Official Samsung LNxxB540 Owners Thread

Anyone care to share what picture settings they found best?

yeah i also wanna know you want this for tv or HD or BLU RAY?

anyone else have any info on this tv? im interested in purchasing one of these suckers from costco today.

I am definitely not the expert but I just bought one yesterday and I am thrilled. I currently have Sharp 32" GP3 model.
I walked back and forth between BB and Costco. I really liked the Pioneer P42U1 for $90 less after 10% movers coupon. But I bought the LN40B540. I really like this TV so far. More work to come when I get some free time to attempt tweaking.

same here, i've been checking it out and im on the fence. any input from the owners would be helpful!

I'm thinking of getting it too. It's either this one of the Sony kdl-40vl160 which costs a few hundred bucks more.

I'm checking out the LN46B540 since is on sale at Costco.
I found the Official Samsung LN37B540 Owner/Calibration Thread here on AVS Forum
that should be useful as a good start for any model of this series.( LNXXB540)
I'm not able to post the link here since this is my first post in this forum.

If anyone has feedback about the LN46B540 experience to help me out in my decision, many thanks in advance.

Is this an 8 bit panel?

I just bought the 40inch ver of this tv from costco a couple days ago and so far im loving it. Just wondering why there is so little info on this tv? and yes if someone could post up some settings for best picture quality that would be much appreciated.

Took delivery of the 46" version from Costco Tuesday. I'm brand new to HDTV and flat panels, so I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment with all the variables/adjustments. That said, I've found the LN46B540 so far to be easy to use and nicely designed. Remote's a bit tempermental (slight variations in how you point it seem to affect performance), but no big deal. Picture's gorgeous on over-the-air DTV and DVDs. My SD satellite looks lousy, but I knew that going in; an HD upgrade is in the works. Viewing angle is very good. I was down to this and the 120hz/47" Vizio at Costco for $1049, but the Vizio really seemed to fade at the extremes compared with the Samsung products.

Like previous poster, I've found nothing on this particular model or 540s in general on the 'net. I have found settings for the A530 and A550 46" models - any idea which would be closest to the 540? Or should I just stick with the 37" 540 settings mentioned in previous post?

Hmm, not much on the b540, huh. I'm debating whether to get the ln40b540 or the b530 but leaning towards the b540. Other than an extra hdmi port, a small contrast ratio and maybe an s-video port, there seems to be no difference.

is there anything that anyone knows of that is a real bonus?

I bought an LN32B540 from Costco recently. Very happy with the picture and the way upscaled DVDs look. My only concern is that the receiver sensitivity seems to be less than that of my old DTV convertor box for my analog TV. I believe the difference may be in multi-path rejection since very small changes in the antenna position allow me to bring in the picture from the one missing channel.

Does anyone have any idea what generation ATSC chipset is in this TV?

Has anyone else compared the OTA reception capability of this with other HDTV sets?

This is my second Samsung series 5 LCD. - There are not many calibration settings out there. For compatibility reasons, would the LN37 and LN40 540 model use the same? Or should one look for other series 5 LN40 units to compare and try those calibration settings?

Would appreciate any guidance on this. BTW -The CNET settings are real basic.

I don't know if you found your answer already, but that's dynamic contrast.
On our tv, it can be affected by 2 settings
1) Energy Saving in the setup menu, especially if it's set to Auto or High.
2) the dynamic contrast under Picture/Advanced Settings

Turn them off and see if you still have your issue, and if so, play around with them to see if you can find some combo you like.

Well, just bought the 40" at BestBuy for $250 cheaper than regular price and movies and video games look fantastic.

I haven't found a calibration for it yet, but am looking and will post it here when I do.

Also, it's a tiny bonus, but until I get my HD box in the fall, i'm able to make use of the coaxial input on the back and pick up 3 HD channels for free using a $10 pair of rabbit ears (For those of you in the Vancouver area, it's CBC, CTV and Global).

Just picked up the LN40B540 today. My only hesitant on it was the fact that it was 60hz and not 120hz. Is that a big deal? The salesman there was trying to sell me on the Sony KDL40V5100, which was about $100 more and 120hz instead of 60hz, but also only 50000:1 Dynamic contrast compared to the LN40B540 which is 60000:1. He felt the 120hz was a bigger deal then having the 60000:1.

Whats the consensus on this?

I have to say now, after reading up on the split feelings on 60hz vs 120hz, I'm glad I went with this tv and not the 120hz Sony.

Why are there so few posts about this television? I'm loving mine so far!

I'm hoping to get a LN52B540 to replace my Olevia 747i that just died and likely can't be fixed.

I don't understand why Samsung has to have so many variations. I think my search found over a dozen models when I typed in 'Samsung' and 'LCD'.

I'm going to be using this to watch divx/avi's from my Mac Mini through VGA, play games on my XBox360 through HDMI or watch Blu-Ray/DVD's through my Samsung BD-P1500 via HDMI.

Anyone using this with XBox360 and HDMI? Comments?

Should I assume that the black levels are going to be better than my Olevia since it's a newer set?

I end up getting the 46" and glad I did 'cause the 52" wouldn't have fit in my friend's vehicle.

Out of the box, just turning down the brightness/contrast/backlight/colour a bit (tv is in a basement rec room), I couldn't believe how amazing it looked.

Still figuring out the settings and not completely familiar with the Blu-Ray Digital Video Essentials and it's confusing menu system. Blu-Ray showed some flickr even though the play and tv were saying they were using the 24fps film mode. I think it was the contrast being too high. Was The Prestige, near the beginning when Michael Caine is in court and there's a bright white wall behind him. He's shaking his head and there's some weirdness, but turning off all the fancy features seemed to have stopped it.

Anyone know the service menu codes for this series? And should I worry about heat since I don't have a lot of air flow through the basement, thanks to a smoking neighbour and having to have the windows closed most of the time?

just picked up the 32" today open box at sams for a heck of a deal.. I'll try and post some after I get to play with it a bit

i returned a Vizio for this TV yesterday so with only 1 day and 1 HD Red Sox game under my belt, it's hard for me to comment. i will say it feels like a solid TV. i love the clear glassy-plastic with a reddish hue, this is a nice up-scale touch.

in the store, this TV really looked awesome. very crisp images with nice color.

i did watch Monsters Inc yesterday with a samsung upconverting DVD player and the colors were very rich.

so far i am very pleased. that said, i am not as picky as a lot of video nuts! lol

Bought the 32" B540 at costco...no ghosting, no stutter, handles motion great for 60hz, color is superb, standard def is actually pretty good, HD is superb, and I even got an S panel (SS02)

HOWEVER, to me, it appears the off angle viewing is kinda poor. If straight on is 90 degrees, the colors wash out dramatically just moving to 45 degrees. Anyone else getting the same results with this TV? Any settings to help with this? I know this is inherent with LCD's compared to plasma, just didnt think it would be this dramatic.

Where is the best place to buy the 32" version guys? costco? it costs $499 there right? and guys, this model is a better choice than the b460 right?

I think I have the same problem (kind of scrolling vertical bands?) and its only noticeable on bright scenes in 1080p 24fps (or at least on my PS3 and my standalone Blu-Ray player). What features did you change, do you remember?

Hey Corey, sorry should have reported back when I figured it out. It was the 'Digital Noise Reduction ('Digital NR' in the Picture Options menu') that was causing the weird image quality. I put on my Dark City Blu-Ray and in the opening scene, Keifer Sutherland stands under a streetlamp which has a yellow light. With the Digital NR on, it looks as if he's standing in front of a blue-screen for effects shot done in the 80's. Turn the Digital NR off and it looks like film. Amazing the effect that one option had over the image. Now film looks like film and any noise on the screen is there 'cause it's film grain or an older transfer. Myself, I want everything to look like film.

I also noticed that my Blu-Ray player looks better when set at 1080i output and 24fps film mode. It's a Samsung BD-P1500. Maybe that means the TV is doing a better job at scaling than the BD player. Maybe you could try different settings on your disc player 'cause I have read that often TV's have much better scaling chips and so it's almost better to just leave your disc player set to 480p out and let the TV do the heavy lifting, even if it can output at 1080p.

Thanks Warren, I will check that, I'm pretty sure I had everything set to off but you never know, sometimes it seems changing one setting changes something else. I have a Pio-51FD (which is supposed to be top notch) and a PS3, I first noticed it in the DVE test patterns on the PS3 but also saw it in some of the Watchmen special features, I'm a little curious if those are even 24p source.