[Kevin Kuehn]

I believe a portion of this lack of black level comes from some sets having lower B+ headroom. The B+ on this TV I'm experimenting with has close to 250v vs Max's set at 150v. My contrast control has a range that allows high black level's even without the dc restoration circuit present. I find that most video I watched growing up was fairly consistent within a given program. I suspect there was some type of video compression used during the production process back in the 60's though 70's. I can basically set it and forget it. I'm not sure if modern day video content would be worse in that respect. Honestly I don't have much desire to watch new programing on my vintage sets. I do find the audio processing on today's movies quite poor in comparison to older material. Or possibly there's a trend back towards less processing? With my ageing ears I struggle to hear the quieter passages, and soon after being blown away. IMO too much dynamics. Similarly I don't see the range of video dynamics in nature that we expect to see from from our television sets. When ambient lighting is low the human eye tends to see less contrast.