Samsung 1080p Owner's Thread --- HLSxx87W/HLSxx88W DLP Models - Page 588

The HD-DVD add on for the 360 looks FANTASTIC on the HLS. I use VGA to the set running at 1920x1080 from my 360

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Thank God. I was starting to think I was using see-through text as I was getting no responses. I will update as I hear more Big Dadd. Appreciate if you do the same.

Thanks -- Ted

First, I'd like to convey a long overdue attaboy to UMR for the calibration he performed on my HLS-5087W. He came out Oct. 2006 and calibrated the set (at 140 lamp hours) and the sound system. All I can say is he took an already impressive image and improved it significantly. SD in particular looked vastly better than it did pre-calibration, but in all modes and inputs the set looks simply amazing. Jeff is a great guy and did a great job, I look forward to getting him back for a tune-up as the lamp ages.
I can honestly say that seeing a properly calibrated set has spoiled me forever, I look at every display with new eyes now, and truth be told most of them are wanting.

Sorry this took so long UMR, but with a new hip and other issues you simply slipped through the cracks (the hip, thankfully, was defect free out of the box).


Issues with the set: The set was delivered in late July of 2006 and on delivery, the "2" button on the remote did not work. No biggie, I had purchased a URC 350 so that took care of it. Called Samsung and they said they would send a remote.
On week two, vertical green lines started appearing intermittantly. They might go away after 10 minutes or so, or an on/off cycle might get rid of them. Arranged a service call and six days later a tech came out and replaced the main board. Problem solved (thank goodness I had the URC remote, otherwise the visit would have been useless due to lack of access to the service menu).

So, all has been well ever since. Set performs flawlessly, no noises I can detect unless I put my ear to the lamp compartment. Pincushion is about 1/8" and not a worry, although I did loosen all the bezel screws and massage the screen a little for some improvement. SSE I don't notice until I get 3' from the screen, rainbows I don't see. I will add that I don't look for these issues, and having so resolved I just do not see them. I like it that way.....
In fairness, I've been an optical engineer in automated microscopy systems so I know what is happening, understand the limitations of the technology v. the price and put it out of my mind. Having said that there is no question the pincushion could improve with a screen mounting system capable of keeping the screen flat. No matter the various statements by service technicians the problem lies elsewhere (I got the same rap from mine), empirical evidence alone makes it plain pulling the screen flat (mine is concave with the vertex facing into the set) reduces the effect with no apparent loss of focus. I'm pretty confidant if I could get the screen perfectly flat the pincushion would be nil.

So I'm thrilled with this product overall, and would make the same choice in a heartbeat, although probably at a larger size.

Oh, and the remote? Turns out triggering the second service call automatically cancled the service note for the remote, the explanation being the system they use will only allow one service item per customer. I called bull**** on the call rep and told him to get the damned thing shipped pronto. He demanded I provide proof I payed full price being that I had exceeded some unspecified 30 day limit from the purchase date. I presume he wanted to avoid replacing the remote for a B-stock set bought off the floor with none, which is fair enough, but then the knuckleheads shipped me two of them. Go figure....

The 2 guys that replied to me thank you very much. The fact that the subwoofer can go any where in the room or atleast more then the one place i thought it could, helps. Even though I'll game alot, im really getting this TV for a theatre experience.


But that leads me to another question, I'll get the onkyo if i have to. But would this Samsung matching HITB not be a good penny pincher with nice sound quality?

http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4157186

I know it hasn't came out yet but does samsung have a good reputation, atleast better then sony?

Thanks for the calibration report. I've added it to the owner's list that is linked at the bottom of my post.

Continue to enjoy!

There is a forum dedicated to Home Theater In A Box sets. You can check it out here.

Home Theater In A Box

Is this loosening of the bezel screws and massaging the screen an easy thing to do? I've heard others speak of this and like to try it for my pincushioning, but I'm not sure how to accomplish it.

I have the A1 and a PS3. HD movies on the A1 look a lot better than a blu ray movie on the PS3....in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the blu ray movies on the PS3 look pretty darn good. Just not as good as the HD's. As far as upconverting standard dvd's, the A1 is much better than the PS3.

so it looks like the 1080i videos you have seen look better then the 1080p video's on blu ray? I had my players hooked up to my old dlp and the HDDVD looked better then the ps3 blu ray both running 1080i so I am amazed that the hddvd running in 1080i looks better then blu ray in 1080p. I am guessing that the blu ray on the PS3 isnt as good as the stand alone Sony player. I thought HDDVD looked better but I was guessing because it was my tv. I cant wait to check this tv out. Anyways I am not about to drop 1k on the sony BD Drive just to get the PQ, I will wait for a great dual format player to play both with out any issues so I can get 1080p on both devices

Yes, in my opinion. I have the PS3 and the A1 hooked up via HDMI to my 6187. I only own 1 blu ray movie (MI 3) and 1 HD move (Seabiscuit), but I've rented several of each. I would rather buy/rent a HD movie, but once again, the PS3 blu ray is no slouch.

As long as we are on the subject, I am getting my s5687 tomorrow (!) and am trying to figure out my DVD situation. I was originally planning on using my 360 through VGA to watch upconverted SD DVDs until the HD battle winds down. But I've read many times the 360 does this poorly. So now I am looking for other options.

I heard the Oppo players are good but their chips don't mesh well with Sammy DLPs. Then I looked at Toshiba's HD DVD players. Amazon has the A2 for $300, and I have $150 in gift certificates, making it only $150 for a good upconverter and an HD DVD player.

Should I jump on this or step up to the A20/XA1/XA2 or go another route? Does anybody have feelings about these and if any of them are worth the extra step?

I have a 5088 and am experiencing the same problem, I have only had the TV for 2 weeks, it seems a bit strange, I searched this forum but can't seem to find an answer....

Quick question Sammy heads - I've been tweaking my picture settings for Xbox 360. Wondering what the consesus is for "Game Mode"? Do you guys use it? I don't notice any lag with it off but it seems like Samsung really made this "Game Mode" for game consoles, and more specifically, Xbox 360. I say this because the "Game Mode" icon looks identical to a Xbox 360 controller (white, two sticks and the guide button in the middle). Anyways, when I toggle it off and on, I do notice a change in the picture, even if I have the same identical settings for when it's on or off. I know that having "Game Mode" on is supposed to eliminate some of the extra processing in the picture, this ensures that there is no timing issues. But does this make for a degraded picture quality? What is the consesus on "Game Mode" Do you guys think I should leave it on, or turn it off? I would really like to hear more about this. Detailed impressions, don't hold back!


I Love my Sammy HL-S5087w!!!
Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD-DVR via HDMI
Xbox 360 and HD-DVD Player via Component
Dell Inspiron Laptop via VGA
PS2 via Component

I'm in gadget heaven. Who needs a PS3? lol Not me...

I have a 6188 and just played Call of Duty 3 on the 360 split screen with a friend about a week ago. I completely forgot there even was a game mode until you just reminded me of it here. I didn't notice any lag over the old 36" CRT.

I think game mode would probably be more useful with older systems that output at 480i or p. I haven't played any PS2 on it yet, so I can't really report there, but I did play through Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES recently and didn't notice anything unusual lag-wise there either. Of course that's not really a "twitch" game. In fact the only games I've ever seen mentioned as possible lag candidates are Guitar Hero on PS2 and some fighting game whose name escapes me right now.

Anyway, the bottom line is you shouldn't need it with the 360, especially if you have the October '06 1080p update.

I've both a 360 add-on and a PS3 and both look spectacular on my 6187. I haven't done a same-disc, head-to-head comparison, but I can tell you that the really quality transfers (Batman Begins, King Kong, NIN concert) sparkle on both formats.

Makes it hard to watch upscaled DVDs now, honestly.

I ue the gaming mode when I have my sons PS3 hooked up to my 6187. I only do this because I am sharing the HDMI port between the PS3 and my DVD player. For DVD I have the HDMI setup in Movie mode and other settings that make the games look too dark. Toggling gaming mode lets me setup the input to another setup so I can just toggle gaming mode on/off and keep both the game settings and the DVD settings. I have run the PS3 without using gaming mode and I don't really see any difference in game play. We mainly are playing RFOM & MS.

I have a Toshiba HD-XA2 and a PS3 and have viewed The Departed on both formats. Colors on the PS3 are more vibrant, however I will take the XA2 over the PS3 any day. My PS3 has trouble with extremely finely detailed patterns. Two scenes come to mind in The Departed. First, the scene with Matt Damon and James Badge Dale where they're sitting on a park bench after the rugby game. The gold dome of the state house is very noisy and the surface seems to shimmer, while on HD DVD it's rock solid. Same story in the scene where Martin Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg first meet at the office, only in that scene the same thing happens with Martin Sheen's button down shirt. Could it just be my PS3? I'm not sure as I can't do an apples to apples test here locally, but I definitely find myself buying the HD DVD version of dual releases... A Scanner Darkly is coming today in fact. If anyone has a PS3, 6187W and The Departed let me know your thoughts on these two scenes. I've tweaked the display from both the TV and PS3 end, and have not seen any appreciable improvement.

My old Toshiba HD-A2 looked better than the PS3 as well.

Further, the XA2 beats the hell out of both my Oppo 970 and PS3 in DVD PQ... I guess it better!

Bumping this as the only reply I received was a reminder to take the # down beforehand... appreciated and noted, however that doesn't answer the question. My macro went to the wrong menu due to a context issue, so had I known that would've happened I'd have taken down all the values from the SDP51(M) menu as well... but I've taken photos of all the screens now so no worries going forward.

Yeah I do agree that they are the most bang for the buck. I was just curious if people feel that the SSE seems a little "less" at home than in the store. We still most likely be going with HLS6187W. Even with the HLT coming out, I don't think the 1 HDMI port, 6 inches of depth, and a few menu options is worth $500 or $600 over what you can get the HLS for right now.

I just watched Departed on my 6187 and PS3, and hooo-boy, you aren't even kidding about that gold dome! Hahaha, it was buzzing so bad, I've never seen anything like it from an HD disc or OTA broadcast. It's not just us, either, because I'm fairly certain I've seen posts about that scene in the BD forum - from PS3 owners and standalone owners alike.

As to somebody's question about Game Mode, I have it on and off erratically. It only needs to be on when playing last-gen games on PS2, especially timing-based rhythm games like Guitar Hero, where there can be a slight lag between your button presses and the onscreen action. (Guitar Hero 2 may not even have this problem because it can run in progressive scan, but I turn Game Mode on for it anyway.)

I've never noticed any input delays with either 360 and PS3 on this set.

As to SSE, I've owned my set since last July or August and I don't think I've really noticed SSE much until recently, after coming back to this forum and reading up more about all these damn niggling little artifacts, lol. Now I can see it plainly if I look for it, the trick is to go back to not looking for it.

Given all the other things this set does right, I can overlook a little SSE.

Samsung came out and replaced my main PCB yesterday (HL-S5687W) after I was having some issues (I'd have to power-cycle after changing inputs pretty often since the screen would go black and stay there), and now I'm having to go through calibrating it with DVE again, so I had a couple questions for people:

- I had been using Eliab's settings as a reference point for my previous calibration, and they worked pretty well. However, this time I set both of the Gamma settings to 0 in the service menu, and followed the instructions for turning on the Iris. However, the combination of this dropped my light output (as expected), and so the settings from Eliab are now too dim. Can someone else that has done these tweaks post their settings so I can use those as a reference point to get started?

- I have an Oppo-970HD player set to output 1080i and I can't find for certain if the Samsung uses the SD TV color range or the HDTV color range when being fed a 1080i signal from here. I'm going to guess it defaults to the HDTV color range and I should change the output of the Oppo to be the RGB color spectrum instead of the YPrPb spectrum over HDMI. Can someone verify this for me?

Otherwise, changing those settings in the service menu did give me a picture I like far more than before, and I was already in love with the image. I got an updated firmware with the new PCB, but it was September and not December, so no overscan lock, and I'm still quite happy with Samsung's service (they already had to replace the light engine last fall after part of the reflective material came loose and was causing a shadow on the right half of the screen).

I was thinking, should I hook up my 360 via component or vga? I was thinking of hooking up my PC to this screen also so I can play some HL2 and Flight simulator X on my New TV. I was also thinking of putting the wii in the bedroom instead.
I have a PC I built with a 8800gtx graphics card
Xbox360
PS3
HDDVD Player
WII
HDDVR comcast

How would you go about this
I am guessing to put wii in bed room
HDDVD and PS3 via HDMI
HDDVR via Component
XBOX360 I am kinda stuck how to hook it up, Component or VGA.
I kinda want to intergrate my PC to this screen since it is a screaming desktop machine.
is xbox 360 better via vga or component, I know this tv will do 1080p via component

XBOX 360 AND VGA (and crap a$$ game mode)

FIRST OFF -- I feel very safe to say the Sammy HL-S 1080p DLP sets and the XBOX 360 are a match made in heaven ... REALLY.

For those in doubt or whom have been misinformed, the Sammy HL-S sets and the 360 using VGA looks fan-f'n-tastic.MS had released a patch/update only a week after the 1080p update to fix the washed out look of the VGA ... and it has done a fantastic job.

IMHO
-VGA looks just as good color wise as the component (and I find actually more accurate)

-VGA is MUCH MUCH sharper in a good way over component. I really find it to give it that sharp edge, BUT AT THE SAME TIME ... gets rid of some jaggies that some games show. Oblivion is a good example ... ridges on building and stuff as well a bump map cuts are much nicer with VGA.

-VGA can be scalled to ensure you get either no overscan with a small black boarder or I scale to have no black boarder and lose no info (did the graw HUD outline test)

- Another advantage of the VGA is you get you games at 1080p, your HD-DVD add on at 1080p (VS 1080i) and all your DVD's upscalled to 1080p (VS 480p) .. and yes, you do not need the HD-DVD drive to get upscalled DVD's ... it is the brains of the box that does the upconverting ... not the drives.

---------------
If you're still skeptic .. buy a VGA cable, keep receipt, try it, if you don't like what you see (but you will) ... return it.

BTW, I use the same setting for VGA as my other stuff. VGA will not give you access to all options, but this has never affected me in a negative way. And I am not the only one with this mind set. I have converted many to the VGA when using the 360 and have received ONLY POSITIVE and THANKFULL replies.

"VIVA LA VGA"

PS .. now you will have an extra component connection now as well ..
And IMHO avoid game mode .. it looks like $hit. It was ment to help with lag ... however the only lag I have ever experienced was when playing older 480p games and the TV has to work hard at upscalling.

GAME MODE = SUCKS (but who cares .. it is not needed with todays consoles)

I loosened the screws holding the bezel on the top and sides (phillips head screws on the rear, I backed them out a couple of turns) and pulled/wiggled the bezel hoping the screen panels would find a stress free resting position, I didn't get it flat but it did decrease about 1/16". I did not try to loosen the bottom of the bezel, nor did I remove the side covers and push outward on the screen, although I might do that sometime when I'm feeling ambitious. I think I could do it using a microfiber cloth with little risk of damaging the screen.

Eliab's post on cleaning screen smudges/removing the screen has more info, and demonstrates why removing the screen entire is not trivial.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8031317

Another has posted with much the same results (slight improvement) but I can't find the link ATM

Thanks for the advise but my issue is that I also want to hook up my pc to this tv. so if the Xbox360 is taking up a vga port then what do I do? I have an HDDVD player so I don't need the add on for the xbox360. I know my xbox is a media extender but I would love to play games like crysis when it comes out on my pc and surround sound which in fact is amazing. Maybe I should just leave my pc alone on my 20inch lcd but I kinda want to hook it up to my tv, just fish 10 to 20 feet of vga cable and digital coax cable to it get a wireless keyboard and mouse then boom I got a 50 inch 1900 by 1200 monitor with my Pioneer Elite Reciever and deftech Speaker system, it will sound good with the CLR 2002 center, BP 7004 towers and BP 1.2x surrounds speakers

I don't think this is specific to this TV, but I couldn't find a gaming-related thread anywhere. If there is one, someone can enlighten me and I'll go there.

Anyway, I'm coming in late to the PS2 scene and just got one of the new silver slim ones a few months ago. Last night I finally had time to hook it up with the Sony branded component cables to my 6188. The game was Kingdom Hearts if that'll make any difference. The result was fine picture quality wise but there were two issues. One was that the picture didn't fill the whole screen horizontally - there were thin black bars on the left and right. I had the PS2 and the TV set to 16:9 so that, in theory, the picture should be stretched slightly but should fill the whole screen. Secondly, because these bars were there I could tell that the picture was shifted to the right slightly. I've seen various references to this around the web, but nothing conclusive as to whether it's normal or not, or more importantly why it happens.

Has anyone seen this happen with their TV? I'm assuming it's NOT the TV because everything else displays fine (including the 360 on the other component) although I haven't used this particular input before. Any help would be appreciated!

I had this problem once and found that the on-off button on the TV had stuck in the depressed position.

cubenruben ... you can buy a VGA splitter / switcher for not much money. This way you can have multiple VGA sources run to one monitor (in this case a TV)

For example:
http://sewelldirect.com/vga-manual-switch-2.asp

Two VGA in and one VGA out

XBOX 360 (VGA) goes into the switch on "A" for example. PC (VGA) goes into the switch on "B" for example, then the VGA OUTPUT of the switch goes to the Sammy VGA port.

You want the 360 .. turn switch to "A"
You want the PC .. turn switch to "B"

okay or I can get a kvm switch at like best buy then. that would be a pain in the ass but oh well

actually what you post was better then what best buy has, there switches come with the cables which I can use on the xbox360

I have a KVM I use at home between my two PC's to my PC monitor and it works like a charm. Only hang up you MAY find (which is no big deal) is if you are on your 360 and then switch to PC .. the TV may lose syn ... but switch off the PC input on your set and then back to it.