I went back to the store today with my brother and a bunch of blu-ray demo disks to audition the 90"...
I was able to play with the remote this time around and with the help of my Disney WOW disc I did a quick calibration of the 90 in Movie mode.
My brother and I agreed that the 90" has a better overall picture than the two 80" beside it and the salesman agreed. The picture had a "veloute" look to it with none of the graininess I sometimes see on the two 80" especially in the red areas of the picture yet it was very detailed and had very good sharpness.
Colors looked generaly good but skin tones were plagged with a very strong yellow cast in many of the movie scenes I used which is not present on my VT25 or my other panny plasma in the living room. The yellow cast was present on all color temps and I was not able to get rid of it using the color management menu (saturation, tint, etc for 6 colors) even with extreme slider settings. This menu seemed to have very little effect on how the picture looked. There seems to be a color decoding issue similar to the one I had with 72 Toshiba RPTV. But I'm no calibrator and maybe a guy like Chad B would be able to fix this. When I switched to game mode the yellow cast disapeared but overall picture looked dull and washed out. I didn't have time to tweak that game mode to see how good it could get as the store was closing and I also didn't have time to try other picture modes.
Perceived contrast was good but not has good as mentioned in my previous post. Full screen blacks had a bit of a blue tint into them and where nowhere near the blacks produced by the Elite just beside it. So while some scenes had good contrast, others lacked the punch I get on my VT25 on the same scenes. Boosting the contrast helped a little but at the expense of clipping whites resulting in a loss of details in white areas. Dark scenes were not as black as I would have wanted them to be even in fairly bright light. Maybe a lower backlight setting in a low light environment could've helped a little to make those blacks appear more dark.
Frame interpolation (Cinema mode) had a 10 step gradation which helped panning smoothness adjustment in relation to SOE. I prefer interpolation off but it's interresting to be able to smoothen the movement for those who like it without introducing a too strong SOE effet and also with a little less artefacts on lower settings.
So I guess I'm really going to have to wait for a 80" Elite but boy do I wish I could get my hand on a 90" with local dimming and good color decoding cause that 90" screen is really a perfect size for an immersive cinema feel.
Looking forward to read some expert (Chad B?) review of a calibrated 90 cause despite the things that I don't like in it that big screen impressed me (and my bro) a lot!
Edited by dhan - 6/25/12 at 11:06pm