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Unfortunately this difficult scene also brought out one of the set's least impressive aspects: relatively noisy shadows and false contouring. When the camera turns to the half-lit face of Bourne's female companion Marie (Franka Potente), for example, on the darker half, her eye and cheek are surrounded by moving dots of noise that drop abruptly to black in the darkest areas instead of fading naturally. A highlight appeared on her cheek at one point that stood out unnaturally against the shadow.
These artifacts are species of false contouring that also plagued Samsung's 42-inch model, and they were difficult to escape in scenes such as this. As with the 42-inch model, when we reduced the brightness control to lower the amount of noise, we started losing detail in shadows. Flat fields of near darkness, such as the wide shot of Bourne's house in the early dawn, also brought out crawling greenish motes of noise. As with all similar artifacts, the noise and false contouring became less visible when we moved farther back than our normal 8-foot seating distance; at 10 feet, for example, the motes were much more difficult to discern.
As we expected, bright scenes looked much better than dark ones, and false contouring was all but absent. As Marie shops in the marketplace, for example, the brilliant blues and purples of the women's saris stood out beautifully, and the thatched huts in the background as she crosses the beach were rendered with deep, rich beige tones in the warm sunset light. Saturation was excellent, thanks to the Samsung's accurate color decoding; her semitanned skin looked just right as she stood in the window's light, with no visible red push.
With test patterns, we noticed that gray areas fluctuated significantly from one step of brightness to another. We did calibrate the grayscale to bring it a bit closer overall to the standard, but that had little effect on the Samsung's comparatively poor grayscale tracking. This issue was much more difficult to detect in program material, although we did see it if we looked hard in some areas. One example from Bourne was visible in the room where the agents plant devices to blow the lights; the white wall, which was brighter on one side and moved to shadow on the other, appeared very subtly more greenish in parts and reddish in others.
Details were fine for a plasma of this resolution, and when Marie looks through Bourne's papers and maps, we could easily read the writing and see the tiny type. As usual we recommend you feed this plasma the high-def resolution that's closest to its 1,366x768 native resolution: 720p. 1080i sources looked slightly softer, although the difference was again quite subtle. By the same token, it likes HDMI better than component-video, which evinced high-frequency interference in the most-detailed areas of test patterns, although yet again, it was difficult to spot in normal program material. As a side note, like a few HDTVs out there, the HP-S5063 can't handle 480i sources via its HDMI input, but that's not a big issue since HDMI is usually reserved for higher resolutions anyway. We also noted in the review of the 42-inch HP-S4253 that it was impossible to completely eliminate edge enhancement, but its 50-inch brother didn't suffer the same issue.
Standard-def performance was a bit problematic according to our test patterns, and in particular, composite-video appeared way below average, with strange vibrations and instabilities in lines that should be stationary. We recommend you use a progressive-scan or upconverting DVD player with this set to avoid this kind of instability. Details via component, S-Video, and composite video appeared softer than they should have, although the set did do a very good job of smoothing jagged lines and engaging 2:3 pull-down detection quickly. We looked at some noisy standard-def video and found that the HP-S5053 did an average job of quelling the snowy-looking motes. Unfortunately, engaging its noise-reduction circuit had very little effect for reducing the noise from any source.
Finally, we tried to assess Samsung's claim that the HP-S5053's glass panel reflects less room light than other plasmas, but it was difficult to do so without other plasmas onhand. Anecdotally, Samsung's screen did seem to reduce glare a little, although in our testing room we still noticed overhead lighting, for example, reflecting off its surface. Of course, glare is an issue with all plasmas and direct-view CRTs but doesn't plague flat-panel LCDs or microdisplays.
| TEST | RESULT | SCORE |
| Before color temp (20/80) | 6,609/6,645K | Good |
| After color temp | 6,529/6,469K | Good |
| Before grayscale variation | +/- 172K | Good |
| After grayscale variation | +/- 190K | Average |
| Color of red (x/y) | 0.654/0.329 | Average |
| Color of green | 0.248/0.678 | Poor |
| Color of blue | 0.152/0.064 | Good |
| Overscan | 3.5 percent | Average |
| Black-level retention | All patterns stable | Good |
| 2:3 pull-down, 24fps | Yes | Good |
| Defeatable edge enhancement | Yes | Good |
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Samsung HP-S5053:
$879.95 - $899.99
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Second Act
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$899.99 | Yes |
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Refurb Depot
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$879.95 | Yes |
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