Summary: I had been following LCD technology for some time and consider it to be the best long term going-forward video display technology. The technology has matured to the point where the price point is falling in relation to size and resolution improvement, so I decided to buy one.
I focused on the 32 inch HDTV format as the size to fit my viewing room. I had intended to buy something less expensive, say from Walmart, but first did some viewing at places like Circuit City, Best Buy and Tweeter. Unfortunately, the consumer market is not "tuned" to the picture quality issue yet, and I found it very difficult to compare one set to another and concluded that the low ticket sets would be impossible to compare as there seemed to be no "venue" where you could view them.
Thus I used CNET as a starting point to bring up information on the major players, SONY, SHARP, SAMSUNG, PANASONIC, HP, and Dell. Of these, I narrowed the competition based on my price objective to SHARP, SAMSUNG, PANASONIC, and HP. (Dell was ruled out because they have no demo sets in my area to look at. SONY was ruled out on price.)
The HP TV (LC3200N) is demoed in my area only at COMPUSA. Unfortunately, they had the set hooked up to some black box that was providing the digital signals and a life like but computer generated picture. I asked to see it display a real HDTV signal on cable, but the salesperson was not able to do that.
The SAMSUNG (LN 329D)and Panasonic (TC-32LX50) were displayed next to each other at Best Buy and as far as I could tell the picture quality was very good and essentially equal in terms of resolution and color match. Unfortunately, the salepeople are not very familiar with the equipment, and seemed only to be able to select the program content, e.g. HDTV or a standard Digital TV signal. I wanted to see how the set color balance could be adjusted and as that is important for my use.
I looked at the Sharp LC-32DA5U (no ATSC tuner) and wanted to see the LC-32DA4U (with ATSC tuner) but could not find a demo unit in my area.
For whatever reason, most of the LCD TVs are HDTV ready, which means they can accept HDTV signals but cannot tune them. At the same time these sets have the old analog NTSC tuner. So you need to buy an HDTV tuner box and add it to your system adding to your total price and overall system complexity.
I concluded that it would make more sense to have an HDTV that has an integrated HDTV (ATSC) tuner so with my price objective, this limited the competition to the Samsung, HP and Sharp units. Since I could not see a Sharp with the ATSC tuner, I eliminated it as well. And since I could not view real HDTV program material on the HP set (at COMPUSA, because they did not know how to do it), I ruled out HP.
Based on picture quality, I was confident that the Samsung would perform to my expectations so that is the set I ordered.
The set was easy to hookup and get running. I am not a big fan of cable TV for reasons I don't want to get into right now. My intent was to use this TV for receiving over the air broadcasts and for DVD media using the HDMI interface.
I can recieve about 10 different analog broadcast TV stations using a RECOTRON amplified in room rabbit ears and loop antenna. As expected, when I tuned in these local NTSC stations I got analog quality signals with some ghosting present. The Samsung did a good job of "ehanching" these signals. I figured that I would need to buy one of those special (e.g. Turk) HDTV antennas and install it on a mast in order to get HDTV programs over the air.
Just for fun, I looked up the channel numbers for the HDTV air wave signals being broadcast in my area and tuned them in. What a surprise, my simple rabbit ears and loop antenna worked good enough to bring in the HDTV signals and the SAMSUNG ATSC tuned them in without a hitch. I was really amazed that it would be this simple and I didn't have to do anything special like subscribe to cable or satellite TV, or install an external HTDV antenna.
I don't know how the other TVs with HDTV tuners work, but the SAMSUNG can smell the tuned channel. If it is analog, then it uses the NTSC tuner. If it is digital, then it uses the ATSC tuner and you get a digital picture, either in standard digital format, or HDTV format.
In addition, if it is digital, it reads the program information for the channel. It can tell you the station ID, whehter the signal is HDTV or DTV etc. etc. Also, it can tell you what programs (and time) the broadcast station is going to display that day. It is similar to the idea of the on-tv display of TV-Guide. The Samsung remembers the stations you have tuned in. So you can bring up this guide feature and see what's on tap for all of the digital stations. In effect, you get a good idea of the local programming and you don't need to go to the newspaper or TV-guide magazine. For a given program, say the Tonight Show, the on-line guide can even give you a synopsis of the show, e.g. who are the guests appearing with Jay Leno that night.
The Samsung has a picture enhancement feature called DNEi. You can put the TV in a demo mode where one half is using DNEi and the other half is not. The enhancement feature improves the contrast of the picture and I use it in the DNEi on mode.
I have found that most people seem to like TVs with the picture color oversaturated. On screen, people look like they have just some out of the sun and the colors are super bright. A golf course looks like someone overdosed it with fertilizer. The default on the SAMSUNG is this way and the other sets I looked out at the showrooms looked oversaturated as well, but I was able to adjust the color balance and tone it down, so that skin tones look natural. You have the ability to adjust all the primary colors or take certain default modes. Such as normal, movie and the like. I use my own custom setting for most viewing.
I have not yet hooked a DVD system to the set, but I have displayed a VCR signal. The Samsung has two F type channel ports on the back, so you can bring an antenna into one and a cable (or second RF source) into the other. So my old VCR is plugged into the second F port. Admittedly, this is not the best way to handle signals from a quality standpoint, but the SAMSUNG did a better than expected job of displaying the VCR analog signal. So I am hoping that when I supply a high quality DVD signal, the SAMSUNG will perform well. Because the Samsung has a single tuner, it cannot tune more than one RF source, however, it can handle PIP where the second source is native non-RF signal, such as HDMI.
Concerning the audio system. I would imagine that LCD TVs with the speakers on the side would have better audio definition. The sound on this Samsung comes from just below the bottom of the screen. You can pick from the standard types such as stereo, mono and 3D mono. The sound is more localized in my opinion than what you can get with wider speaker separation. My plan is to use my own external speakers driven from the line out audio signals and my own amplifier.
Some people have commmented about the blue ring power light and how it is anoying in a darkened room with the set off (standby mode). I would agree with that, and if I were SAMSUNG, I would have made that blue light less obtrusive. However, for my use, this is not a problem, and one could probably put something in front of the light to block it out.
All in all, I am very satisfied with this Samsung TV. The HDTV presentations are incredible. Better than I had expected.
