Give your TV a new home from IKEA
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 92 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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26 out of 28 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Finally an LCD with a uniform background"
Pros: No bands or clouds. Excellent blacklevel.
Cons: Somewhat noisy picture at times. Inconsistent brightness control.
Summary: I owned the Sharp LC-46D62U for 5 months before returning it to Sharp because of horizontal bands. I loved the picture quality otherwise, but the non-uniform background was too much to deal with and all replacements sent by Sharp had the same issue, along with the D92 series.
The Sony XBR LCDs, while loved by CNET, have myriad issues with mura-effects and crush blacks. So do the older Samsung models.
The good news is that Samsung has hit a home run with this new "T" series. The background is completely uniform with no bands or clouds. The black levels are as good as plasmas, with nice detail and no crush. The "T" series boasts 3 HDMI 1.3 inputs and lots of tweaks available from the main menu. The out of the box settings are horrid, so do not judge this TV by what you see in the store - in fact, the TV has a "shop" mode, which is scorchingly bright.
Be aware that the 65 unit has the higher contrast ratio than the 61, but has clear glass as opposed to a matte finish. This means that if you have a lot of ambient light in your room, you may want to consider the 61. The 65 has a decidedly plasma-like look to it due to its glossy panel and high contrast.
Some early purchasers on AVS did notice some very faint "clouds", which disappeared after a few hours of use and did not come back. You will also want to set the HDMI black level to "low".
Compared to the Sharp, I find motion handling on this set identical even though the Sharp's spec says 4 - 6ms. One negative, albeit slight, is that the 4665F seems to be a bit fuzzier with respect to picture quality on 720p. I also don't like the brightness control. The scale is from 0 - 100, with 50 being the default, which is just about near optimal - I have mine set at 45. If you go above 65, you will notice how the left and right sides of the screen brighten much faster than the middle until you get to 100, when the screen is uniformly bright. Using the gamma control seems to work on the middle part of the screen. It's kind of odd why the brightness works this way but I seriously doubt anyone would want the brightness at even 60, let alone above 65.
All in all, it's a great LCD - probably the best on the market right now.Updated
There is an issue with this TV dropping HDMI connections with the PS3. I do not own a PS3 but if you do, checking out the AVS threads will give some insight into the problem.
Something I alluded to before is the the out of the box settings. This TV is somewhat tricky to calibrate, though if care is taken, it produces excellent gray scale. It is very easy to get significant black crush, so good calibration is a must.
Clean HD is stunning - almost 3D. I thought it was great on my Sharp 62U, but this set is even better. However, this set struggles with lesser quality content such as SD or overly compressed HD, which manifests itself as reddish "noise" on certain areas of the picture. I never see it on DiscoveryHD or HDNET but occasionally on HBOH or TNTH or poor quality DVDs.
Skin tones are excellent, with none of the dreaded Sharp red-push.
This TV will NOT accept 480i over HDMI. According to Samsung, 480i is is not supported with HDMI, though many manufacturers, including Sharp, will accept it.
I am still very, very pleased with this TV.
- 3 replies to this review
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The PS3 HDMI issues have been identified by Sony and corrected through firmware updates. Initially I had the same connectivity problems...the upgrades have all but made them disappear.
The 42" Sharp you refer to is actually an AUO LCD panel. In order for Sharp to hit the initial $1999 retail on the 42D62U 1080p panel, they could not use their 8th generation LCD glass (too expensive)...they had to go to a 3rd party LCD supplier to get the cost down (and quality, unfortunately), called AUO.
Samsung tech is correct, HDMI at 480i is NOT an official HDMI spec. Just an FYI, the Sharp 42D62U will not support 1080p @ 30hz or 1080p @ 24hz through HDMI or Component Video. These are 2 pretty important frame rates as we go into the future of Video. -
I just ordered this TV and was wondering if you had any tips on how to setup the color calibration?
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im going to get the 61 series due to a little less width, but what do you mean by ambient light?
Samsung LN-T4665F:
