nuvision lucidium - Page 2

Another thing I failed to mention: the set comes with a 2 year warranty and 2-day in-home service. No need to buy an extended service plan for this set.

Exactly my thoughts on the processing quality. That is the reason I asked owner to do little tests on his TV.

Cheers, Wizard

Regardless of the price, if they only need to sell 10k units, then I'd expect that they're buying best-of-breed components and having someone like Flextronics do the assembly. The trick is sticking with custom installers and high-end boutique retailers, who with good sales consultants, keep you out of head-to-head comparisons and price wars with the big box store models.... keeping your custom installers and high-end boutique retailer's margins high so they can keep their good people paid well and happy, rinse and repeat.

FWIW, my set has Made in Korea stamped on it. My wife and I both work in the computer and consumer electronics industry. Korea isn't where you go for cheap electronics manufacturing.

considering samsung dominates all sorts of manufacturing in their home country of Korea and that their S-LCD plant is also located there adds even more evidence to my thoughts that that TV has an S-LCD made panel it in, would explain the good black levels as well because all other brand panels with the exception of sharps brand new UV2A panels cannot match S-LCD S-PVA panels in static contrast ratio numbers, problem is they get cloudy and flashlights when viewed in dark rooms

take a look at the back of the TV and see if you can spot the panel's label though the TV vents, its usaly on the top righthand side of the panel and the logo on it will look like this

I don't have an RF modulator, so instead I hooked up my BDP-83 via composite. The BDP-83 is setup to do no video processing, so the result should be just the TV's processing. The result is rather respectable given that it is scaling from NTSC.

The set is mounted on the wall and I don't really want to take it down. From what I've read about S-PVA, it is possible that NuVision is using their higher end S-PVA panels. It would certainly align with their statements on 10-bit color.

Was just flipping through the manual looking for specification when I noticed a description of the calibration menu. There is a full description just like every other menu. On the same page, it says you need to enter the password to access the menu and it is xxx. Sure enough, the code in the manual works and I can adjust black level, ADC phase, and white balance points for each color channel along with a few other things. I didn't expect to find that in the manual.

Finally had some time yesterday to really work through the Spears and Munsil disc and play with settings. I poked around in the calibration menu, but without the right gear, doing anything to the white balance controls just made a mess. I stuck to just the normal picture adjustment controls, which when set in the calibration menu apply to all inputs.

With careful adjustment, I was able to get a solid display of blacks and whites within the normal HDMI range (16-235). I did verify that Deep Color could be enabled and passed through my AVR, but it had no visible effect on the contrast test pattern. I left it enabled anyway. One thing to note was that the backlight is set extremely bright out of the box. I had to turn it down to 20 for night mode from the default of 100. This does not seem to cause any real loss of vividness to colors, but does allow blacks to get close to black. In a dark room with an all black screen, there is a small amount of flashlights in the corners (you'd need to be looking for them) but no noticeable clouds. The screen doesn't quite get to the point where it blends in with the frame of the set, but it is fairly close. Not enough to really worry about it being distracting.

Color adjustments were extremely minimal. Same for the sharpness controls.

I spent the bulk of my time experimenting with the various upscaling, deinterlacing, and motion compensation capabilities in my Oppo BDP-83, Denon AVR-4310CI, and the TV. The set apparently uses a custom-made video processor exclusive to NuVision. While the Oppo and Denon both use the ABT processor and do a good job at converting 1080i to 1080p or 1080p/24 to 1080p/60, I found the NuVision was considerably better. The Jaggies edge-adaptive deinterlacing test shows a number of artifacts when either the Oppo or Denon is used to deinterlace, but the NuVision shows only 1 small area of Moire and a very small region of blurriness around the moving needle when using the FX5 mode (repeats the same image 2 times for 60Hz and 5 times for 24Hz instead of doing a 3:2 pull-down). FFM mode (motion compensation) caused a number of artifacts and caused a smearing effect trailing the needle.

What was really interesting was the difference on 480i material. The Oppo and Denon do a good job upscaling DVDs, but the NuVision has a sharpness and clarity that brings them nearly to Blu-ray quality. With FX5 mode turned on, fast-motion is dead on and gives a faithful playback from the source material. FFM can easily make the same fast-motion scenes extremely smooth, but some loss of sharpness happens. I decided that I preferred the sharpness and feel of FX5 for not only 480i, but also 1080i, 1080p, and 1080p/24. If sports or fast action are your thing, this set should be one to consider.

Another interesting aspect of the video processor used is its ability to playback basically every HD resolution and frame rate. I don't have any 50Hz material, but the manual clearly indicates that it will handle it. Given my experiences with 60Hz and 24Hz material, I'd expect the results to be phenomenal.

The bottom-line for this set: it won't get the extremely deep black levels that sets like the Samsung 8500 can do, but the sharpness, clarity, and purity of the image is worth it. Regardless of the source material (480i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 1080p/24), the image is always extremely real and FX5 handles fast motion better than every set I've seen. The big downside is the price and difficulty in finding a retailer.

The ISF calibration guy is scheduled to come out in 2 weeks. I'll post a follow up after that.

Thanks kc8apf for your continued review updates of the NuVision FX5 LS series. Your most recent assessment is encouraging enough to want to check one out further. I will have to wait a few weeks, though, as the store where I first saw the non-LED model FX5 is not expecting any of the new LED models for at least that time frame.

Although I was initially considering the older CCFL FX5 model, I have decided to wait to see the new LED version, and, coincidentally, with the recent 2010 CES announcement of a number of new TV's, including the new Sony Bravia line, which looks very appealing, perhaps a few others, as well.

Brian, Magnolia's calibration guy for the San Francisco area, stopped by today. He will be emailing the charts from the calibration software in a few days. I'll post them once I get them.

He started from the settings I had done by eye with the Spears and Munsil disc. It turns out that I was actually quite close. The main differences were adjustment to the white balance and gamma.

My initial reaction to the calibrated settings is that darks are handed noticeably better near the limits of the panel. I gained 3-4 extra shades of black. It also seems to have allowed the backlight to drop another few notches which reduces the already almost imperceptible flashlighting even further. That said, they are still there if you really look for them in a dark room on a pure black screen.

kc8apf,

Thanks for your updates & please keep doing them. I hope to drag my lazy butt to one of their dealers here in Phoenix soon.

The calibration guy eventually sent the final settings, but didn't include the actual calibration data. He hasn't responded to emails, so I don't think I'll be getting it.

To my surprise, I got an email from the calibration guy today with the actual results instead of just the settings.

A small company does not have the capital needed to manufacture their own LCD panels. It takes BIG bucks and that is why you see hundreds of televsion manufacturers using panels made by a handful of manufacturers. They are more than likely using third party components which are carefully selected (hence the higher price)

I've never heard of this brand but you can bet I will be looking for it now.

In speaking with a Magnolia representative this weekend the Nuvision panels are Samsung. They have someone that hand picks each one and he rejects 9 out of 10 panels.

I see that 46" and 55" models in NuVision's FX10 line have started to show up in Magnolia Home Design showrooms. The picture looked very good to my untrained eye. Aside from the astronomical price, does anybody have any firsthand observations about these new sets (e.g., picture quality, etc.)? I guess it's still a bit too early for any online professional reviews.

From the available sizes and the specs, it looks like they are using the same edge lighting system and panels as the FX5. I'd guess they mostly just updated their video processor to do 240Hz and 3D. If so, it should still be a phenomenal display. Of course, 3D isn't much of a reason to upgrade from my FX5 LED.

There's a new (but not really extensive) review of the 46" version of NuVision's FX10 at AVguide.com:

http://www.avguide.com/review/nuvisi...d-3dtv-tpv-100

On a trip I had a chance to check out an fx10 55", the number one thing that caught my eye was the blu ray chicken little feed and the motion when you look at the birds lips. Fantastic. I'm sold.

These tvs can be special ordered from any BBY Magnolia and they do in fact offer certain promotional bundles. What those bundles are, I couldn't tell you.

I just got a Nuvision NVU55FX10LS.

I notice with the active back lighting turned on, the image "pumps" when going from dark to light or light to dark. it's very distracting. Do you have any suggestions to reduce this while keeping the deeper black levels?

I turned off the local dimming, and all is well, I'd rather live with some led bleed then the pumping!

I love this set! Stunning!

Here's a link to the Home Theater review:

http://www.hometheater.com/content/n...ls-3d-lcd-hdtv