You can easily see with your own eyes the difference between good and poor picture quality. However, the technical definitions of image quality are rather complicated: image quality is a mix of contrast ratio, color saturation, accuracy and resolution.
Contrast ratio is the ratio between the brightest and darkest color a HDTV can produce. The better your system is, the higher contrast ratio it can produce. If your system has low contrast ratio, you will experience dull and washed out images, and fine details will be lost. The good news is that there were great improvements in contrast ratio, and even cheap HDTVs have enjoyable contrast ratios at this time.
Black levels are also very important for good picture quality. Good black levels mean you see absolute blacks, not greyish blacks. Poor black levels can be especially annoying in dim light conditions, because this is when your eyes are very sensitive about blacks. Lot of people achieve absolute black by setting the black levels too low: by doing this you may have absolute blacks, but black shadow details will be lost. Another important aspect of picture quality are the high white levels.
High white levels make the images on the screen appear vivid and lively. This makes the viewing more pleasant. Again, lot of people make a mistake by setting the white levels too high: this way certain details and bright highlights can be lost.
Important characteristics of the images on your display are color temperature, saturation and accuracy. 6500K, corresponding to daytime illumination, is the standard for color temperature. This is the natural light temperature. Everything above this is bluish, and everything below is yellow or reddish. If the color temperature is not set properly, every color will be bluish or reddish.
Color saturation can be relatively easily adjusted by using the color patterns that come with calibrations discs or TV channels. Color accuracy depends on how your HDTV decodes the image data. These are pretty complicated issues. You may want to read more about this elsewhere, but if you only want to stay at beginner-level, it is enough for you to know that the decoders of your system should match the color encoding used in film production.
Greyscale and display characteristic also affect the color reproduction of your HDTV, but again this is above the beginners knowledge about image calibration. You can choose to learn about this, or you can hire a specialist to do it for you.
The latest HD resolutions provide 5 times more pixel amount compared to Standard Definition. As a result, image is not simply clearer, but there is night and day difference: the smallest detail can be noticed on the image. If you want to have the best, go for 1080 capable HDTVs.
The term of percieved sharpness relates to resolution. It means users can sharpen artificially the image without modifying the resolution by creating a crisp edge along the border of the image. This also gives the impression of better image quality.
Edward McKellen is an HDTV expert who writes HDTV reviews for HDTVreviewlab.com. To check out the latest Panasonic HDTV reviews or learn more about HDTV visit HDTVreviewlab.com