So I was looking around for a month or so for a decent LCD and I settled on a Samsung series 4 32 incher for 38K delivered and wall mounted. Since I have had it for a couple of weeks now I thought I would review it on the off chance that some other kindred soul is in the same dilemma I was in.
But before before I actually begin the review itself I thought would explain the thought process I went through about various details like size, reolution, brands etc. I hope that the people that dont want to buy the Samsung can see what other options they can look at. Keep in mind I was shopping with a budget of around 50k and I was willing to stretch a bit more if needed.
Input options
This (after picture quality) is the most important thing for me in a TV. And it should be important for you as well. At any given time my TV has three devices plugged into it (DishTv, Xbox360 and PS2) with an option for a fourth (PC via VGA) that might be needed. So the TV needs to have at least 1 component, 1 VGA, AV and HDMI options. Samsung has all of them. In fact it has multiple connections for Component and HDMI. My only gripe is that the VGA option is in the back and you cant well fiddle around with that once its mounted on the wall without a lot of bother.
Size
This was a tough one. From the getgo the 40+ inchers were out. They wouldnt fit into my budget unless they were plasma (which came close enough to my budget to consider stretching). And I did not want to buy a plasma (more on that later). That left me with the 32 and the 37 inch options. Now I sit at about 6-8 feet from the screen so I was pretty sure that 32 would be good enough but I kept the 37" option open. Depending upon your requirements and room size 37" is avery good option.
[BREAK=Further options]
720p or 1080p
Ah the million dollar question. Or actually the million dollar question that turned out to be moot. This was my biggest concern. I could easily get a 1080p 32" in my budget. The question was "Is it worth it?".The answer it turned out was simple.
NO.
I figured the best place to find this out was at a store and look at both options side by side. So I went to this place in Lajpat Nagar (the store I bought it from) and they had the Samsung series 5 and series 4 32" side by side. They were feeding a 1080p signal (a discovery channel type nature video) to both the sets. The series 4 was taking the signal and displaying it after downscaling at 720p. The series 5 was displaying it at native 1080p resolution. And I couldnt spot the differance. I looked from around 5 feet or so. Then I looked it right up close at about 2-3 feet. Still nothing. I asked them to put a blu ray disk in (they have a BR player for 29k, who would buy that?), so they put Black hawk down in. And still nothing. The thing is the differance in cost of 1080p and 720p is around 7K. And as far as I could see it was money down the drain. So I stuck to 720p.
Brands
So what else was there? Aside from the Samsung I looked at Sony (V series), Hitachi and Viera. Viera did not have a VGA input from what I was told (can someone verify that?) so that one was out. That left me with Sony, Hitachi and Samsung. Hitachi looked good on DVD and HD but the STB broadcast picture seemed not as good as the Sony and Samsung plus it was ugly as hell in design. So I ignored that as well (for the picture quality of STB not the aesthetics
). I never acutally saw the LG ones in action so cant say for them.
But the bottom line is as far as picking a brand is concerned I suggest you go out and look for yourself. There are enough options out there to see what suits you best.
Plasma or LCD
This was tough as well. Like I mentioned earlier a lot of the 42" plasma can be had around 60K. So why LCD? A few reasons of mine
1 Viewing distance. I thought 42" would be pointless at 6 feet which is what I sit at mostly.
2 PC connection. From what I had read, consensus seemed unanimous that Plasma are inferior to LCDs at PC usage.
3 Resolution. All the plasmas I could find were using the 1024X768 resolution. This doesnt look to good on my Xbox (tested via the VGA cable on a monitor)
Lastly I figured I would save that 10k and stick with the LCD. Plus that extra money can now go into my Home theatre setup.
[BREAK=The review]
Right now that thats over lets get on to the review itself.
I thought I would split this into signals I tested. So without further ado lets start with SD DTH signal.
DTH (STB connected by AV cable)
I have Dish TV at home and while I dont watch a lot of that (mostly I use the telly for gaming or DVDs) other people in the family do and this aspect was important to them and therefore to me.
Right of the bat the default settings the TV ships out with are awfull. The whole picture looks overy bright and pixelated at times. So I played around with the settings a bit (also looked at avforums.com for that) and finally settled on the best one I could find.
Now DTH looks good. Its certainly a step forward from my previous CRT. But its not a giant step forward. Discovery and cartoon network look a lot better on LCD. Sports as well look good. There was no ghosting or lagging in the Premiership games I saw yesterday. But all in all is not a spellbinding improvement. Still I am fairly happy with the results.
DVDs (from the PS2 via AV cable and Upscaling from the PC input)
Despite the DTH people advertising the DVD like quality of the display the differance in quality between a telivision broadcast and a good DVD is noticeable. I looked around for King kong as it had some lush colurfull exteriors. Also tested Sin city for its dark and moody look. And Shrek for its lovely animation and splurge of colours.
And it looks brilliant! Shrek was my favourate. It looks so vibrant and alive its hard not to be impressed. The colours are plush and natural and all in all its fantastic. The blacks in Sincity also look rather good. It looks good from the native 480p version of the PS2 and it looks slightly better when upscaled from a PC input. All in all the DVD aspect is very good.
Divx
Just a small word for Divx. Most of my film collection (about 100 GB worth) is in Divx format so I had to test and see what it looks like. I used the Xbox 360 to stream stuff from my main PC. I had seen that LCDs dont show the Divx format in its best light (on my desktop Viewsonic anyway) so I was pleasently surprised that it looks better on the TV than my Desktop LCD. It looks to be on par (depending upon the rip) to some of the STB TV channels. Its not mind blowing but I am happy that it doesnt look like a bloated pixellated mess. So all in all fairly happy with that.
[BREAK=HD, gaming]
HD
Well not True HD but I do have a small (and growing collection) of various things in 720p format. I started out by testing a few episodes of Planet earth. And its so beautifull I fell in love. I also tried Batman Begins at 720P and that looks brilliant too. So I threw some 1080p content at it. Mostly trailers and small videos and that looks excellent as well.
I dont have a lot of HD material at hand and I kinda wish I did. There is nothing else quite like it and the TV does such a brilliant job of displaying it that I feel bad just switching back to STB.
Final verdict is that if you have a decent collection of HD material you will not be dissapointed. Its everything you want in a HD display. The colours, the details, the picture clarity is nothing short of stunning. The fact that Dish TV might be stepping up to HD in a few months makes me giddy.
Gaming (HD with Xbox 360 (component) and SD with PS2)
Ah the real reason I spent 38 K on the telly. I was fairly happy with my Viewsonic 19" for my Xbox 360 gaming. So I was not expecting much more than a larger size screen for gaming. Boy was I wrong. Forget about the screen size the whole picture quality is so superior that I cant picture going back to the Viewsonic now. I tried almost all the games in my collection. All of them look brilliant. Plus the larger screen size makes split screen play a lot more approachable. Gears of war alone makes the whole 38 K well spent.
PS2.
Again this is big leap from my previous 21" CRT TV. Its true that some of the low res textures can be a bit jarring at times on some of the older games. And the lower resolution means some of the flaws are highlighted but the superior colours and the size makes you overlook some of ther other inherant issues of SD games.
Will probably update this once I try some PC games on it. But its just a task moving my huge cabinet arount to the TV and my laptop cant even play solitaire without chugging.
[BREAK=And in closing...]
Some other details
Aesthetics
What about looks? Looks dont matter you say. Well they do to me. I like functionality and thats still most important but it helps if it loooks good when switched off and boy does it look gorgues. It has a very nice finish and lovely curved bottom (everyone loves a lovely curved bottom). Its thin and the speakers are hidden. What more can you ask for? Looks beautifull wall mounted.
Remote
This is not that important since once you set things up you will be mostly using the STB or DTH remote. But I have to say the remote is overly large, with some functions on the lower half that are useless. I am still trying to come to grips with it so it takes some getting used to.
Sound
Again I was expecting the sound to be average at best but it was actually pretty decent. Granted any external speaker you plug into it will sound better but as a default option for most people this will more than get the job done. Most importantly the sound clarity is extremely good and doesnt get compromised even at higher volumes. Turning on SRS gives the sound a richer feel as well. From dialogues to gunfire all the sounds are very clear and rich. For those people who dont plan on getting an expensive home theatre system with a TV this will be very good default option.
And thats about it. If there are any mistakes in the review (grammatical or factual) please let me know I will correct it.
I hope this makes your job of selecting a HDTV easier.
Last peice of advise. Always go to a showroom and see any telly you are interested in action.
But before before I actually begin the review itself I thought would explain the thought process I went through about various details like size, reolution, brands etc. I hope that the people that dont want to buy the Samsung can see what other options they can look at. Keep in mind I was shopping with a budget of around 50k and I was willing to stretch a bit more if needed.
Input options
This (after picture quality) is the most important thing for me in a TV. And it should be important for you as well. At any given time my TV has three devices plugged into it (DishTv, Xbox360 and PS2) with an option for a fourth (PC via VGA) that might be needed. So the TV needs to have at least 1 component, 1 VGA, AV and HDMI options. Samsung has all of them. In fact it has multiple connections for Component and HDMI. My only gripe is that the VGA option is in the back and you cant well fiddle around with that once its mounted on the wall without a lot of bother.
Size
This was a tough one. From the getgo the 40+ inchers were out. They wouldnt fit into my budget unless they were plasma (which came close enough to my budget to consider stretching). And I did not want to buy a plasma (more on that later). That left me with the 32 and the 37 inch options. Now I sit at about 6-8 feet from the screen so I was pretty sure that 32 would be good enough but I kept the 37" option open. Depending upon your requirements and room size 37" is avery good option.
[BREAK=Further options]
720p or 1080p
Ah the million dollar question. Or actually the million dollar question that turned out to be moot. This was my biggest concern. I could easily get a 1080p 32" in my budget. The question was "Is it worth it?".The answer it turned out was simple.
NO.
I figured the best place to find this out was at a store and look at both options side by side. So I went to this place in Lajpat Nagar (the store I bought it from) and they had the Samsung series 5 and series 4 32" side by side. They were feeding a 1080p signal (a discovery channel type nature video) to both the sets. The series 4 was taking the signal and displaying it after downscaling at 720p. The series 5 was displaying it at native 1080p resolution. And I couldnt spot the differance. I looked from around 5 feet or so. Then I looked it right up close at about 2-3 feet. Still nothing. I asked them to put a blu ray disk in (they have a BR player for 29k, who would buy that?), so they put Black hawk down in. And still nothing. The thing is the differance in cost of 1080p and 720p is around 7K. And as far as I could see it was money down the drain. So I stuck to 720p.
Brands
So what else was there? Aside from the Samsung I looked at Sony (V series), Hitachi and Viera. Viera did not have a VGA input from what I was told (can someone verify that?) so that one was out. That left me with Sony, Hitachi and Samsung. Hitachi looked good on DVD and HD but the STB broadcast picture seemed not as good as the Sony and Samsung plus it was ugly as hell in design. So I ignored that as well (for the picture quality of STB not the aesthetics
). I never acutally saw the LG ones in action so cant say for them. But the bottom line is as far as picking a brand is concerned I suggest you go out and look for yourself. There are enough options out there to see what suits you best.
Plasma or LCD
This was tough as well. Like I mentioned earlier a lot of the 42" plasma can be had around 60K. So why LCD? A few reasons of mine
1 Viewing distance. I thought 42" would be pointless at 6 feet which is what I sit at mostly.
2 PC connection. From what I had read, consensus seemed unanimous that Plasma are inferior to LCDs at PC usage.
3 Resolution. All the plasmas I could find were using the 1024X768 resolution. This doesnt look to good on my Xbox (tested via the VGA cable on a monitor)
Lastly I figured I would save that 10k and stick with the LCD. Plus that extra money can now go into my Home theatre setup.
[BREAK=The review]
Right now that thats over lets get on to the review itself.
I thought I would split this into signals I tested. So without further ado lets start with SD DTH signal.
DTH (STB connected by AV cable)
I have Dish TV at home and while I dont watch a lot of that (mostly I use the telly for gaming or DVDs) other people in the family do and this aspect was important to them and therefore to me.
Right of the bat the default settings the TV ships out with are awfull. The whole picture looks overy bright and pixelated at times. So I played around with the settings a bit (also looked at avforums.com for that) and finally settled on the best one I could find.
Now DTH looks good. Its certainly a step forward from my previous CRT. But its not a giant step forward. Discovery and cartoon network look a lot better on LCD. Sports as well look good. There was no ghosting or lagging in the Premiership games I saw yesterday. But all in all is not a spellbinding improvement. Still I am fairly happy with the results.
DVDs (from the PS2 via AV cable and Upscaling from the PC input)
Despite the DTH people advertising the DVD like quality of the display the differance in quality between a telivision broadcast and a good DVD is noticeable. I looked around for King kong as it had some lush colurfull exteriors. Also tested Sin city for its dark and moody look. And Shrek for its lovely animation and splurge of colours.
And it looks brilliant! Shrek was my favourate. It looks so vibrant and alive its hard not to be impressed. The colours are plush and natural and all in all its fantastic. The blacks in Sincity also look rather good. It looks good from the native 480p version of the PS2 and it looks slightly better when upscaled from a PC input. All in all the DVD aspect is very good.
Divx
Just a small word for Divx. Most of my film collection (about 100 GB worth) is in Divx format so I had to test and see what it looks like. I used the Xbox 360 to stream stuff from my main PC. I had seen that LCDs dont show the Divx format in its best light (on my desktop Viewsonic anyway) so I was pleasently surprised that it looks better on the TV than my Desktop LCD. It looks to be on par (depending upon the rip) to some of the STB TV channels. Its not mind blowing but I am happy that it doesnt look like a bloated pixellated mess. So all in all fairly happy with that.
[BREAK=HD, gaming]
HD
Well not True HD but I do have a small (and growing collection) of various things in 720p format. I started out by testing a few episodes of Planet earth. And its so beautifull I fell in love.
I also tried Batman Begins at 720P and that looks brilliant too. So I threw some 1080p content at it. Mostly trailers and small videos and that looks excellent as well. I dont have a lot of HD material at hand and I kinda wish I did. There is nothing else quite like it and the TV does such a brilliant job of displaying it that I feel bad just switching back to STB.
Final verdict is that if you have a decent collection of HD material you will not be dissapointed. Its everything you want in a HD display. The colours, the details, the picture clarity is nothing short of stunning. The fact that Dish TV might be stepping up to HD in a few months makes me giddy.
Gaming (HD with Xbox 360 (component) and SD with PS2)
Ah the real reason I spent 38 K on the telly. I was fairly happy with my Viewsonic 19" for my Xbox 360 gaming. So I was not expecting much more than a larger size screen for gaming. Boy was I wrong. Forget about the screen size the whole picture quality is so superior that I cant picture going back to the Viewsonic now. I tried almost all the games in my collection. All of them look brilliant. Plus the larger screen size makes split screen play a lot more approachable. Gears of war alone makes the whole 38 K well spent.
PS2.
Again this is big leap from my previous 21" CRT TV. Its true that some of the low res textures can be a bit jarring at times on some of the older games. And the lower resolution means some of the flaws are highlighted but the superior colours and the size makes you overlook some of ther other inherant issues of SD games.
Will probably update this once I try some PC games on it. But its just a task moving my huge cabinet arount to the TV and my laptop cant even play solitaire without chugging.
[BREAK=And in closing...]
Some other details
Aesthetics
What about looks? Looks dont matter you say. Well they do to me. I like functionality and thats still most important but it helps if it loooks good when switched off and boy does it look gorgues. It has a very nice finish and lovely curved bottom (everyone loves a lovely curved bottom
). Its thin and the speakers are hidden. What more can you ask for? Looks beautifull wall mounted.Remote
This is not that important since once you set things up you will be mostly using the STB or DTH remote. But I have to say the remote is overly large, with some functions on the lower half that are useless. I am still trying to come to grips with it so it takes some getting used to.
Sound
Again I was expecting the sound to be average at best but it was actually pretty decent. Granted any external speaker you plug into it will sound better but as a default option for most people this will more than get the job done. Most importantly the sound clarity is extremely good and doesnt get compromised even at higher volumes. Turning on SRS gives the sound a richer feel as well. From dialogues to gunfire all the sounds are very clear and rich. For those people who dont plan on getting an expensive home theatre system with a TV this will be very good default option.
And thats about it. If there are any mistakes in the review (grammatical or factual) please let me know I will correct it.
I hope this makes your job of selecting a HDTV easier.
Last peice of advise. Always go to a showroom and see any telly you are interested in action.