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This week, Chinese manufacturing giant TCL invited me to its private suite at the famous Chinese Theater in Hollywood to see its new 48" 1080p LED-LCD TV, the 48FS4690, which will be available in the US exclusively at Sam's Club for a month or so, then at other retail outlets. The visit was timed to coincide with the premier of 300: Rise of an Empire, which I didn't watch because I have zero interest—in fact, negative interest—in blood-and-guts movies.
The 48" TCL 48FS4690 LED direct-lit LCD TV in TCL's private suite at the world-famous Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.
The big news here is the list price: $450! I remember when flat-panel prices were struggling to get below $100 per diagonal screen inch, and now this model sets the bar at a tenth of that amount. Granted, it's a basic flat panel with no online apps, no 3D, and 60 Hz refresh rate, but if that's all you need, you'll be hard pressed to find it for less at this screen size.
The 48FS4690 uses LED direct backlighting, which means the LEDs are mounted in an array behind the LCD panel, not along the edges, with no local dimming, which isn't surprising at this price. Still, I generally prefer direct backlighting over edgelighting because it tends to have better uniformity of illumination.
I brought the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark 2nd Edition setup Blu-ray in case they let me fiddle with the controls, which they did. In fact, the company reps paid close attention to what I was doing, which is a good sign that the company wants to improve its products.
As I looked at the patterns for adjusting contrast and brightness, it became immediately apparent that the set does not display below-black or much above-white; it clips everything below 16 and above 241. (Brightness is encoded as an 8-bit number, so its value can extend from 0 to 255, but video is defined from 16 to 235. Still, a TV should display the full range so the contrast and brightness controls can be set properly, especially since there is white information above 235 in some video content.)
Even with this limitation, I was able to set the brightness and contrast controls, and these settings were the same as the default settings in the Cinematic picture mode. Using the blue filter that comes with the disc, the default color setting was right on the money, but the tint setting was a bit high—odd, since in most cases these days, the default tint setting is fine. The only control that needed significant adjustment was sharpness—at the default setting, the set exhibited some serious edge-enhancement ringing, which disappeared only at very low settings; I set it to 0.
Note to TCL: in future sets, have the menu disappear when adjusting a picture control. As it is, the menu blocks a good deal of the images that are used to set those controls. I was still able to make the adjustments, but it would have been much nicer if the menu disappeared and the control slider moved to the bottom of the screen.
I also brought some movies on Blu-ray, including Stargate: Continuum, Master and Commander, and Baraka. Right away, we saw that the skin tones were too red, which was fixed by adjusting the tint control back to its default setting. Clearly, the blue filter was not accurate with this set, as is often the case with LCD TVs. Also, I thought the Neutral color-temperature setting looked closer to correct than the Warm setting, though I didn't have my measurement equipment with me to be sure. (The set offers no grayscale-calibration controls—again, not surprising at this price.)
Once I got things dialed in, colors looked quite good, and the detail was nice and sharp, though the shadow detail was only okay, as illustrated in the below-deck shots at the beginning of Master and Commander. Illumination uniformity was better than many edgelit LED-LCD TVs I've seen, but not perfect—in particular, there were lighter patches in the lower left portion of the screen, which extended into letterbox bars. This was also evident in the opening starfield of Stargate: Continuum, though I could also see more faint stars in that image than I've seen on many LCD screens. On the plus side, the LEDs do not jump to zero during interstitial black screens, like they do in the Samsung EH6000 series, which is also LED direct lit with no local dimming.
The 48FS4690 is not the be-all and end-all of flat-panel TVs by any means, but with a list price of $450, I don't expect it to be. The closest I could find is the 47" Vizio E470, which is also 1080p at 60 Hz with LED direct backlighting (no local dimming) and no online apps or 3D, for $550. I haven't taken a critical look at the E470, so I can't say if it beats the 48FS4690 in terms of illumination uniformity and shadow detail.
In any event, the TCL 48FS4690 represents a new pricing threshold for TVs of this size, providing reasonable performance for less than anything comparable.
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This week, Chinese manufacturing giant TCL invited me to its private suite at the famous Chinese Theater in Hollywood to see its new 48" 1080p LED-LCD TV, the 48FS4690, which will be available in the US exclusively at Sam's Club for a month or so, then at other retail outlets. The visit was timed to coincide with the premier of 300: Rise of an Empire, which I didn't watch because I have zero interest—in fact, negative interest—in blood-and-guts movies.
The 48" TCL 48FS4690 LED direct-lit LCD TV in TCL's private suite at the world-famous Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.
The big news here is the list price: $450! I remember when flat-panel prices were struggling to get below $100 per diagonal screen inch, and now this model sets the bar at a tenth of that amount. Granted, it's a basic flat panel with no online apps, no 3D, and 60 Hz refresh rate, but if that's all you need, you'll be hard pressed to find it for less at this screen size.
The 48FS4690 uses LED direct backlighting, which means the LEDs are mounted in an array behind the LCD panel, not along the edges, with no local dimming, which isn't surprising at this price. Still, I generally prefer direct backlighting over edgelighting because it tends to have better uniformity of illumination.
I brought the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark 2nd Edition setup Blu-ray in case they let me fiddle with the controls, which they did. In fact, the company reps paid close attention to what I was doing, which is a good sign that the company wants to improve its products.
As I looked at the patterns for adjusting contrast and brightness, it became immediately apparent that the set does not display below-black or much above-white; it clips everything below 16 and above 241. (Brightness is encoded as an 8-bit number, so its value can extend from 0 to 255, but video is defined from 16 to 235. Still, a TV should display the full range so the contrast and brightness controls can be set properly, especially since there is white information above 235 in some video content.)
Even with this limitation, I was able to set the brightness and contrast controls, and these settings were the same as the default settings in the Cinematic picture mode. Using the blue filter that comes with the disc, the default color setting was right on the money, but the tint setting was a bit high—odd, since in most cases these days, the default tint setting is fine. The only control that needed significant adjustment was sharpness—at the default setting, the set exhibited some serious edge-enhancement ringing, which disappeared only at very low settings; I set it to 0.
Note to TCL: in future sets, have the menu disappear when adjusting a picture control. As it is, the menu blocks a good deal of the images that are used to set those controls. I was still able to make the adjustments, but it would have been much nicer if the menu disappeared and the control slider moved to the bottom of the screen.
I also brought some movies on Blu-ray, including Stargate: Continuum, Master and Commander, and Baraka. Right away, we saw that the skin tones were too red, which was fixed by adjusting the tint control back to its default setting. Clearly, the blue filter was not accurate with this set, as is often the case with LCD TVs. Also, I thought the Neutral color-temperature setting looked closer to correct than the Warm setting, though I didn't have my measurement equipment with me to be sure. (The set offers no grayscale-calibration controls—again, not surprising at this price.)
Once I got things dialed in, colors looked quite good, and the detail was nice and sharp, though the shadow detail was only okay, as illustrated in the below-deck shots at the beginning of Master and Commander. Illumination uniformity was better than many edgelit LED-LCD TVs I've seen, but not perfect—in particular, there were lighter patches in the lower left portion of the screen, which extended into letterbox bars. This was also evident in the opening starfield of Stargate: Continuum, though I could also see more faint stars in that image than I've seen on many LCD screens. On the plus side, the LEDs do not jump to zero during interstitial black screens, like they do in the Samsung EH6000 series, which is also LED direct lit with no local dimming.
The 48FS4690 is not the be-all and end-all of flat-panel TVs by any means, but with a list price of $450, I don't expect it to be. The closest I could find is the 47" Vizio E470, which is also 1080p at 60 Hz with LED direct backlighting (no local dimming) and no online apps or 3D, for $550. I haven't taken a critical look at the E470, so I can't say if it beats the 48FS4690 in terms of illumination uniformity and shadow detail.
In any event, the TCL 48FS4690 represents a new pricing threshold for TVs of this size, providing reasonable performance for less than anything comparable.
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