2001AudiS4

You do not want to leave your sound system on all the time. Home theater receivers generate a lot of heat. You should not have to either if you do not want. Just about every HD cable box I have encountered has both analog and digital audio outputs. You could run analog cables from the hd box to your tv, and then run a digital audio cable from the cable box to your receiver. Only thing I would recommend is listening with the tv speakers and the surround sound at the same time. You may get an echo due to a split second difference in timing between the analog and digital outputs on the cable box.

If your tv is going to be on the wall like you said, you will want to run your wires inside the wall. Do you know where you will put the equipment? Will it go in a cabinet or on a table right below the tv? Sometimes the cable that comes with the cable box will be long enough to run in the all. You only need about a 3 meter cable. Also, if you do not wish to use your home theater reciever to do your video switching, you will have to run more wires in the wall. At least one set of components for your cable box and one set for your dvd (or hdmi for each). You can just run one set to your receiver and let it do your video switching (so you can just keep the tv on the same input and then switch between TV and DVD on your receiver). Only problem with this is you will not get your audio on the tv speakers like you want. So you have several options, just have to really plan and decide what you want to do.

yunginTL

is an HDMI the only type of cable that can transfer a 1080p signal in the future?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Currently you can get 1080p via HDMI, DVI/HDMI or VGA. Component cables should be capable of handling 1080p as well, but the problem is that TVs do NOT support 1080p via component.

So for now and the short-term, one of the three mentioned above is the way to go.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

You can't compare the PS2 to the PS3. Two completely different beasts. The PS2 was designed and sold as a video game console first, and the fact that it played DVDs was just an afterthought. The PS3 is being designed and sold as a complete media and entertainment center. Because of that the BluRay player that is built in will be a full-on BluRay player. It may lack some small features found only on standalone players (they have to differenciate them somehow), but make no mistake, this will not be anything like the PS2 was with DVDs and will be a completely capable player. The BluRay player for the PS3 will work (and work well) for probably 98% of the population out there b/c it will have more then enough functionality and features. And you're right, these manufacturers are not stupid. They are in the middle of a format war with HD-DVD and they'll do anything they can to win that war, including losing money on the PS3 just to have BluRay players installed in that many homes. So Sony will gladly sell the PS3 at a loss just to expose millions of households to a BluRay player.

In short, from what I've read, if you have a PS3, there will be no need to buy another standalone BluRay player. There's no might about it, the PS3 WILL support 1080p via HDMI and WILL be a fully capable BluRay player.

This is a different story for the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 though since that add-on will not have HDMI connectivity. This means you will not be able to get true 1080p from the 360 HD-DVD. You WILL need to purchase a standalone HD-DVD for that functionality.

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baboya96

okay... got my tv today... received it a week eariler than expected so I was pleased... Got it out of the box, turned it on to make sure it's working properly and signed for it since I was told once I sign it, I can't return it anymore. My first impression.... "holy cow it's big"..definitely too big for my current living room but it's APT which i'm only staying temporarily. Once I get a permanent place this baby is going on the wall.

A few things i noticed, which I dont' know if i'm just payinginto too many details but when I was standing in the back of the tv, I heard this low buzz sound. I don't know if it's something I shoudl be worried about it. I can only hear it when i'm standing behind it and I have to be at least foot away from the tv. May be i'm just over-reacting.

Currently watching 'saving private ryan' on it as to test out how it really looks. So far so good but definietly need to improve my dvd player (which I'm usying ps2 right now) and its connection cable. I'm planning on going with composite cables rather than HDMI. Also need to upgrade my sound system. Any suggestion would be welcome.

One more, is there recommended setting for brightness and contrast? As I'm watching this movie, I notice some of the bright scenes are wayyyy too bright. Anyways, I thought I share my first impression of this great TV.

yunginTL

why would u go composite over HDMI? at least switch to component

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

If you're going to use composite cables you may as well just return the TV and buy a $299 CRT TV from Wal-Mart.

As for the buzzing sound, we have the 42" Sammy plasma and it makes that noise as well. Seems to be the standard plasma noise b/c my neighbor's Panasonic does it as well....

fdl

Turn your brightness down for the first 100 hours as the TV burns in. I actually keep many of my settings at or below zero, as I think this is where things look the most natural. But of course the settings will depend on the make and model.

running a dvd of a Ps2 isnt going to look all that great. Get yourself an HDTV box and/or an upconverting DVD player.

yunginTL

does a dvd upconverter really make a difference? is it just in the fact that the output is thru HDMI that it looks better? because if thats the case, when u have a regular dvd player hooked up to teh TV, shouldn't the TV upconvert the signal?

baboya96

My mistake, I meant to say component cables (red, green and blue i think)... I don't know the clear difference between component and HDMI, most TV's that I've seen at CC or Bestbuy were connected thru component and they seemed awfully clear to me. May be I'll get both sets and see if there's clear difference between them in picture quality and hopefully that'll justify the cost difference in cables too.

As far as DVD player goes, do you recommend that I just invest my money on surround sound system with built-in DVD player?? Sometimes these even come with more than single disc which isn't really any benefit to me. I'm just concerned the one in sound system would not really have all the capabilities you would find in single-disc DVD player.

I would like to keep it in Samsung brand. Know anything that you can recommend?

2001AudiS4

I'd say never get those all in one systems with the built in dvd player. Do you want to keep it samsung just to use one remote? Or is it just a thing you have about matching everything (I know some people just like it that way).

yunginTL

if your lookin because u want to match the samsung hq70 i believe is a dvd all in one, and its an upconverter, personally i would never go with an all in one because if u want to upgrade later on or change speakers it sux, a seperate reciever will always give u a better sound and more options for inputs....all in ones are too limited

baboya96

Actually it's both. Having tv, dvd, sound system and cable box... i mean that's alot of remotes so being able to use one remote for it all would be ideal. Plus some of these players from Samsung somewhat do match the look of my TV.

yunginTL

ur solution is the logitech harmony remotes...

suXor

I am not convinced yet. You can't increase the resolution beyond it's encoding. If it's 480P on the DVD, that is the best you are going to get. However, by going out over a digital connection, perhaps it is better since there is no conversion to analog @ the DVD player?

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

I'm not convinced on upconverting players either and will probably get one. There are some out there which will actually make the DVD look worse b/c of the way the DVD player works with the TV (and both are trying to convert).

Most TVs up convert an input signal to their native resolution anyway, so for me a standard DVD player with my TV doing the upconvert to 720p works fine until I get a BluRay and/or HD-DVD.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

FYI, I have both a Sammy plasma (42") and Sammy DLP (50"), and with both of them you could definitely see a different with the HDMI over component cables. The plasma actually showed more improvement then the DLP did with the switch.

And before you think that I just noticed it b/c I'm anal like that... even my wife noticed the difference when we did the switch. I didn't tell her which was which... I just switched between them and asked her which looked better, and the one she said looked best was HDMI on both TVs.

Plus, for the cost of the HDMI cable ($17) it's almost as cheap as component cables anyway. Monoprice.com for cables for the win...

yunginTL

interesting so its just more marketing

baboya96

well if you got $100+ to spend on remotes, please share....
as for me that's just extra money that I don't want to spend... remember I still gotta make payments on this tv. But I know what you are saying. It does solve all those problems IF I go with different brands for every elecctronics I got.

baboya96

Well honestly, I'm not really convinced that cheaper (cost-wise) HDMI cables would perform just as well with more expensive cables. Since the price range of these cables vary SO MUCH (low $10 to even over $100), I have to assume there HAS TO BE somewhat of difference in quality. I admit part of it has to be the name-brand such as monster cable ...etc but then again I read some reviews online that ppl spend lot of money on TV's but try to go cheap on cables resulting bad picture quality.

Unless someone can really prove that different in price doesn't do damn thing when it comes to cables, I have to say i'll be a sucker and get me one of those $100 cables just to be on the safe side.

SiGGy

I think you missed some major things , I know it's a day late and a dollar short. But I'll tell ya anyway... someone else might read this thread.

The 1080p DLP has 2x the resolution of the Plasma. I.E 2x the quality. It's a big difference not a small one if you have HD equipment. If you only plan on watching only DVD, than buying a HD plasma was a waste of $$. You should have spent less and gotten a EDTV plasma.

In regards to the bulb replacement in the DLP...

Sure you have to replace the bulb in a DLP, but really it's good you can replace it. Why? Plasma's SLOWLY dim over time, sure you can get 20,000 hours out of one. But have you ever looked at a brightness over time graph for a plasma? They look real dark and like shit after 3 years of good use.

When you replace the bulb on the DLP your set is basically brand new again...

p.s.

LCoS > DLP

I wouldn't buy a DLP set myself, unless it was a 3 panel DLP. And it was a true 1080P DLP, not a wobulation set.

yunginTL

how do u know if its a wobulation set? and what does that mean exactly...

yunginTL

$100+ isn too bad in the pocket considering how much more its gonna make ur life easierr...this way u can get the best of all components and have it all workin on one remote rather than bein restricted with components due to u stickin to the same brand, which is pretty ignorant...

SiGGy

You have a lot to learn still. I'm not being an asshole, but there is basically no difference in the cables unless your talking the super cheap ones. Especially for a digital connection.

Digital is Digital is Digital, if you do drop any information on a DVI/DHMI cable it's VERY noticeable! I.E. like you cannot see large parts of the screen, or you will get NO video at all. Digital is either yes or no, there is no maybe.

Now analog cables you do have to get a decent cable, but you do NOT have to waste your $$ on monster cable. They just need to be the proper spec cables, i.e. correct connectors and correct impedance (measure of resistance, OHM).

Proof? Easy... ALL Dell/HP/Apple monitors ALL come with $10 DVI/DHMI cables. When is the last time you heard someone complain they were having digital dropouts from their cheap OEM monitor cable? And ALL OF THEM display resolutions HIGHER than high definition on a cheap cable. And they have higher frame rates... so they are stressing the cable even more than a HD TV would.

Not to stereotype but you are a Bestbuy customer...

fdl

That may be true for older plasma's, but the latest generation plasmas are rated at 60,000 hours to HALF brightness. I.E. Unless you plan to own the set for 50 years, you arent going to notice any sort of dimming.

Also, regarding 1080P, unless you have a big set (50 inches plus) the difference is negligable IMO.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Wow, you really need to do some research.

As Siggy said, a cable is a cable, especially a digital cable. This is pretty much the case here as well. On one of the more highly regarded AV forums, several of the senior members/admins disected a bunch of cables from Monster and several of the websites who offer lower cost solutions (monoprice.com was included in this comparison). Not only were the less expensive cables just as good as Monster, but some appeared to be better constructed. They opened all of them and the internals were identicle. The one that they said appeared slightly better was the monoprice.com cable with the net jacket (they offer cables with and without said jacket, but I always buy with). They also ran PQ tests and all of the HDMI cables were equal. From the cheapest to the most expensive Monster cable.

So yes, if you go out and spend $100 on an HDMI cable you are not only a sucker, but you are buying into the marketing hype that is Monster. There are forums full of AV nuts, people who spend 10's of thousands of dollars on equipment running $20 HDMI cables b/c they know what the deal is and have done their research.

Honestly, if it's good enough for them, it's more then enough for me. I have 3 TVs hooked up using cables from monoprice.com, and on the main TV (the DLP) the monoprice.com cable replaced the Monster cable, and no one even realized I did the swap b/c the PQ is exactly the same (except I saved over $100).

Then you can take that money saved and buy a nice universal remote since buying components of the same brand simply to have everything match is a horrible idea...

.

SiGGy

DLP is the Kia of TV technology. Sure it works, but it pulls some tricks to make it work. And adding a color wheel on top of it just makes matters worse.

Do you know how DLP works 1st off? You do know that it is a chip with literally 1 MILLION tiny mirrors on it that rotate back and forth to produce a picture?

If your saying HUH? picture this. Have you ever been in a room with direct sunlight coming in and it just happens to hit your watch and refelct a tiny spot you can control around the room? OK, picture that your watch represents one pixel of an image, and the sun is the DLP's projector bulb.

Now on the DLP your watch would equal one tiny mirror on the chip (there are literally 1 million tiny mirrors). The DLP chip can make the mirror basically do one of two things. Reflect the mirror towards the projection screen creating a small dot to appear, or reflect it away from the screen to a dark light absorbing material making the dot disappear. Now that gives you full on and full off brightness. In order to simulate different shades of brightness the mirror will oscillate on and off rapidly making the dot appear more of less bright depending on how you oscillate it. All of the mirrors do this all at the same time! Think about how many different levels of brightness there are for each pixel in a picture!

That's for a RAW black and white picture, now we need to add color in!

So you need to add in the color wheel. DLPs DO NOT produce true color, they fool your eyes into seeing color. They project the image in layers, one after another. Lets pretend we are working with 3 colors on the color wheel. RED, GREEN, BLUE. (real color wheels have more colors because of the color inaccuracy they had to add them in to get proper color tones) Normally you can create any color with the 3 primary colors (red, green, blue)

So it would work something like this...

1st cycle the DLP chip will synchronize all of the mirrors to oscillate each pixel for it's correct brightness for RED and ONLY red. The color wheel has the RED filament in front of the projector/DLP chip now. So only a RED picture is on the screen. Picture looking through only the RED side of the old school 3d glasses, that is what the screen looks like at this exact moment.

2nd Cycle is the same thing as above but for blue. The color wheel turned and is now on the blue filament and now only a blue picture is on the screen.

3rd is for green...

Now this stuff happens fast! So right before your eyes 3 different pictures were cycled to make up one frame. One red, one blue and one green. Never were they all on the screen at the same time. It happens quick enough that your brain blends the 3 images together and creates one color image! Now this is only one frame I am talking about, movies are 24FPS, Broadcast TV is basically 30FPS. Yes, this has to happen 24 to 30 times a second.

Lets work with DVD. at 24 FPS (frames per second).. (although this isn't really accurate, almost all DLP TV(s) convert the video to 60FPS internally I'm not going to get into that)

So... for only a 3 color, color wheel... each color has to be shown 24 times in a second.

So in one second the DLP chip has to prepare itself 24 times for RED, 24 TIMES for Green and 24 times for blue. And don't forget those mirrors have to vibrate (oscillate) to create different shades for each cycle of color!

So figure that DLP chip has really drawn 24*3=72 frames for 24 frames of video i.e. one second of video. And god only knows how many times those mirrors have vibrated to create different brightness levels for each color pass.

All of this is going on when your watching TV!


Ok, now you sorta know how DLP works.


Current DLP Texas Instruments version 3 dark chip can only display a true resolution of 1280x720p of TRUE resolution. i.e. A matrix of 1280 mirrors wide, by 720 mirrors down.

1080p is 1920x1080! That chip I just mentioned falls seriously short of delivering this resolution.

In order to make a 720p DLP chip simulate 1080p they (wobulate ) make the entire chip change angles to draw the missing pixels! In essence making the entire DLP chip move slightly to the side, essentially creating double the resolution. Again it does this VERY fast. So not only is ALL of what I described above going on, but it is also shifting the entire chip to reuse the DLP chip to create double the pixels. So now it has to do everything I described above at 2x speed...


An easy way to mentally picture wobulation is, for the 1st half of one frame they AIM the DLP chip at the left left of the screen. Then for the next half they wobulate the DLP chip to make it aim at the right half of the screen.

In reality is happens a bit different, but that's the best way I can describe it without illustrations.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

^ Sweet info!! BTW, I'd call them more the Hyundai of TV. Kia is too much of an insult

SiGGy

That is with the TV set to a low brightness level when running for the 60k hours. A plasma set to high brightness will deteriorate faster, much faster. And high brightness is the default settings on most plasmas.

Didn't he buy a 50"?

And really it depends on your viewing distance and source material as well...even a 65" 1080P TV at 18' will not appear any better than a 720P 65" at 18'.

IlliNorge

What is LCoS?

Definitely go with HDMI or DVI. The cable quality does not matter. Like has been said before, the digital signal is all or nothing. This cable should not run you more than $20.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

This is true. You can test this at any store. The real difference is visable when your viewing distance is about 10-13' or so. I typically compare TVs at the same distance I view them (we are about 12') to get an accurate idea of what the difference between certain sets would be...

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Liquid Crystal on Silicone...

http://www.projectorcentral.com/lcos.htm

I believe Toshiba makes an LCoS set which is something I have been eyeing for a while. When the time comes to pull the trigger I'll do a real comparo between the Mistu, Sammy and Toshiba sets and decide which way to go...

.

SiGGy

hahah!

SiGGy

Don't forget JVC and Sony for LCoS (HD-ILA and SXRD). Honestly JVC is top dog right now for RPTV IMO. With they latest 1080P sets just released on September I'm almost tempted to get one! I keep drooling over them. My 65" is only 4 years old though.

IlliNorge

Thanks. Seems like LCos has a limited contrast compared to DLP, but that makes sense because the light has to be passed through the liquid. The biggest disadvantage to my owning a DLP is that it is 2 years old and with so many moving parts, vulnerable to breaking down. I would liken this to owning an Audi after 2 years and getting electrical problems.

IlliNorge

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't all HD signal today less than 1080p? In a week I'm going to get my signal from the mpeg4 sats from DirecTV. Is there going to be a noticeable difference on my 42" DLP?

SiGGy

Latest LCoS by JVC has 10000:1 contrast ratio.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Yes, HDTV is either 720p or 1080i. The only devices right now that will support 1080p are BluRay, HD-DVD, and the PS3...

SiGGy

Your correct for broadcast signals, they are 1080i or 720p.

HD-DVD and Blueray can display a 1080P signal. And soon the PS3.

The main advantage of a 1080P TV is when sending a 1080i signal to it. The TV is capable of displaying all of the information in the 1080i signal.

Prior to 1080P TV(s) existing you could only view 1/2 of information in a 1080i signal on a 720p TV. Basically until late 2005 early 2006 you couldn't watch full 1080i HD unless you shelled out the cash for a *true* 1080i TV, very very $$. And there wasn't very many models. Basically the introduction of the 1080P TV was the moment HD moved out of it's infancy, full HD resolution was finally at consumer levels.

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

Yeah, JVC is on the list, but only after I see the new sets. Both my parents and neighbors have a JVC HD-ILA set (52") and my Sammy blows them out of the water. That's on the 720p/1080i set though. I need to see what JVC's new 1080p sets look like. I haven't completely ruled JVC out, just need to see the new stuff. As for Sony, not a huge fan. My bad experience with their 60" LCD set left a bad taste in my mouth, however, the SXRD set is nice, but I'm waiting to see what the SXRD2 sets have in store.