Samsung HLS-5679W LED DLP Owners Thread (*NO PRICE TALK) - Page 5

I have some information and replies here:

For the person (I believe in the Future Owners thread) asking about RBE while playing Sin City:

I played the Recut version and didn't see the first hint of RBE. I haven't seen it at all on any input. However, I've read in other threads that some people are not as likely to see RBE as others so take what I have observed playing Sin City with a grain of salt.

ptwat: my set auto tuned several HD cable channels I didn't even know I could get and I don't even have a cable box: just cable in from the drop. I can't wait to experiment more and see how many I can tune. QAM tuner - check.

f300v10: I wish the black level was blacker on this set. Maybe with more tweaking I can get it down some more. For now I would rate the black level as slightly better than my LCD HDTV and not as good as the rear projection CRT-based set I gave my brother.

brbrice: I know you were talking about a PC connection but I hope there is a way to adjust the sets overscan. 1.85:1 material doesn't have bars (not the end of the world I know). Also, if anyone knows how to access the service menu to center the display (i.e. 2.35:1 materal, etc.) that would be great.

mello1: I've only played the XBOX 360 on this set but I didn't seem to experience any lag. I admit that I've only played to games so far though. The Game Mode didn't seem to add anything to me and turning it off again didn't seem to take anything away either. Maybe it's meant for other systems like the PS2, XBOX, GameCube, etc. I don't know.

NorthJersey: all though it isn't the official stand, I'm really enjoying the look and feel of the Z-Line Designs Luxor 55" wide TV stand I got (LUXOR55S) and think it and the set go well together.

f300v10: I've turned DNIe off because when I look at the image I can't think of only one thing: what the hell is DNIe for? I tried and I tried to use it but is just didn't do anything useful or improve the image at all to me. Maybe it looks good in show rooms or something but not in my home. Furthermore, I just didn't turn it off, I grayed it out completely by selecting Movie Mode based on Klac's advice.

Klac: it seems choosing Movie Mode grays out the DNIe and Color Gamut options completely. I so much wanted to use them because it seemed the right thing to do. Too bad is was just the opposite (at least for me). Just turning DNIe off wasn't enough for me and my color banding, dithering.

Choosing Movie Mode still allows access to Digital NR (I have this Off too), My Color Control (I've selected Red for now; note that the My Color Control color you select will apply to all inputs).

I like the fact that you can customize the Movie Mode completely and still set the Color Tone (I have it set to normal).

FYI: one thing I've discovered is that when adjusting the Picture on a HDMI input, the sound cuts off after exiting the menu. Have to cycle through the sources and return to get sound again (through the optical output).

Thankfully, the Movie Mode can be customized seperately for each input.

Using Movie Mode like Klac said to has removed the color banding I mentioned seeing earlier and has given me a sigh of relief as well.

Overall, I am now (finally) happy with the image quality. DirecTV SD & HD, D-VHS D-Theater, DVD (480p and 1080p [Samsung 960]) and XBOX 360 look good (as good or better than the CRT-based rear projection set I replaced). I look forward to further calibrating the set and getting every ounce of black level I can get.

P. S. I believe I had my set on so long that the fan may have cut on. I felt air circulating at the right back section were the side controls are but I could be sure how loud it was because of the XBOX 360's roar.

Hey Wesley,

Thanks for being such a nice guy and trying to answer all of our questions! Being one of the first owners is a daunting challenge for anyone!

I believe the instructions for entering the service menu can be found in this post (as long as it's the same proceedure/steps as its siblings):
service menu post by htwaits

-Brian

I am interested in working on one of these. Please drop me a note if you are in the Houston area. I will give the first person a deal.

I see the same thing with the color banding. I kept telling myself it had to be the source but I am seeing it with OTA, the 8300HD, and *really* bad with the HDMI out on my dvd player. It is unacceptable to the point of anger in SD signals. It almost looks to me like the tv has 16 bit color or something at times. I'll try movie mode tonight and see if that takes care of it. The behavior is exactly like you describe it, not noticable so much in bright scenes but very noticable in the background in dim areas on the screen. It's like a blocky digital dithering. Movie mode better fix this for me because the pciture is unacceptable so far.

The banding could be a setup issue or it could be the new system has a problem.

Please let us know if movie mode works for you...thanks

Sorry you guys are having problems with low level information in the picture.


On the other hand, don't you just love it when these threads have something jucy in them.

these color banding issues seems to be the same complaint about this set at CES. Good to hear that it can be corrected in the service menus.

Wesley, thanks for the tip on the stand, from the pic on circuitcity.com it looks like a nice one. Can you provide a pic of the set on top of the stand in your house ?

Sorry, may be a dumb question, but why do you use a Samsung 960 to upconvert DVDs. I am wondering if I need to change my DVD player when I recive the TV this week, but I thought the TV would upconvert the DVD to 1080p over the HDMI. Is it better to have the source (DVD player) do the upconverting??

Thx

Upconverting DVD players have a chip inside (like Faroudja) that does the conversion and then sends the signal to the TV. A TV will just take the incoming signal and try to display it at the set resolution. DVD is 480p so that 480p signal will go to the TV unadulterated. The upconverting DVD player will do some magic and then send a 1080i (or 720p) signal to the TV.

The 5679 converts everything to 1080p, and the 960 DVD player also upconverts to 1080p. I think the question here is which device is better at doing it, or are they about the same?

I bought the 960 simply because it was relatively cheap. It was only 70$ more than the model below it. I can't say what looks better until my color banding issues are resolved after going into movie mode tonight.

I'm reluctant to enter the service menu on my 6188 due to this.
Maybe I'm a little dense on this issue, I hope somebody can expalin this to me.
At what point do your settings get reset? At what point do you make note of your settings?

The VP30 will output 1080P it just can't pass-thru 1080P yet until they enable that feature through a firmware upgrade.

Jeff,

If no one else in the Houston area takes you up on your offer, check back with me after it appears TVA is shipping. Last I checked I was #16 on their list. I'm in Friendswood.

Lowell

Night and Day difference, everything is acceptabe now. Things seem to have a "film" look now though I'm not sure how to explain it... maybe a little more dull looking. I probably need some color adjustment next. Why would Samsung ship a unit in such a god awful state by default? They should turn on movie mode by default instead. I'd have *definitely* bought a different set had I just blindly walked into a store and seen certain singals (mainly SD) on this set.

Bottom Line: With movie mode ON I am very happy now. I see no color banding or dithering and I am looking for it like a hawk now. I'lll report back later if I can make it happen somehow.

You might want to use DVE to calibrate your new set. Here is a link to Eliab's instructions.

Eliab on DVE

Are you sure about this? I don't rember seeing this in the SM.

If you haven't already seen it, though not explicitly for the 'LED' version, here is the thread for the 86 series;
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=674513

NorthJersey:

I will take a picture of my set on the stand this afternoon. I really like how it turned out.

Note that to "correct" the color banding didn't require going into the service menu, just the standard menu. I currently have all inputs set to Movie Mode and I am tweaking each one. I've managed to return My Color back to Standard (instead of Red like I had it before).


JoeyK, MoneyD, jrdnyquist:

I really wanted the Samsung DVD-HD1080 but it still hasn't been released yet. The 960 has picture and HDMI settings that have allowed me to get a deeper black level and keep the Movie Mode settings on its input (HDMI 2 in my case) at their defaults.

I now wish my other components like the Xbox 360 and DirecTV H20 Receiver had similar picture and/or HDMI settings so I could acheive better black levels and keep the input Movie Mode settings at their default. I have or will have several components connected to each input and ideally it would be better to adjust picture quality on each individual device instead of the TV's input to 'cover' all of them.

When I switched the TV to Movie Mode and adjusted the 960, I must admit that I am very pleased with the 960. The 1080 (with SACD and DVD-Audio support), if it ever comes out, will more than likely be my last DVD player with the high-def formats being some time in the future.


jrdnyquist:

I've had to tweak the settings of every input I've switched to Movie Mode because I felt they looked dull and flat too. The only exception was the one input mentioned above in which I could adjust the component instead.

One thing I haven't seen discussed yet is the SSE (silk screen effect) on the LED sets vs. the DLP (and other rear projection) sets. More than anything this seems to be my pet peeve on most current sets including LCD, DLP and SXRD. Has this been improved upon on the LED sets?

I thought the silk screen effect only happened on LCDs? I was at BestBuy last night &
they just set up the new Sony Bravia XBR2 46" 1080p LCD. I didn't see any silk screen
effect or anything else wrong for that matter. If the 5679W doesn't meet my expectations
when they start showing up, I'll probably go pick up the new Bravia instead.

I can only speak for myself and what I saw. The colors on the preproduction LED 5679 models they displayed (one in the Samsung booth and one in the TI area) looked a little too reddish to me on the first two days. On the last day it looked much better. On the set in the Samsung booth it was more evident.

My own speculation is that one of the LEDs was weaker than the other two, and it was either corrected or tweaked later.

As one who can see rainbows but is not bothered by them, I can say that I saw no rainbows on either set. I remember this clearly because in talking to one of the Korean engineers at the Samsung booth, he excitedly asked if I could see rainbows on the HL-S7178W (which I could, although they were much improved over the HL-Rs in that respect). Disappointed, he brought me to the LED model and asked again. I tried for three days to see rainbows on the set, and saw none. Not reduced rainbows, no rainbows at all.

The complaint of "noise" is completely new to me and contradictory to what I observed about the television. I saw no noise issue on either of the LED sets or, for that matter, the 5086 and XX87's which were next to it. I think the noise issue with the conventional Samsung DLPs may be more related to the signal being fed to them in the electronics stores. That said, any of the new microdisplays will expose a bad signal. Garbage in, garbage out.

Please don't post pricing other than MSRP or where to buy.

Keep in mind that this is an owners thread.

Thanks

I don't remember exactly what was said without scouring the CES thread (if that was where it was), but I do remember 'noise' being a issue. Not input noise (source) but internal generated noise of some type. At least that was my impression.

Unless I missed the boat somewhere.

SSE is not to be mistaken with SDE (screen door effect) which is what can be seen on some LCD sets. SSE is the result of the screen texture onto which the image is projected while SDE is caused by the gap between individual pixels. I've seen it on both LCD and DLP sets and to a lesser extent on the SXRD sets too. Plasma sets for example do not have any SSE but can have SDE.

I was just hoping they'd improve this on rear projection units as this is something I personally get bothered by quite a bit.

My TV was delivered just after noon today. I am replacing a 36" Proscan CRT. I may not have the best eyes for detail, but I think the TV looks great right out of the box. The OTA digital signals here in Dallas look great. The room I placed the TV in is pretty much surrounded with windows and the picture is plenty bright. I think the standard definition detail provided by my Directv receiver looks as good as expected. I watched a few minutes of Serenity with my up-scaling Sony DVD and it looked really good. I can't imagine how good the HD-DVD players must look. So far the only complaint I have is the sluggish remote. It seems to take too long to get a response from my TV. I have already programmed my Logitech Harmony which is working better than the factory supplied remote. The sluggish response may simply be a battery issue.

I've found the same thing to be true with my remote as well. I'll be JP1'ing it to my One For All soon and look for the response to improve as well.

NorthJersey:

Here is my set on the Z-Line stand -
CLICK TO SEE PHOTO

nice setup WH! thanks for the pic. I thought you mentioned that the tv has an overhang ? Is it in the back, because the tv seems to line up just fine on that stand