New Samsung DLP=Bad pic quality?

[Venom]

I saw the new Samsung DLP's and fell in love. Went back the next day to buy one.While they were checking to see if it was in stock, I actually sat and watched it closely. They were running the Samsung demo DVD. I noticed that it had and incredible amount of digital artifacts everywhere. I had them switch to an HDTV source and it still did the same. Sports were the worst. Any player moving on the screen was didstorted and blurry. You could not even make out the jersey number. If he stood still the picture would clear up. All other sets around the DLP were clear enough to see the jersey numbers. I have now been to Best Buy, Circuit City & Sound Advice. All DLP sets at all locations are the same. During action sequences they are the worst. Blurry and fuzzy until the enhancement circuit kicks in. Any one else see this?

[FatDog]

I sat and watched a HLN 50" unit for about 30 minutes. The picture was great on the demo loop.

But once in a while, during quick scene changes, the display would go all white with some black lines. It was like the scaling circuitry had to re-analyze and there was a fraction of a second where it could not produce good picture.l

The HD demo loop did not include sports, mainly movie trailers.

[FatDog]

I spend about an hour at Cambridge Soundworks and had a long talk with the manager about the Samsung DLP units.

Basically, he took one home and it never left his house. The 50" will only leave if his house burns down or he gets his hands on a 61" unit.

He did mention that the SVideo input on the unit had some 'issues'. The colors would get shifted a bit towards yellow. He tried several DVD players to make sure it was not his cable/DVD player.

With component, he has never seen a problem.

Now that I think about it, I believe he is using a DVD player as his "highest quality" source. (We dont get OTA or Cable-based HD out here yet.)

I also have to admit that when I saw the display in Best Buy, the signals were split to about 8-10 televisions. I can see that even with an amplifier, this could cause some signal-strength issues.

And it can be a problem with a too-strong signal as well.

Others that own this television have not reported problems so I suspect it was a local issue, or a problem unique to that set.

[sundial2k]

I have been looking to replace my Mits 55311, and am leaning towards a DLP simply for the lack of burn-in. I spent about 40 minutes playing with a Samsung 43" at Sound Advice (although I plan to get the 61").

Where it was located in the store, I was only able to view it with basic cable. I found the picture to be very digitized, almost so that it looked fake. I have seen the 50" (HLNXXX) set at Circuit City with HDTV, and of course it looked a little better than the 43, but still digitized.

The real issue begins when I glanced over at a standard rear-projection. They look SO MUCH BETTER. It isn't even close. The skin-tones, black levels, color, depth, clarity. All of those look far more realistic on a rear-projection than they do on the DLP.

I have not yet seen the Panasonic PT-52DL52, which is supposed to be very good. I'll report back when I do see it.

[Skyboss]

I've been using an HLM437W for six months. It developed a bit of a "green push". I picked up the maintenance manual and calibrated the unit. It looks great now. There is a green offset which needed an adjustment. Now it looks so dang real it's amazing. I have found that a standard cable feed looks like crapola. There just isn't enough info in the signal which results in a bit of a washed out picture. Using the Dish with a DVI yields better results. Using OTA with the DVI also yields great results. I use an SIR-T160.

All in all, it outperforms my previous 1080i set by leaps and bounds. I actually trashed a perfectly good 1080i set because it's image was so poor. This even after calibration. The DLP is lighter, brighter and more energy efficient. Side note.... The artifacts are likely the feed in the store, not the unit.

[Joe B]

I have the HLN507 with an April 2003 build date. It is awesome! I believe any picture quality issues on the DLP were mostly introduced by the store's video distribution system.

For example, I saw the HLN43 at Sears and it looked better than the HLM43 at Tweeter. I returned the next day with my wife at the same Sears store and the picture was horrible because either the cables or the outputs on the distribution box went south.

DVI looks the best. A Samsung HD-931 DVD player feeds upconverted 720p on my display. It is connected to the MyHD MDP-120 DVI pass-through connection. I get HDTV OTA through the MyHD card via DVI. Comcast cable is fed via component. Hopefully, Comcast will enable the DVI port soon.

The HLNxxx DLPs are excellent.

Joe

[Deucedriver]

My HLN 507 (purchased 6/17/03) also has a little bit of a "green" push. Anyone care to share any tweeking secrets? Skyboss - I noticed you also had the same problem.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[arkygptx]

Yes. I just bought a Samsung 50" DLP HDTV. I noticed the same thing. My TV before this one was a Sony 46" CRT Rear Projection. The picture was much better during action scenes. Maybe not as crisp during slow moving scenes, but overall I prefer my Sony. Also, if it is not HD, forget it. The picture, pardon my language, f*cking s*cks. My new purchase has made me a bit hornswaggled.

Go Cowboys


I saw the new Samsung DLP's and fell in love. Went back the next day to buy one.While they were checking to see if it was in stock, I actually sat and watched it closely. They were running the Samsung demo DVD. I noticed that it had and incredible amount of digital artifacts everywhere. I had them switch to an HDTV source and it still did the same. Sports were the worst. Any player moving on the screen was didstorted and blurry. You could not even make out the jersey number. If he stood still the picture would clear up. All other sets around the DLP were clear enough to see the jersey numbers. I have now been to Best Buy, Circuit City & Sound Advice. All DLP sets at all locations are the same. During action sequences they are the worst. Blurry and fuzzy until the enhancement circuit kicks in. Any one else see this?

[lcaillo]

I don't sell the Samsung sets but have looked at them a lot and talked to other techs who work on them and calibrate them. The compare very well to the Sony and Mits sets that we sell, though I do not trust the reliability on the Samsung as much. The sets do often need significant calibration and have somewhat of a poorer performance on composite and S-video from what I have seen, but most of the artifacts mentioned in this thread are likely source related. Overall they are very good sets, just make sure, like with any purchase, that you know that you have a servicer who is factory authorized, reputable, and experienced with the sets nearby. If not, look at one of the other brands for which there is reliable service locally.