Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Vincent and everyone else at HDTVTest for their hospitality and being kind enough to invite me to attend this year's UKTVTest TV Shootout event.
Furthermore, a big thank you to Tyler (WiFi-Spy) for both taking the time out of his busy schedule to fly across the Atlantic to partake in the event and doing a simply fantastic job regarding calibrating the various TV displays. It was great meeting you
For those who are interest in the details, here we go... the shootout was scheduled to start at 10:00am but started slightly later than this.
First of all, Vincent explained the structure of the scoring and awards, along with providing everyone with scoring sheets and explaining how to fill them in.
Following this, he began the various rounds of demonstrations with respect to all of the TVs, testing each according to the chosen performance aspects and categories, starting with BLACK LEVEL and SHADOW DETAIL, then moving onto BRIGHT HIGHLIGHTS DETAIL, COLOUR ACCURACY, MOTION PERFORMANCE etc... etc...
Unfortunately the layout of the room and positioning of all the seating being very close proximity to the TVs has presented a number of ‘challenges’... First of all, it became quite simply impossible for me to take professional photographs properly whilst the event was underway. All 50 people had a floor area of only circa 1.5 to 2 meters in front of the TVs, so there was absolutely no way I could position myself in that small space with my photography equipment, what with 50 people moving backwards and forwards in front of all of the TVs.... And to complicate matters further, the PANASONIC OLED TV had auto-dimming activating when any video is paused, meaning they could not use freeze frames for comparisons but had no choice but to use solely moving videos on a loop. This created a further headache from my perspective regarding taking proper photographs, because for a variety of reasons you need a long exposure time, which can only be used with freeze frames and not moving images.
So what I have done is agree with Vincent that next year I will attend the day before the event with respect to photographing the comparative performances in detail prior to the actual event. I can then focus on photos of the event itself on the day, as well as being able to post the comparative photographs, which I will have already taken the previous day, without any delays on the day itself.
Due to the small size of the viewing area, Vincent (very sensibly) split the 50 'judges' into two halves and the first half were invited to come down to the front to view all the TVs up-close-and-personal, before then sitting back down again, wherein it was the turn of the other half of the room to do the same. So , to answer someone's question, NO the judging was NOT done from the seating position, but in fact standing right in front of whatever TV.