Official Samsung LNxxD630 Owner's Thread - Page 15

thanks nick, see above reply...i really like the look of the 46d6400. right now i have a 5 year old vizio vp42 in the corner of the bedroom (a very small one - thanks for mentioning your room size - mine is 12.5 x 9.5 - this now changes my thinking process somewhat)...now i am wondering if i should just go for the 40d6400 which will be slightly smaller in picture size than my vp 42 (greatly reduced size when comparing bezel sizes though) and rolling with that...i know the AVS wisdom is go for the biggest TV you can afford (or even if you can't afford it ) but a 46 may be too large for the room?

decisions decisions...

What will be your viewing distance from the TV? I am about 12' from my 46" and that seems about right for this TV.

laying in the bed - 10-11' from my head/pillow to front of tv

Even at this distance the 46" should still be fine. When I first got mine it seemed really big but after watching it a few weeks I almost wish it was bigger. Especially since I have a large viewing room. However I am very pleased with this unit. Especially considering the price I paid for it.

yes, i may spend some time outside today looking at tv's...agree with the 'bigness' of it all not being a problem...bought a sharp 70" at clearance price recently for the living room and thought it was huge...until i settled in for a couple weeks...now it looks 'normal' must be the avs curse

your room is bigger than mine, though...a 46 for me is going to be pushing it. window shopping will help clarify my thoughts...it seems that this model is being phased out eventually so the decision clock is ticking...

FWIW, I have never bought into the idea that you should get the largest size that you can afford. I have a 42 inch LG LED that I tried a couple of times to put in the bedroom. I found it to be overwhelming at my viewing distance, which is about 7 feet. I just couldn't get used to it. And my bedroom is somewhat larger than yours. The 40 inch is about as big as I can tolerate. I would think that a 46 inch would require a viewing distance of 10 to 12 feet, which would put it clear on the opposite side of the room from where you are sitting, and keep in mind that at that distance, the onboard sound from a thin bezel LED TV will almost certainly seem sort of vague and distant. In that case, you probably will need a soundbar, or a receiver/speakers setup. Just my 2 cents.

thanks nick (and others) for your thoughts. here's where i am as of today:

i sat in the bed for a long time and looked at my existing vizio 42"...it is fairly big for such a small bedroom (viewing is not flat against the wall, it's in a corner on a swivel entertainment stand turned towards the bed)...the samsung 46" would not be much larger overall (a couple inches wider) considering the vizio has a larger bezel area compared to the samsung, i'd be getting more picture for essentially the same space...however

the samsung 40" d630 is tough to find online now at a good price. the blue big box store has it available locally today, but...

...amazon has the 46" d630 for only $100 more than the local 40" would cost!

what a situation... $100 more for the same tv, but larger. 40 may be the more 'perfect' fit for the room but this 46 seems like a good value deal online. temptations...

thoughts?

Zen - here is my .02 worth. I have OCD and I went back and forth LED, LCD or Plasma. 37", 40" or 42". No name brand, name brand and which one. How much I want to spend and how much I'm willing to spend. Thin tv, and benzel or a little thicker. I couldn't find the perfect tv, but I'm happy with what I got. You have to ultimately make the decision. My room is small maybe 8X8 so I'm probably less the 7' from the tv. I went with an off brand 42" with big benzel and took it back. I didn't like the size, benzel, pic. or sound only thing was a good price. I was going with the led, but don't like the flashlight look on some senes. The plasma's were nice, but didn't have anything smaller than 42" I was looking at plus they were sold out except for new models. I like my LCD Samsung, I did see some with the smaller benzel I did like, however they were led/lcd and I'm not sure how the sound would do with them being so thin. Anywho GL and let us know what you end up with.

YES, and it drives me crazy. Trying to overcome it, I've boosted the yellow by adjusting various offset levels. Now I sometimes get a human-looking flesh tone, but just as often have some people looking red while others look too yellow.

Before I upgraded to the Samsung, I had a Sony BX420 which was a lesser TV in every respect except the skin tones (which were fine). I wish I could turn back time and get the Sony back.

Did you try the detailed settings in the cnet review of this set?

after going back and forth between the 40 and 46, ordered the 40 online...should be here next week.
oh yes, i have the ocd trait too...we are amongst brothers here

Miplin I turned color space to auto and no more reddish purple skin tones.The cnet settings did not work as good as I originally thought.its the white balance controls that are the most important to calibrate.if you want a brighter picture you can turn up the gains more(leave the offsets as there for dark levels).

Try calibrating with the free AVS709 disc. Pretty good once you take some time to understand what you're doing. Unless your TV is really off, you'll get a pretty good picture.

Maybe there is a reason for red in the dark screen scenes.On my sammy I turned red down as much as I could and got a real black but also created an overly noticeable black crush.Did the same thing on a CRT but it did not crush blacks as much.

Hmmm, I find the CNET settings...white is more yellow than white...not sure I like it.

Hi all,

I did try the CNET settings, and found the result to be a little greenish and washed out. It might be worth giving it another shot though, to reassess the effect on the skin tones specifically.


I just tried changing the color space to Auto, and, surprisingly, it looks a little better than the heavily manipulated Custom version I put together (it's difficult to find the logic of those controls). You make an interesting point about the White Balance. I'll try working with those levels while the Color Balance is on Auto.


I didn't know there was a free calibration disc. I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for all the input. I'll let you know how it works out.

i try the calibration disc.......and did not like what i saw.

nobody see the colors the same.

best calibration IS YOUR EYES!!!!!!!!! PERIOD. try diffrent settings on a HD CHANNEL (LIVE) that have a live video , NEWS or SPORTS LIVE.

The best calibration may be your eyes, but many people don't know what settings to change in order to get the picture they want. And your suggestion of using an HD channel for calibration may give a good result for the channel you use, but the settings may not be generalizable to other channels or sources.

It's also pretty evident that some people have a better eye for color than others. For example, most amateur photographers have no idea that the color balance is off in their photos.

Took average between 2 different settings I found.
ColorShare starting with red and going down.
Red 72 5 0
22 38 0
0 12 85
51 43 0
12 39 52
58 4 62

Offset
Red 28 green 26 blue 27
Gain
18. 22. 17

Whitebal 10'pt starting with 1 and going down.
2 1 1
1 1 0
-1 0 -1
0 0-1
1 1 2
-3-3-4
-3 -2 -4
-2 -2 -2
-2 0 -2
-1 1 0

Think it looked good.Think I boosted the gains up 20'points each.May have turned off 10 pt white balance or color space.

the 40 is in the bedroom
beautiful set
i am kicking myself a bit for not getting the 46 though...with the slimmer bezel it actually looks a lot smaller than the 42 vizio it replaced even thought it's only a 2" difference (acutally it's just the greedy in me ) i will adjust
the sound is perfect for a small room, no sound bar needed. i could see if it was a main living room tv, but so far so good
been a bit busy, but more impressions later...it always takes a few days to get a real feel for a set...

I've had my Samsung LN46D630 for under a week and there is a horizontal bar about 1/2 inch thick by three inches wide that randomly appears in the center of screen. The bar is filled with tiny black dots. One night it won't appear at all and another night it appears every 5-10 minutes. Last night a blue bar appread for about one second and then flicked off. This is while watching live and recorded tv. I have Time Warner cable and this was never a problem on my old tv. Advice? Thanks

I wouldn't even bother with trying anything, just take it back for an exchange.

The only reason I'm hesitating taking it back as I got a really good deal but I got the last one so I'd have to return it for cash back and then buy the same tv for more money somewhere else. I hate to spend more money on the exact same tv. Is the problem something that can be fixed or do I need a whole new panel? Thanks

Well you could go the warranty route with Samsung if you don't want to take it back.

A couple of notes about calibration, color settings, etc.

We may all have LNXXD630s, but each set is going to show colors a little differently. First, these sets are assembled from bins of parts, which may each be just a little different than another. Second, the factory doesn't calibrate these TVs at the factory other than to preset certain settings to give an unrealistically bright and blue tinted picture.

With that in mind, any "calibration settings" you might find may or may not work for your particular TV. Chances are slim to none that the settings you find will be the exact settings that calibrate your TV to industry standards. They are simply the settings that happened to be be correct when CNET or someone else professionally calibrated THEIR particular TV.

The free AVS 709 disc is as good a free disc as you'll find, and there are some other ones available for some $$$ that are good as well. They will guide you through some of the very basic settings (brightness, color, tint, sharpness, etc), and will help you understand that sharpness should actually be near 0 instead of 100, and that "brightness" actually sets your black levels, while contrast sets your "white/bright" levels, etc.

With the sheer number of settings on our TVs, you'll drive yourself crazy trying to adjust by eye. Then, once you change a channel, you'll find that those settings might not actually be very good after all. Take some time to learn about calibrating TVs, what the different controls actually do, and then use a disc to try it yourself. If you revisit calibrating several times, and your picture still isn't where you want it, your set might require a professional calibrator to access the service menu and perform a 3-4 hour professional calibration.

If you guys visit the "calibration" subforum here on AVS, you'll find that no one shares "calibration settings" because that is sort of like sharing the forecast in Maine with someone in Florida and expecting them to take anything other than "Ok, now I know the weather in Maine."

The thing about calibration settings is that you can get a set very close to reference without having to pay someone to do it for you. I used some settings on my panny G25 and was very pleased with the results. I also agree that taking the time to learn how to calibrate your OWN set is the best option.

That being said, the colors on this TV are very accurate out of the box. I've spent time the past couple of days with all of the pre-calibrated settings I could find on this set and neither really stood out as being better than another, let alone the default settings. Even the Cnet settings seemed a bit off.

I just really really wish that the full picture settings were available when streaming movies via the built in media player. It's a shame seeing as how the player really is quite robust and plays every file I've tried. I could always stream via my PS3 but I wanted to avoid the extra heat, noise and power.

I wasn't initially WOWed by this set, perhaps because it lacks the extra pop of a glossy screen but it's really growing on me. The screen is uniform and even motion seems an improvement over last years C650.

So until recently I had pretty much ignored the whole "panel lottery" thing because my TV has looked and functioned flawlessly. I decided to check mine and it is an SQ01 version, which I have come to understand is a Samsung panel. I purchased it from Amazon last July for under $600, and it was assembled in Mexico. Maybe there is some truth to the inconsistency in picture that owners are experiencing, and perhaps it is a result of the varying panels. Or maybe some people just have different or unrealistic standards when it comes to color and picture. I find it hard to believe that if all panels were created equally that some of the owners of this model would have such a hard time reproducing accurate colors.

In other words the aftermarket panels may very well be the culprits for the inconsistency reported in the picture. I do believe that people interpret colors differently, but the way some of you are describing the difficulty in calibration and color reproduction it sounds like a hardware problem. Just my .02

I'm looking for some feedback about a potential issue I am having with my Samsung ln46d630

I initially bought a un46d6300 several weeks ago, but returned it due to flashlighting and clouding issues with were quite prominent on dark scenes.

I exchanged it for an ln46d630, which overall I am ok with, no flashlighting issues. However I noticed that the viewing angle is fairly poor on dark scenes. Bright scenes are ok, but on dark scenes (playing Skyrim, esp. loading screen) I notice that if I am sitting directly in front of the left side the right side is noticibly less black that the left, and vice versa.

My understanding of poor viewing angle meant if I was looking from a 45-60 degree angle, but this TV seems to start to drop off at 10-20 degrees. However this is only really obvious if the room is dark and it's a dark scene. I then found out about the panel lottery and noticed I have an SN02 version (the service menu gives 46D1AF0C, so it's a CMO panel).

Is this something that I should expect for this TV, or is this an especially poor viewing angle, and I should try to exchange it. The only unit the store has left is the floor model, it is an SQ01, but it has been on the floor a while and I am not conviced this particular issue will be improved.

I have tested my current TV at lagom.nl and found it to have minimal ghosting and decent input lag around 50-60ms on game mode (I can live with that), picture quality is quite good too. I have not done any specific calibration yet.

Any feedback is appreciated, thanks,
Dave

Yes the D630 has a lower viewing angle due to the type of LCD panel used.
Another type of panel that LG and Panasonic uses provides a wider viewing angle, but that results in poor black levels, so its a trade off.
Fortunately the D630 has a swivel stand to help aim it directly at the viewer.

I had 46d630 with sq01 or sq02.It looked the best when straight on( crystal clear), a bit less crytalclear just a few inches off center, then if up close and on angle it's bit more noticeably murky,cloudy( but not too bad).

I went back to my 36 Sony CRT.No bad viewing angles.