Official Samsung LNxxA450 (Series 4) Owners Thread - Page 21

I am setting up a 40" 450 series, here is my problem:

Closed Captions not work from Dish Network receiver, feeding out of component video feeds, into a ONKYO 603 receiver. I am using the Component outs on the ONKYO into the TV's Component inputs.

It is not seeing the CC. The Toshiba Rear Projection had no issues with the CC.

When we watch over the air HD programs the CC works fine.


Does anyone have any ideas?

New owner of an LN40A450...nice set. The HD broadcast comes in great. Anyways, I've been reading over the threads for the past hour or so and I noticed in one of them that someone experienced some white noise at the top of the screen when in Just Scan mode. I've only had this set for 2 days and it's only really been in Wide Screen mode.

For the heck of it, I switched to Just Scan to see if I had white noise and sure enough, it was present a little. But I was able "hide" it by moving the vertical positioning up. What I'm more concerned with is the green strip on the right side of the screen from top to bottom (probably an 1/8" maybe less) in Just Scan mode. If I try to move the horizontal positioning over to the right, even at full horizontal positioning to the right, the green stripe is still there?

This is present in both HD and SD channels.

Anyone else experience this green strip in Just Scan mode while viewing SD or HD channels?

This is what I found on-line for Standard Mode:

Backlight = 5
Contrast =85
Brightness = 49
Sharpness = 0
Color = 50
Tint = G50/R50

Detailed Settings:
Black Adjust = Off
Dynamic Contrast = Off
Gamma = 0
Color Space = Auto (or use this with Custom - Red: R33-G0-B0 - Green:R18-G52-B0 - Blue: R11-G0-B51 - Yellow: R49-G53-B0 - Cyan: R22-G46-B56 - Magenta: R37-G0-B43
Flesh Tone = 0
Edge Enhancement = Off

White Balance:
R-Offset = 25
G-Offset = 25
B-Offset = 26
R-Gain =37
G-Gain =25
B-Gain = 0

Picture Options:
Color Tone = Normal
Digital N/R = Off
HDMI Black Level = Low
Film Mode = Off (disabled)
Blue Mode = Off

Energy Saving = Medium
Entertainment Modes = Off

I hope this helps as it is all i had to work with and it looks good to me.

i dont understand why the "sharpness" level would be set to 0....wouldnt you rather increase it so that the picture is "sharp"?

Sharpness degrades picture quality by adding noise.

Yeah, once you get used to a lower setting, you realize that 0 actually produces the sharpest image.

Going to try that out, Thanks for the advice!

I wouldn't say that as it is 'sharper' on the higher settings but so much you could cut yourself on peoples outlines, there is absolutely no reason to add additional sharpness to digital content unless for some reason the whole thing was shot out of focus and you were trying to make it watchable.
Also make sure to take edge enhancement off and turning on 'just scan' helps too.

I do turn edge enhancement on and add some extra sharpness for my SD cable channels as they are pretty messed up.

Fry's had the 330 on sale ($579)earlier this week and I bought it. Today they have the 450 for the same price ($599). The cases and contrast are different as well as the connections. Is it worth the time to pack up the 330 and get th 450? I mean I don't really need another HDMI port. I do like the 450 case better with the hidden speakers and it is also lighter. Is there really a big diffrerence in performance?

Does the 330 even have a composite/s-video port? Also you get more options for calibrating the TV, not to mention a little better contrast, a 3rd side HDMI port, and a much smaller/cooler looking case.

As much as I hate packing up and returning TVs I have to say for an extra $20 I would probably bite.

I did and like the 450 much more than the 330 for the reasons you listed. The 330 does not have DNIe and I like this feature. Once I was able to determine it can be turned off I decided to buy it. I realized my 50 DLP also had DNIe and played with it on that TV to see the difference on and off. The 330 picture was clear but did seem a little washed out. Also it did not have the deep black that DNIe can do.

Anyone have some input for picture settings for pc gaming? I'm having a tough time getting my 26a450 to look right with my games.

Hey all just picked up the 40 inch tv and this is my first LCD HD TV so it was a big big purchase. The problem I'm having is the 360 looks beautiful via HDMI, but my HD cable box is using Component and it seems that the colors are kind of dark and and not bright and vibrant. Almost seems to also have a yellow tinge to everything. Is there anything I can do to fix this? HELP!

UPDATE: Tried just coaxial cable, and the picture looks beautiful. Could it be my cables, or HD box?

I still need some help here. Advice is appreciated, or just point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Hi guys. I'm new to posting, although ive checked this forum frequently for advice regarding the HD world. I just recently purchased an ln32A450 and have positively obsessed over the picture settings since I got it -- what a curse to have so many options. Anyway, I think I may have an interesting solution (or a starting point) for some of you out there. The following are my current settings for use in xbox360 gaming and HD DVDs through the Add-on, HDMI connection. I don't know how this will fare with other setups, but here goes, explanation to follow.

Mode: Standard
Backlight - 6
Contrast - 92
Brightness - 46
Sharpness - 18
Color - 50
Tint - 50\\50 (this may need a slight adjustment towards G)

Other settings
Black Adjust - medium
Dyn Contrast - low (or off if you like)
Gamma - +1
Edge Enhance - OFF
HDMI Black level - normal
film mode - very OFF
DNIe - greyed out for me in every mode but dynamic, but fyi causes massive loss of detail in dark scenes.

Color: normal (warm1 is nice too...)

Xbox settings:
Reference levels - Standard (very important, blacks are super-crushed in any other mode on this tv)
Res - 1080i for movies, 720p for games

A little explanation -- The difficult element of this config was black adjust vs hdmi black level. These are very related. Originally, I had black adjust off and black level low, like many other people here. But I found that comparing standard mode to dynamic with all factors held constant and DNIe turned off, dynamic was giving me some dark detail that was missing from standard, and even more missing from movie. However, dynamic looked slightly washed out in other areas. So I tried turning the HDMI black level to normal (in standard mode) and this illuminated some of the detail I was missing, but at the expense of truer blacks.. thus the black adjustment. Gamma also plays a role in this situation, and I considered having it at +2. Anyway Xbox users and anyone else who's interested.. give this a shot and let me know what you think! I think it's as close to an all-purpose (even TV) solution as I've gotten so far.

PS I haven't properly calibrated the TV, only used other calibrations as a starting point for reaching this config. I don't know how accurate this image is, only that it doesn't stray too far from some of the recommended settings I've seen, and has a bit more pop and liveliness to me without noticeable artifacts, etc. Flesh tones might still be a bit pink, and perhaps some of the color-oriented calibration advice would be useful there... I guess that's the next step for me.

PPS Ive changed my mind on the black adjust\\hdmi black level issue... back to "off" and "low" -- might be worth tinkering with anyway though for some out there. Additionally would like to report that 1080i does seem to improve detail levels in movies and in games, but slows things down.. as advertised. I'm wondering if anyone knows, if I have the 360 set to 1080p and feed the tv that signal, what kind of scaling is going on and can anything positive result from this?

Great thread!

I am using a vga cable from my xbox360 to my samsung ln32a450. The only problem with trying to use the above calibration is that sometimes certain parts are grayed out.

For example, I can't edit the sharpness at all. It's completely grayed out.

I think this may be because maybe samsung doesn't allow you to tune the sharpness settings when you're on PC mode (i'm on pc mode because of using a vga cord to hook up the 360 to the sammy).

Also I've upgraded to the latest firmware. Anyway, if you guys have any ideas, please tell me ... thanks in advance.

I was watching an old episode of burn notice today on my pc, with my 26a450, and the blacks just dont seem right. Like not enough detail. Heres a pic to show it:


i have my contrast on 90 and brightness on 55. Any way to make it look "better"?

ah nevermind, i got component cables to see if i could change the sharpness and yes you can

Turns out that pc mode doesn't allow u to mess around with a lot of the settings.


I have one other problem right now. I bought my ln32a450 from amazon.com about 4 months ago and just opened it right now (vacation reasons) and there's this annoying little green pixel on the middle left of the screen that i don't know how to get rid of. I don't know if I can return it to amazon.com or exchange for another one because it's already been like 3-4 months. But perhaps there's another way to get rid of this pixel? It's green, so I don't know if that's a dead or a stuck pixel.

Thanks in advance

trouble with playstation 3 setup via HDMI

If someone could respond to this i would appreciate it. Well the problem is i got a 40G playstation 3 console about 1 month ago. It came with the standard AV cable the white,yellow,red. After that i purchased a Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch
Series 4 LCD TV. IT has 3 HDMI ports 2 in the back and one in the rear panel, so i bought a Sony HDMI cable with a USB cable that came together in a pack which cost like 70 bucks, and I did the setup and on display settings i checked all of the reslutions my tv supports 720p and 1080i, and when i put in like madden 09 or GTA 4 i get these horizontal and vertical flickering lines when playing these games, Do i need a new hdmi cable? and i know that every game has a video output resolution which has it on the back of each game but even when choosing the resolution the game supports i still get these stupid lines???
anyone who owns this particular tv set can help me with the right display settings that would be great
THIS iS MY CURRENT SETUP
HDMI cable connected to HDMI in 1,
Under video output settings on the Playstation 3, I only have,480p and 720p checked, Then on the RGB full Range i Have it set to full,
On the tv settings am playing games in with the entertainment mode option- with the cinema option, i know it has a gamemode option supposedly to optimize the picture and sound settings for video games but the picture just looks brighter and not as good as in cinema mode.

If you haven't already experimented...take it off RGB Full Mode; use Standard or Movie picture modes on the Samsung rather than the Entertainment mode; try a different HDMI input on the TV. If all else fails, get $4 HDMI cable at monoprice.com and return the overpriced Sony [heck, you might want to do that anyway!] Connecting my PS3 to the 32" 450, I haven't experienced any of the problems you described. Good luck!

Under what circumstances does the robot sound occur: hooked directly to cable, hooked up thru a set top box or both? I'm hooked up without a stb and I get the sound intermittanly on the hi-def stations only. I'm planning on calling samsung but before I do I'm trying to get as much info as possible. I'm sure they'll try to blame it on a poor signal but I'm sure that's not it. Btw, I'm on comcast. I plan on getting a cable box but if I still get the robot sound that'll be a bummer. Any thoughts, wisdom or what not, please chime in. I'm running the lastest firmware also.

hey basso have you tried my settings? The original ones before the PPS, that is... meaning try changing your HDMI black level to normal and black adjust as you see fit... normal uncovers some detail in dark scenes but also washes out the picture a bit. I ended up changing my mind on the issue as you can see in my post, but if you don't mind a slightly brighter overall image and perhaps a less 3d overall effect, hdmi black level normal might give you some of the dark detail you crave...

Anyone else try my settings? Whaddya think?

yeah i had hdmi black lever on normal anyway. Your settings didnt really help it must have something to do with the fact im using it as a pc monitor.

oh another question, is the max res for the ln26a450 1360x768 as a monitor?

I've narrowed down my choice for a 37" to 2 TVs: LN37A450 and the Toshiba 37AV500U. They are the only 2 that will fit in a cabinet space where it will live.

I looked at them side by side in 2 different stores, and came away with the same perception: that the Tosh just doesn't have nearly as good a quality picture as the Sam: blacks are grayish, less contrast, and it is not nearly as sharp. I played with the picture settings but could not get the Tosh close.

However, I am concerned about the speaker/sound quality in the A450 not being good enough. I don't need a surround system since this will be my bedroom (secondary) TV, and I want to be able to use the same Sammy remote for volume as well as all other TV functions.

Therefore, I was thinking that if all the sound functionality and settings (including volume) was available through the headphone jack, I could get a decent quality set of powered computer speakers, attach it to the TV via the headphone jack and leave it on all the time.
The Klipsch Promedia 2.1 set is one I would consider. It would give me much better quality sound, still be compact, and if the TV's sound settings are available, I could make use of the SRS simulated surround as well as the equalizer settings.

So, is this possible/viable?
Thanks!!

I've got good news and bad news for you. I just tested using headphones in my LN32A450 and all the sound settings were completely controllable, including volume, equalizer, surround, etc. The bad news, I got a very noticalbe hum in the two headphones I tried (Sony earbuds and some old Aiwa phones). In my test, I was tuned to cable TV and HD sources over the QAM tuner (I don't have any other audio sources passing through the TV as I use an AVR for all my audio needs.)

On the other hand you can easily use the RCA audio output jack on the TV to connect to a set of computer speakers by getting one of those y-connectors (RCA - 35mm) for a couple bucks at RadioShack or monoprice.com. The downside is of course that it's a fixed audio out jack and you can use the volume controls in the TV to control the sound.

I also compared the Sammy to the Tosh, and the PQ is no comparison. Go for the Sammy in spite of its audio quirks.

Is this one of those tv's that converts 1080i to 540p? Just wondering.

I'm not sure if this is an inherent problem with HDMI or a problem with my 32A450: An upconverting DVD player is connected to my 32A450 with an HDMI cable. If I connect an optical audio cable from the DVD player to my receiver, DTS is passed through, but if I run the optical audio cable from the 32A450 to the receiver, it won't pass the DTS signal from the DVD player.

Has anyone else noticed this?

That seems to be true for all TV's it will down mix it to stereo audio, except for the channels that it tunes in with the ATSC or QAM tuner.


ANYONE FIGURE OUT THE ROBOT AUDIO YET?

Just picked up a LN32A450. Having problems adding OTA channels after initial scan. I have antenna pointed in one direction & do initial scan. I then turn antenna to other market, and the new scan deletes initial channel lineup.

Can anyone offer advice regarding manually adding channels?

If you know the actual frequencies, you can enter them by hand and they'll be added. Like in New York, 56 is cbs 2.1, 28 is nbc 4.1, etc. You can look them up at http://antennaweb.org. Westinghouse TV's have a nicer interface for this stuff, but the picture wasn't as good.