Samsung UN55C6500 55 inch Series 6 LED TV
Jan 22nd, 2011 | By SimonA more technical way to analyze picture quality, but not as fun as sitting in front of the TV for hours upon hours to come up with a qualitative value is to use a quantitative program to judge against a benchmark. In this instance I used X-Rite: iDisplay 2. Originally designed for monitors (CRT and LCD), I’m using it configured for LCD displays. I’ve configured the TV to take the input signal from my laptop and will adjust the backlight, contrast and brightness on the TV to make sure the iDisplay 2 has the best possible picture. The software takes about 10 minutes to run and I was amazing how little modifications were required to meet what iDisplay 2 says is calibrated. Regardless of what picture mode you set iDisplay 2 will still give you the same optimized configuration mode. It will then be up to you to fine-tune the settings if you want more darkness for your movies. The Standard Picture Mode has a backlight setting of 14, contrast of 100 and brightness of 45. The TV performs the best when the contrast ratio is as high as possible and at 100 it doesn’t get any higher. However, in my current situation room was too bright and we needed to make some adjustments to create a better picture. After waiting around for when X-Rite deemed the conditions to be appropriate I found that the TV needed very little adjustment. One small reduction in brightness. If you have good white lights on dimmer you can almost always get the perfect conditions. In this case I could adjust the brightness value itself, the backlight or a combination of the two. When lowering the brightness value down to 3 as needed to achieve the desired rate you can see in the before and after calibration that the hair in the model blends in with the background and we lose a lot of detail in the shadow. The better way to achieve the correct brightness is to start with the backlight LED value and then fine-tune with the brightness, I dropped the LED backlight down to 8 from 14 and further reduced the brightness one point to 44 instead of 45. This puts you in the calibrated mode without affecting the overall image as much.
Setting up X-Rite
Calibrated – Low Brightness Result
Original (left) & After (right)
Calibrated – Low LED backlit Result
Original (left) & After (right)
Power consumption is certainly something I consider when purchasing any new consumer electronics. The last thing I really want is to purchase a TV that continually drains my wallet with a power guzzling 600W usage. The advancements of technology have allowed us to enjoy the benefits of high definition pictures without expensive monthly bills. To test the power draw on the UN55C6500 I will consider the case of the TV being powered off to monitor the phantom load and watching basic cable TV.
By using an LED backlit panel, the power draw is very low. The standby power draw was undetectable with my meter. When watch I am Legend I found the average power draw to be only 157 watts, this is a 60W drop from the LCD panels of 2008! Over a course of a year this is actually a measureable savings. It’s not enough to warrant replacing your existing 55A950 but enough that if you had an old CRT lying around it’s time to recycle it and join the 21st century.