HDTV review (LCD - 32 INCH WIDESCREEN - 1366 X 768 - 500 CD/M2 - 1000:1 - D-SUB 15 PI)

During our customary calibration phase, during which we adjusted the set for our darkened theater, we were impressed by the Hannspree's range of controls, and its individual sliders for red, green, and blue color-temperature tweaks were particularly welcome. That's because the Hanspree Xv's three color-temperature presets were extremely blue; even the Warm setting hovered around 9,000K (see the Geek box at the end of this review). After adjustment, we coaxed the color temperature much closer to the 6,500K norm, although it wasn't nearly as accurate as the Vizio V32L HDTV, for example. The grayscale reddened as it got darker, which became apparent in program material. Click here for our complete user-menu picture settings, or see Tips & Tricks above.

During the beginning of the King Kong HD DVD, we noticed that redness in dark areas pretty quickly. In the first shot of Naomi Watts in the dressing room backstage, her face was slightly dark, and on the Hannspree it appeared redder than on the other HDTVs in the room, which included the Vizio VX32L HDTV, the 37-inch Vizio VX37L HDTV, the 47-inch Vizio GV47LFHDTV, and our reference Pioneer Pro-FHD1 plasma TV. In brighter scenes, her skin tone and other colors looked much more natural, but overall the Hanspree's color accuracy was still below average.

We also paid close attention to the set's ability to produce a deep color of black, and in the Hannspree's case, its black level was somewhat brighter than that of the other LCDs we had on hand. Jack Black's first film screening, for example, evinced brighter shadows and letterbox bars than on the other sets. In its favor, the Hannspree did produce good shadow detail for an LCD; we could see more of the shadowed ship in the docks on its screen than we could on a couple of other LCDs.

The uniformity of the Hannspree's picture across the screen didn't suffer from any major problems, although if we looked hard at the letterbox bars above and below the image, especially in dark scenes, we could discern that the left side did appear slightly brighter than the rest of the picture.

The Hannspree also evinced more false contouring than any of the other displays in the room. During the intro, for example, as the shadow falls over the words "A WingNut Films Production," we saw distinct bands of color as opposed to the smooth gradation on other displays. The bands were the worst on the Hannspree, while the Vizios had a few of them (the 47-inch model most of all), while the reference Pioneer plasma TV was free of banding. We saw similar contours in the shadows during the scene where Black is watching the film.

We also took a look at how the Hannspree Xv handled standard-definition sources, and the results were surprisingly good. It smoothed out the jagged edges from the moving diagonal lines on the HQV test disc, and the waving American flag also looked very smooth. The Xv rendered every line of resolution from the disc, and details in a stone bridge, steps, and grass were likewise sharp. It also engaged 2:3 pull-down detection with admirable alacrity.

The only problem we had with the Hannspree's otherwise good standard-definition picture quality was the Xv's lack of a noise reduction (NR) control. The low-quality shots of skies, flowers, and sunsets from the HQV disc crawled with noise, whereas on models like the Vizio we could engage NR and remove a lot of the video "snow." If your standard-definition sources are relatively clean, such as digital cable and satellite, this shouldn't be a big problem, but nonetheless we think lack of NR is a noteworthy omission on a set that's likely going to be showing a lot of lower-quality sources.

Our brief look at computer sources delivered mostly good results. The set resolved every line of 1,360x768, according to DisplayMate, and text looked fine, if a tad softer than we've seen on some other displays. Overscan was not an issue at this resolution setting.