400+ is pretty unless you are going to watch television outdoors on a beach in bright day light.Also when an LCD is set to display 400+ its black levels will be so pathetic that anyone who likes decent picture will not touch that television with a barge pole.
F8500 has greats blacks while retaining amazing whites which i guess no LCD's can even day dream about.
Which is why i said one needs sunglasses to watch,if one is watching it in a dark room.No wonder television info black numbers for lcd look pathetic ,they measure black levels with backlight set to max.
But in daytime afternoon when there is plenty of sunlight in the living room,the lcd brightness does come in handy whether its going to utilize the 400+ cd/m2 of brightness depends on viewing condition.
F8500 may have better blacks on pixel level in a dark environment but in rooms with daytime ambient light like mine ,even a IPS lcd will be safe in showing better perceived blacks.
But since LCD's are the most handicap in this department usually calibrators try and reduce the back lighting to obtain decent blacks which is again a compromise as LCD's cannot display anything close to decent blacks when displaying their peak white so they are not dynamic.
Most or majority of the calibrators and review sites reduce the backlight to acceptable levels(except televisioninfo.com).
Full array local dimming tvs starting and possibly ending with the HX950 not only dim the backlight but can also go to full brightness in areas where they are not dimming .Earlier models like HX900/920 and afaik other brands only dimmed.
So with this new mode available in the HX950 ,televisioninfo got a record contrast figure thanks to the new Peak white mode and their reviewing method the Sony HX950 got a contrast figure of 20208:1 which is the highest that site has recorded surpassing the VT60 and F8500 and matching the blacks of the F8500
Local dimming tvs not perfect but it did get a very high objective score.
If I may say so (once again), white levels are less (much less) important than black levels.
Yes. Whites are very important.
But in my opinion deeper blacks will enhance the impression of the other colors and contrasts. A tv with good contrast can definitely show better colors on a white background.
In such a case where pure white scenes are rare , what could be the use of bright whites?
One instance is snow flakes. In such a case if the contrast between the surroundings like sky is explicit then the snow will definitely look realistic.
Very bright white snow with poor contrasts with the surroundings looks yuck.
Having better black is better then better whites ,thats fine as long as one watches in a dark environment.
If the tv has poor brightness all colors will look muted.
Just for the record if i had a choice between the panasonic Z60/VT60 and the F8500 i would gladly go with the F8500,the higher brightness of the samsung outweigh the deep blacks of the panasonic.
The whites matter in plasma because they dim their screen depending on the APL and that picture doesn't need to be always contain a white color for the plasma to start dimming.
If you have a bright whites ,you can't notice those deep blacks since your pupils will contract and we can't resolve or see those deep blacks.This why local dimming tv like the HX950 dims the areas where it needs to dim and boosts the brightness of non dimmed zone, so that the perceived contrast will be higher and even if there are halos visible in tvs with local dimming for the most part you won't notice them due to peak whites which causes are pupils to contract.
Any way this is a thread for the W802 and lets keep it that way . Pretty much every thread that has a title name which includes Sony always becomes a VS thread and everyone knows who makes that into a versus thread .
