[Supertoyz]

Well after over threee months of waiting my PB set showed up last Wednesday......1 week ahead of the scheduled delivery date! Friday all of the Thanksgiving guests left and I could finally pay attention to the TV. I was shocked when I effortlessy lifted the unit out of the box, I set it into position and admired it for a minute while checking it over......very nice fit and finish as well as layout. I connected everything and finally the moment of truth came......I turned it on.


Here's my connections:

DVD - Sony DVPNS900V Progressive scan player, "Better Cables" silver serpant component cables connected to "Component 2 on TV"


Sateliite - 5th gen Sony Dolby Digital Receiver, A50 I think connected via Tributaries S-Video cable......I'm on the fence about a SIR-TS160 via DVI


Cable - Analog cable Via Antenna A & B.....(Adelphia Cable...ugh.)


I turned the TV onto cable first........just what I had feared, nearly unwatchable. I have not done anything to try to improve this yet. I then went onto Satellite. It was better but still the picture was as described here for months.....poor to fair. I watched a Sci-Fi film where a shuttle was taking off from a planet in a sand storm at dusk...blowing sand, dark out etc. It had to be the worst PQ I've ever seen. It actualy looked like a windows monitor on it's lowest color setting...16 I believe. The sand blowing in the storm looked like solid sheets of color.....color banding I believe it's called. I've noticed this everywhere in Cable and satellite.....especially in dark scenes. I notice it on floors, walls etc. The best way I can describe it is when a color transistions from one color to another....like a shadow on a wall, instead of a smooth transition from one end of the wall to the other it goes in waves of color (bands) from one end to the other....no blending. I then watched 'Ice Age" and "Monsters Inc." on DVD. It was probably the finest images I've ever seen on a TV....utterly fantastic PQ. I'd have to say that the months of reviews I've read to this point are correct. DVD and HD (I assume) are fantastic and Cable / Satellite suck. I'm certainly keeping the set because I've seen it's potential and am very impressed.....I just need to get it set up properly (colorfacts arrived Friday And figure out how to feed this thing the best signals possible. I'm considering the HD-Satellite receivers and connecting my PC for scaling. Overall I'm very happy with the TV and displeased with Satelitte and cable service. The unit is mounted above a firplace so it sits high, it's tilted 8 degress forward and operates fine in this position. The only geometry flaw I've noticed is in the 4:3 mode I do have some pincushion towards the bottom....the image narrows on both sides towards the bottom of the screen. I've got dozens of question for you folks (Tom Roper) so I'll post a few to start out.


I connected the DVD to component 2 (480P/720P/1080I) instead of component 1 (480I/480P) I'm happy with it here but is there any reason it should be connected to C1 like the manual states? Does C1 go through any more, less or different processing than C2&3?


Also, I can't find a DVI cable anywhere yet I want to connect my PC to the TV for calibration and testing. My video card supports VGA, DVI and S-video so without a DVI cable I've got VGA and S-Video. Two questions here, how is the VGA input different than the DVI? Second since I'm using both S-Video inputs in the back If I connect the PC to the S-video input on the side will I be using the same circuitry as the two on the back? I wan't to make sure that if I calibrate the S-video from this input that I'll be calibrating all three S-Video inputs from this one on the side and that it's not separate.


Thanks All for your help.


Jeff

 

[selim]

Supertoyz, I used both DVI and VGA connected from my Nvidia Gforce3 Ti200 card to the TV and I have to say I noticed no difference in image quality. The overscan in Wide (TV) mode seems to be the same in both cases. About 1/2" from the sides and 1/4" from top and bottom. You get the full image in Wide (PC) mode but you lose some image quality. Also make sure you set the sharpness to 30 or less since higher settings cause some color blending in certain text.


In fact VGA mode is better since the only way to reposition the screen in DVI mode is through the service menu Pos-X, Pos-Y values, while in VGA mode you can use the menu to adjust the screen while watching a movie or playing a game. You also have the coarse and fine adjustments to resize the screen but that reduces the quality of the image.


Also Powerstrip works only in VGA mode but it seems to be doing the same thing that the TV's coarse and fine settings do.


I watched Lord of the Rings through the VGA input and the PQ was excellent.

 

[ZAGBY]

You can buy both DVI-D and DVI-I cables here.



http://www.dvigear.com/dvidcables.html

 

[vfrjim]

I finally connected a VGA cable to my TS-160 and compared it to the DVI input. I froze a HD picture via the STB and switched between the two and if anything the DVI is just slightly better then the VGA input, nothing to write home about, so in my book, both are about the same.


Jim

 

[no_headroom]

Supertoyz, I got a hlm437w on wednesday too and have come to the same conclusions. Any suggestions here on how to improve the color accuracy with satellite (Dishplayer in my case) on svideo1 would be appreciated. The fact that

the colors are slightly off a lot of the time bothers me even more than the lousy resolution.


Also, I had to do SM tweaks to make my RP-82 look good using component1. I am not sure using component2 would be any better out of the box.


Overall I'm still happy, it often looks great and then the next scene might look disappointing. I am still getting used to the set, it's not a 27" crt.

If this set could just vary less in the SD PQ department it would be much closer to perfect.


Also, there is a significant whine when the set is operating. Is this worse for the 437 maybe? It doesn't bother me usually, except late at night and it's a relief to turn it off.


I will definitely get a t165 or build an htpc if this fixes a lot of the SD problems. But I've to agree with Frank that having to tweak this much borders on the ridiculous for a ~4k set. By the time I'm done that 8k plasma might not look that expensive after all.


-Peter

 

[MR-KEN]

I was under the impression that only HDTV Tuner imputs would work on C2 and C3. You said that you connected your DVD progressive directly to C2 and it worked? I'm surprised.

 

[Supertoyz]

Worked just fine......I emailed Samsung Steve to ask the difference between C1 and C2&3, I'll paste his response below.



(cut and pasted)


Your DVD player, ideally should be put into Component Video 1...


Here's the difference. We dedicated this input for DVD players to allow for aspect ratio adjustments and video processing via 480i. In CV1, you can adjust for Zoom 1 and 2. In the CV2 and CV3 inputs, you cannot.


The CV1 input auto switches as follows:


480i goes through the Faroudja processor, 480P does not.


The system settings you make for RF, video, s-video, and CV1 will hold as one setting, based on the last adjustment. CV2 and CV2 inputs are the second level of settings, DVI the third, and PC the fourth level that the set's memory will hold. While this doesn't address individual output differences across several NTSC inputs and the corresponding video 1, s-video and CV1, the service menu does allow to adjust CV1 separately. This will only need to be performed if the user menu settings won't address things. In this case, I recommend an ISF certified specialist to perform these adjustments, although, I've read on the forum about those who've gone in an found good results by themselves. An ISF technician will customize the settings for your viewing habits, room light and selection of components that make up your system.

 

[turls]

"Samsung Steve?" Are you talking about Steve Panosian?


If so, he is the one that preached to me about avoiding answering tons of questions by going the FAQ route. I sure wish he would get to work on it, because this is good info. And the FAQ on the web site does not get into this type of specifics.

 

[tceverha]

Strange, my Pioneer Elite 45a dvd player would not work when I tried the C2 and C3 inputs????