Samsung 720p Owner's Thread --- HLSxx66W/HLSxx86W DLP Models - Page 4

Houston,

Thanks for that tidbit. thats what I was looking for. I think that will help get the situation resolved.

Bob at work says thanks too. He loves this set by the way. Loves it.

kmwest,

I think you can tell, even from the one to one pixel posting I made eariler there is no shimmer or sparkles in the picture.

I'm having a problem it getting 100% black in a dark room.........so the jury is still out on that one.

Also, those pictures with the white background are 100% pure white, without a hint of color (my camera, could not handle the intense white screen correctly.) Also, the skins tones in those pictures is 100% right on.......the camera was producing a slight green tint. That is true for good signals received..........if you have a below average signal, the skin tones will usually shift to green or in some cases neon.

The screen on both models 4266 and 4666 and all the 720p sets is the same

I got your request from my friend about the black screen test you want me to perform. I will do it this week end and let you know.
I got mine last Sat, but haven't had much time to play yet, need to send the wifey and kids on a trip so I can have some time with it. I have been looking at the Sony and Sammy for some time, but when I was in Tampa last week I did a side by side comparison of the R and S and there was no comparison. No matter what I did I could not make the R look as good as the S, so I bought one as soon as I got home. In what little time I have had, I did not find the HD scan yet and got to wondering if it had the built in HD tuner like the R and looked at CC website and it says no. I have been looking at OTR but if it is not HD then the HD will be stunning! Can't wait to get home from work, I might leave early!

likeitlarge,
Thanks...
I think you will like the set a lot. Usually, in most parts of the country CBS and PBS HD comes in good..............WB is usualy great in most areas too. but it is sort of hit and miss here. ABC locally is still getting their equipment together, sometimes great sometimes bad. Up in Dallas it is almost always good. Fox is great here too.

Last night I finally got my comcast hd box and hooked it up via HDMI. HD channels look great (suprise) and a lot of the issues I had with adjusting the image color and brightness went away when I got the comcast box. I made one set of final adjustments and it looked perfect to me.

I was NOT getting the 5.1 signal passed through HDMI.. I have a logitech sound system that will indicate the type of decoding in the display. Through the coax from my cable box I got 5.1 digital, the optical form the TV came in as stereo (passed in via HDMI). I have no way to check the sound from OTA digital channels.

There are two settings I need to play with tonight on the cable box for audio.. right now it is set to "auto" but I can force it to PCM. I will try that this weekend.

I am VERY pleased with this set now that I have the proper signal. I am also glad I didnt get bigger then 42", I would sit even a little farther back then the 7-8' I am at now if I could.

OTA: the tv has a signal strength meter.. if you are having trouble pulling OTA on a digital channel then check that, iit may show that there is digital signal but its not of sufficient strength in which case a better antennae is probably in order. I tried to pull in the digital signal from the local PBS channel because comcast give me a different one.. comcast gives me the better choice but I thought I would be able to get the local PBS from 10 miles away with an indoor antenna, I was wrong.. to be fair I am at the bottom of a hill between me and that station..

Chris

Just got my HL-S4666 in from the TVA powerbuy yesterday. Really pleased with it so far with the exception of the noisy fan. How loud is the fan for everyone else? Right now I can hear the fan sitting 6-7 feet away from the set with the TV playing at a low to moderate level. Its about twice as loud as your typical PC case fan maybe little more.

Wow. That's way louder than my 5086, that's for sure. I have to really strain to hear my fan and the pitch is a low rushing sound. As a matter of fact, my refridgerator in the kitchen makes more background noise than the Sammy does.

I can not hear mine running at all; 4266, and that is sticking my head behind the set. I do hear the Sony HDD500, which is very loud. Both Mits' we had last year were very loud; but they were not as loud as the Sony Hard Disk, which I can hear all the way across the room.

Can barely hear mine on my 5086 and only when the sound is on mute and I shove my head behind the tv. Get more than a foot away and everything is quiet.

Is there a noticable difference in visual quality with Component vs HDMI? The box I have right now doesn't have HDMI, but I can switch it out at Time Warner if I want.

4266 can't hear it. I wonder if it is temperature sensitive the way a PC fan is? Its relatively cool in my tv room.

Regards,

Chris

On my set, I could not tell a difference between component and HDMI......On the HD hard disk recorder (which also has HDMI), it caused the the picture to flash or flicker a couple of times, when pausing, or commercial pass, etc.....I did not like that. That flickering is part of the HDMI handshake process, each time the signal is broken it has to reset (takes about 1 or 2 seconds).......with component all the transitions are 100% smooth. Other than that the video quality is the same on both IMHO.

With that said you Time Warner device could be better with HDMI. My Sony Recorder said it would flicker when changing gears via HDMI............I have no idea about the Time Warner device?

houstonperson, how's the zoom or stretch or smart stretch (or whatever they're called) modes look on the hls for 4:3 content? thanks.

Well for TV I use either the 16:9 for the wide screen stuff and 4:3 for the SD stuff. I really do not like stretch the 4:3........but it seems most people do.

However with that said: The very few DVD's I have are 4:3 and I watch those in stretch 1, in Movie mode, and I am very pleased with that.........the stretch 1 mode just overscans a little on top and bottom on some of the DVD's and fills to the side, just right. Because the stretch is even to me, I do not see distortion..........it really looks good to me.

So for me:
TV "no" - I don't like stretch or wide screen on 4:3
DVD Movie mode stretch 1 "yes" - because there is no distortion.

well ive had my 5086 for 3 days from the powerbuy and i did love it. But today while watching LOTR, the screen got really distorted and all red. I unpluged it for a min and then it was fine for 20 mins and then the picture went bad again. Did this 3 or 4 times but picture always went bad again. Longer the set is of, longer the picture last. Oh well already have my first service call.

thatick, let us know how it all turns out etc.....what city do you live in?

Im in mount pleasant NC. Im waiting on the tech to call me back to set up the service. To Samsung's credit, the were very quick to set up the service.

I got a panasonic 52s upscaling HDMI DVD player for my HLS4266W. Very pleased with the result now. I had previously been using an older DVD player through component.

With my comcast DVR I am not getting "flicker" when I use it but I do get occasional pauses that I did not expect after using a ReplayTV over the last few years. I am wondering if this is a symptom of the same HDMI synch issue but handled a little differently?

I have had some strange problems with the comcast box. Really its nice hardware but the software is terrible compared to Replay or Tivo.

Chris

Just got my HL-S4666W this weekend. I am very happy with it. I can't hear the fans at all. No issues connecting my DVR via HDMI. I use normal FF and skip forward and it does not flicker at all. Great picutre out of the box. I will use Avia of DVE sometime soon to tweak. Very happy to enjoy all my shows in HD now.

Well finally talked to the tech. Since the tv is so new they have no replacement parts so they can not fix it. They are sending me a replacement tv in a day or 2.

Yes I think your are correct....the flicker I get with the Sony DHG-HDD500 connected HDMI, I think is "all" caused by the Sony, because it says in the Sony manual it will do that via HDMI; so to me that means it is the Sony doing the flicker...........The Sony book says connect via component to eliminate the flicker, and that works for me..........PQ looked exactly the same both ways to me.

All those pictures taken earlier were taken with the component mode hook up.

I have the Sony set to "native" mode; which means it automatically will send out any type of signal as it was origially recorded "in"; from the source - 480i through 1080i.........that means each time it stopped and started, the TV would have to resample that native mode, while the Sony was "re-finding" what mode it wanted to send.........hence the flicker. The Sony book also said I could just define a mode; like send everything out 1080i (just one mode), and that would also make things faster on the handshaking routine.

I am new to all this, and just bought this TV the other day.
I need advice though, so I am going to pick all of your Brains, if you will let me.

1. No QAM tuner.
-- is this a bad thing? I realize that it might mean I need a cable box for digital cable right? Anything else I should know about this?

2. Best way to hook up from DVD --> TV?
Component, Composite, HDMI? Am I making these terms up?
3. Best for Audio.
Is optical any good, or is something else going to be preferred?

4. Any good tips for hooking up antenna. Do I need a special HD antenna, and is there a good place to find one?

See, utter noob here.

Essentially you have nailed exactly the issue with not having a QAM tuner.


Generally accepted knowledge orders input in this way:
HDMI/DVI > Component > S-Video > Composite > RF Modulated


You need to use the optical output of the TV if you want DD5.1 audio from OTA HD stations. This output will also pass 2 channel audio from any of its inputs. I think the benefits of this are fairly limited if you have the capability of running the audio direct from the source to your receiver.



You only need a standard UHF antenna. I use a cheap Philips amplified antenna from Wal-Mart and pick up all the HD stations 30 miles away easily. The Zenith Silver Sensor is one that is highly recommended by others on many forums.

So I guess the lack of a QAM tuner isn't the end of the world..really wished I had noticed that though before ordering.

The 1080p model can be had for 300 more, and has the tuner.

Oh well.

If I get digital cable will it make all this moot, since I will get the cable box anyway, or will I still need to get an antenna for local stations?

come on y'all, let's see some more pictures. anyone with a hls5686 out there? thinking about pulling the trigger on the tva pb on that one. at a viewing distance of 13-16 feet it's not worth the extra $ for 1080p, right? thanks.

If this is going to be your "main" TV then I would say go for the 1080p 88 series. It is true that the experts say the "eye" can not tell the resolution difference..........but what you can easily tell is the "shading" is much better on a 1080p.........far less dithering artifacts, better video processing. And 10,000 to 1 contrast ratio instead of 2500:1

If you like live sports (ie baseball or whatever).....IMO the 1080p makes all the difference in the world.

It boils down to what is best for you. Both are great sets.

Bah, must you throw doubt in my mind.

Now I have to decide whether or not to take TVA up on their return policy.

Well now they are telling me it is going to take 21 days to do the exchange on my TV. So for almost a month i will have no tv in living room. Well one thing is for sure, this is the last product i will ever get from samsung.

Yikes! Did Samsung say what was wrong with the unit? Have they received a lot of exchanges on the same model? They are paying for shipping right?

They are paying for everything but their customer service seems to be very confused. Now they say 14 days to authorize return and 21 days for the actual exchange. 35 days??? My suggestion is to buy the tv from a brick and mortar store, that way if you have any problems, you wont have to deal with samsung.

I could have went through TVAthority for service, but it sounds like they go through samsung and it would have been the same deal.