We made no attempt to uncover a service menu for further calibration. However, if you're spending this kind of money, it may be worth a few hundred more dollars to get the unit properly calibrated by an installer certified by the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF).

However, we were pleasantly surprised to find the grayscale tracking to be pretty good at the second warm color temperature setting. When we look at the individual RGB levels, it's not quite as pretty a picture.

This isn't bad, mind you, but it is biased a bit towards the green. This jibes with our overall impression that the image quality on real content tended toward the cool side. But the variances are really pretty small. What's more important is that there are no major spikes worth noting.

If we look at the CIE color chart, we can see that the PlasmaSync doesn't quite track NTSC color parameters (the white triangle). Again, the NEC pushes out a bit towards blue and green, but is almost spot-on for red.

While we were playing around with the PlasmaSync, Will O'Neall dropped by. (Will is Computer Gaming World's technical editor.) Jason Cross suggested that the real test is the Windows desktop.

Jason, of course, was being a little hyperbolic. But it's still impressive to see the Windows desktop on a 61 inch display at 1365 x 768 (using PowerStrip to set the resolution on the Radeon 9800 Pro). So while Will was present, we fired up Aquanox's AquaMark 3 benchmark – not to test performance, but just to look at the images as the animation played back. The effect was startling, as if the screen had some actual depth to it.

Some of this was simply because the anti-glare filter adds a layer to the glass, so you get the feeling you're looking into a real space. But it was apparent that looking at video or animation through a piece of flat glass, rather than a projection screen, adds some psychological element beyond just the size. The AquaMark animation exaggerated the effect.

Watching the samples from the WMV-HD demo DVD simply hammered the point home. Scenes of flight over islands were simply stunning, while the Terminator 2 samples made us want to duck – and we didn't even have audio enabled. We did notice that the overall image seemed a tad on the cool side, a point that was reinforced by the data we collected in the lab with the CA-210 color analyzer.

Of course, watching HD is one thing, but most of us also watch DVD movies. The overall image quality through the component outputs was superb, even when scaled up. The internal scaler on the unit performed quite well and we were hard-pressed to notice any scaling artifacts. However, 4:3 material was either stretched in an unnatural manner, or had bright gray – almost white – bars surrounding the image. This is to prevent burn-in, of course, but the effect was pretty distracting. The stretched 4:3 image didn't look as good as those we've seen on Pioneer screens, either.

For example, we popped in the latest enhanced version of Casablanca, which was shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio in black and white. Overall image fidelity in black and white was impressive, but the overall effect was diminished by the bright gray bars. We wish there was a way to turn that down manually when we wanted.

Widescreen movies were stunning, provided the transfer could match the NEC's capabilities. This display will show you all the warts in any DVD's transfer. On the other hand, a good transfer looks simply superb. We spent some time with the recent Indiana Jones boxed set. We can't recall Raiders of the Lost Ark looking this good in the theater, though of course, that can't be right.

Similarly, when we took a look at The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended edition, we saw few of the flaws we've seen in other displays. None of the banding or artifacting in the scene with god rays was visible. During the charge of the Rohirrim into the valley of Helms Deep, the sunlight suddenly amplifies, blinding the orcs. It looked correct to our eyes.

What about visible pixelization? That's always an issue with a display this size. In fact, if you stood about a foot from the display, you could notice a faint "screen door" effect – the space between the pixels was slightly visible. However, at a typical viewing distance of 6-8 feet, even a fully white screen looked like a smooth surface.

Most of us would have to break open a lot of piggy banks to be able to afford one of these, even if you find it at an Internet discounter. Once you see it in action, though, the siren call is pretty tough to resist. After all, you can put off that new car or your kids college fund another year…

More seriously, the NEC PlasmaVision 61XM2+/S is clearly one of the best displays we've seen to date. While it lacks a built in HD tuner of any kind, it's more likely to go into a high-end system with either cable or satellite HD services and DVRs. The image quality with high-definition material was outstanding and DVD movies (particularly widescreen DVDs) looked smashing as well.

So if you do have the wherewithal to afford a display of this caliber, this should be on your short list of monitors to check out before you buy. You may end up foregoing champagne for beer, but your eyes will be drunk with the beauty of it.

Product NEC PlasmaSync 61XM2+/S 61-inch Plasma HD monitor

Web Site: www.necvisualsystems.com

Pros: Superb overall image quality; excellent grayscale tracking out of the box; good color fidelity; first rate, built-in scaler

Cons: No internal HD tuner; color rendition a touch on the cool side. Expensive.

Summary: If you can afford it, this display offers exceptional image quality in a thin form factor. If you crave a big high- definition display, but want the simplicity of a flat screen, be sure to check this out .

Price: $17,995

Score:

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.

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