HL-T7288W...First impressions - Page 3

Any pictures & follow-up reviews of this 72" monster would be appreciated. I am trying to compare this Samsung with the 73" Mitsu's that just came out (73733 and 73734 line).

Any comments on reliability and PQ would be great.

Thanks!

Received my Sammy via Fedex Freight Friday. One of the shock sensors had been activated and some carton damage, but no external damage to the TV when I got it out of the box. The stand wasn't as lucky though, one corner has been slammed but I couldn't see damage to the box. Since I didn't have any other way to support the TV I went ahead and put the stand together anyway.

I have a Tosh HD-D2 and DTV HD Tivo which I direct connected via HDMI tothe Sammy. I ran through the basic calibrations with a HD DVD DVE disc. I ended up with the same settings as jnelson in post #48, except flesh tone "normal".

I also ran through all of the DVE evaluation screens and since I've never used DVE before I'm not sure how to evaluate the results, but everything seemed OK except for two things. There is screen bowing, about an 1/8" at the top and 1/4" at the bottom. I've read in another Sammy thread this is within the Sammy spec. The other thing is in a white screen a smudge can be seen right in the center of the screen which appears to be on the inside of the screen. The smudge isn't very dark, it can only be seen in a white screen but I will call for a Samsung tech to come out and look at it.

So after that how does it look? This TV replaced a 4 year old Hitachi 65" CRT RPTV which had been ISF'd, and had spot on colors. To my great pleasure the Sammy has blacks that seem as good, and resolution and contrast levels that blow away the Hitachi but I expected that. Before I ran DVE, the skin tones weren't very good but after switching to Movie mode and color tone normal, flesh tones look pretty close. Since I've watched the Hitachi for so long the Sammy's reds look a little off, and little darker, but the blues seem truer. Of course I don't know which one is correct but the Sammy picture is pretty damn close out of the box. I'll be very interested to read people's experience when they have this set ISF calibrated.

I watched one of the planet earth HD DVDs first and I'm very pleased with the overall experience. I tend to be overly critical, but there was some digital noise in a few darker scenes; does anyone know if a full calibration would eliminate that?

Since this thread is titled First impressions I'd have to say I'm happy with my Sammy and it's displaying a picture as good as any RPTV I've seen in any of the video stores.

Finally a question. Does anyone else with this TV have a harmony remote? Of course it's too early for Harmony to have this TV in their library but is any other Sammy's remote the same? I set the harmony up with the HL-T6189S codes and it's not switching the inputs correctly, but I haven't had time to really dig into it yet; if someone's been through this already I could use your help.

Wives seem to love the flat panels. Bought my first SXRD without the wife and she blew a gasket over it's form factor and made my life hell until I had to give in and sell it a week later as divorce is to expensive later in life for any TV though she never paid anything out of her budget for the TV. So the 57" LCD cost me double - Love the Sharp but admittedly it wins in many areas but for damn outright WoW factor I've never seen anything match the shadow details of an SXRD in the sweet spot for HD Movies. Would love to see a 72" calibrated Samsung since I've only seen in store results which won't match true in-home calibrated Samsung so I've heard from many. Simply cannot sneak one in the house though they are thinner they still can't fool her from the side.

WAF can Suck!

BTW - Good Luck with the anti-glare - I hope Sammy's is better tha Panny's - I owned a 500U after the SXRD and the reflections and washout was horrendous and it lasted a week until I went back to LCD. Hopefully Samsungs works I have a sunny room with tall windows and southern exposure and most plasma's became POS on sunny days - don't even bother watching a dark movie when the sun is in the room and the whites on the panny were yellow and gray - dirty looking. Hope the Samsung works for you.

Here are a couple of pictures of the matching stand while I am awaiting delivery of the TV. I am very pleased with its aesthetics and functionality for my situation.

For perspective, that's a 46-inch television.

Good shots of the stand. Seems like it will fit my gear as well.

BTW, are there any big-box stores that have this T7288W in stock? Trying to take a look at this before a potential purchase.

Thanks!

I finally got my Sanus CFV69 stand last Friday and assembled it. Here is the final product:




I use a Harmony 659 and my friend came over on Saturday and we got everything set up and working great using the profile for a Samsung HL-S5688W and tweaking from there. Try that and see how it works. You have to go into "Device" and then scroll through the screens and play around with the inputs until you find out which buttons select the proper inputs, then make sure to use those for your activity profiles. Works fantastic now.

I notice a issue on the Harmony with my sammy lcd the code gives a choice of HDMI2, v1 or v2 for me I have to use v2 for it to change or it defaults to ANT

I have David Abrams coming out to isf calibrate it on the 26th can't wait..

like bill, i also ordered the TR72B tv stand and should be here tomorrow. it'll be nice to have the tv on the stand rather on the makeshift one I made.

Still checking this thread even though I went with the Sammy 63" Plasma over the 7288w.

I see that some are looking for stands. You may want to checkout this company,

www.jsp-industries.com

I originally purchased the Bolero model to go with the 7288W, but it has worked great for the plasma too. It is very high quality stuff.


Later

so is it just me or anyone else having the rainbow effect? and I'm sitting about 10-11 ft back

I see a faint impression of them when watching some shows with fast action or when I move my eyes around the screen fast. I'm trying NOT to look for it though so I don't get into a habit of seeing them all the time.

Discrete codes for Harmony remotes.

I was having a terrible time getting my Harmony 880 to switch inputs properly between my HD Tivo on HDMI2 and my Toshiba HD-D2 on HDMI1. Since Logitech doesn't have the HL-T7288W as a selection yet I've been using the HL-S5688W codes for programming.

Because the Sammy doesn't have separate keys on the remote for each input; I was trying to get the Harmony to duplicate the key strokes, but it wasn't working and I didn't like the idea of having to point the remote at the TV while it cycled through the key strokes.

Finally while reading through different Sammy threads I found several mentions of discrete codes but I wasn't getting enough information to figure it out, so this morning I called the Harmony help line and got enough help to figure it out.

1. add Samsung HL-S5688W as your TV
2. When you choose how to switch inputs choose Method 2.
3. Next add/delete the input list until it matches your inputs.
4. Then set the discrete codes from the pull down lists for each input (here's my list)

Source input / Remote button

TV / Input antenna
HDMI1 / InputHDMI2V2
HDMI2 / InputHDMI2v3
AV1 / InputVideo1
AV2 / InputVideo2V2
AV3 / InputVideo3V2
S-Video1 / InputSVideo
S-Video2 / InputSVideo2V2
Component1 / Inputcomponent1
Component2 / Inputcomponent2
PC / InputRGB
HDMI3 / InputHDMI3

Hope this helps

You will note that USB isn't in my list because I haven't found a discrete code yet. Maybe one of you has found it and could let me know.

What we ended up doing for USB was to teach the Harmony the command for the WiseLink key from the original remote that came with the 7288, then create a new activity for "USB" on the remote. Worked like a champ.

Finally was able to set up the TV stand. here are some pics

So I had David Abrams out to calabrate the Sammy and let me tell you boys it's like night and day...The colors are so..so..real!!

The blu-ray and HD-dvd look awesome!! Even the Tivo S3 looks great.

Props to Dave..

Did the calibration help with rainbows? Did you (do you) have any geometry issues with sidebars or letterbox in that the vertical or horizontal lines are bowed? I saw one 7288 and the pic was great but it had approx. a 1/4 inch of bowing on the vertical side bars.

If it's less than 1/4" (6mm) then it's within Samsung's tolerance. On a set as big as 72" that amount should be even less noticeable.

Thanks for the report. If you can come up with any more reactions please use the edit button on your original report. That way readers will get all your reactions in on place.

I've included your post in the list of owner's reports that is linked at the bottom of my post.

Enjoy.

No they're still there but not as visible. The only issue was on the A20 we got a bit of noise and jitter when set to 1080p on the player. He set it to 1080i and let the tv do the 1080p and this solved the issue.

I'll post some numbers from the report in a bit

In a earlier report I mentioned I had a smudge on screen so I called for service and Samsung sent out a tech last Friday. The side access ports made it easy for him to reach in, and he quickly cleaned the lense which was the problem. He also went through some service screens but I couldn't tell what he was doing and he wasn't explaining.

He looked over the screen very carefully and he found another spot which was fairly small but couldn't be cleaned; I had seen it as well, but hadn't reported it. His conclusion that it was a small crack in the internal screen material. He said that the screen would have to be replaced or replace the set; which was what he said he was going to recommend. He went to great pains to explain how difficult it is to replace the screen, and asked what I wanted to do. In truth; after his explanation I was a little worried about the screen replacement, but I'm also worried about replacing the set as well.

The reason has to do with the bowing issue. I haven't said anything about it yet, but in my earlier post I also mentioned I had about a 1/4" bowing at the bottom, and after sitting for 2 weeks in my living room the case seems to have settled somewhat, and now it's only 1/8" bowed, so I didn't even ask the tech to do anything about it, and I'm concerned that a replacement set my have a worse bowing issue.

So the crack is the real issue and I'm really not sure what to do but I'm concerned that over time the crack might increase and become a real problem. For now if you're more than 6 feet away you can't see it, much closer than the nearest sitting position.

I'd like to here anyone's opinion.

Side note. I think I may have also mentioned earlier that I thought reds seemed a little off, but after some more time on the blub the reds seem more true than before. Is this a normal occurence with new blubs, or am I just getting used to the colors?

By the way, I'm blown away with HD DVD on this set and my wife watchs an episode of Planet Earth almost every night for two weeks straight. I also must say that SD DVD looks better than I had hoped for, and that HD on Directv is impressive (except for motion artifacts). SD on Directv doesn't seem as good as my Hitachi CRT RPTV that this tv replaced; I'm not sure if different settings would help.

I see that boomer8800 is pleased with his calibration, that's something I'm still trying to decide on.. I'll report back when I hear something from Samsung.

After calibrating my set, and having about 10 months under my belt watching the DLP... I no longer see them. Weird, but good! Maybe your experience will be the same.

Good luck!

RBE disappeared over time for me as well when I owned a DLP.

Later

Good to know, I'm planning on having the set calibrated after I re-do my setup (building out a htpc system to run the set) no sense in calibrating it with different imputs than what I would be using in real life. The build is just going much slower than I thought (had to upgrade the file server first and that blew $15K).

Bump. Sorry I just like reading owners impressions of this particular model, thx

love watching it. HD stuff is amazing!

Here's an update on my screen replacement. Back on the 30th I wrote that a service technician had found a small crack in the internal screen and recommended the screen be replaced. The repair was scheduled for Aug 10th and an hour after he was to arrive the tech called up to say they had gone through and practice session at their shop and decided they couldn't do it. He said he was calling Samsung to recommend the set be replaced. I'm nervous about a replacement because of the possibility of getting one that bows worse than mine (about an 1/8"). Have people been getting sets lately that still have the bowing problem? One last note: I've noticed on occasion (maybe 1 out of 5 times) when I turn on the set, I get a blinking green light and there is a longer than normal delay before the set turns on. Are others seeing this, is this normal?

If the slight crack does not bother you, I would keep your current set. Everything you have described sounds like you have a normal set and, in fact, an even more accurate set than mine (with less bowing... I had 1/4", which was still decent).

Finally after months of trying to decide between sony, mitsubishi and samsung I ordered my HL-T7288W today from my local BB it is being delivered next Friday Can't wait!

You could always keep it and decide later if you want to replace it before the 1yr warranty is up.

welcome to the 72" family. LOL