LT-P326W 32 Wide HDTV review

The Spider-Man 2 DVD looked good on the Samsung, with plenty of detail and little visible noise. However, the set's color decoding errors quickly became apparent when we compared Peter Parker's face on the Samsung to his face on our reference Sony KD-34XBR960, a direct-view tube TV. On the Samsung, his skin appeared too flush and tan as he faced down his pizza delivery boss, while on the Sony, his skin tone appeared more natural.

The Samsung was able to get slightly darker overall than the Philips 32PF9996 we compared it to, with inkier letterbox bars and deeper shadows. But its shadow detail wasn't quite as good as that of the Philips. As Peter climbs the stairs to his run-down apartment, we could make out the lapels of his jacket on the Philips; on the Samsung, they were lost in shadow. Naturally, the Sony tube delivered superior shadow detail and black levels compared to either LCD.

As expected, HDTV via our DirecTV feed had even better detail and looked more saturated. We watched a little of Sunrise Earth on Discovery HD and noticed immediately that the Samsung did a good job of keeping video noise to a minimum. In one shot of a foggy morning in the Grand Tetons, the Dell W3000 and the Philips 32-inch LCD both introduced significantly more snowy interference in the trees.

The Samsung delivered very good resolution in 1080i mode compared to the Philips; conversely, its 720p picture via component video looked a bit softer. As with most such sets, the Samsung delivered a slightly sharper picture via its digital inputs than via component video. Strangely, however, the DVI input looked even sharper with high-def than did the HDMI input, while the difference between component and HDMI wasn't as great. As a result, we'd recommend using the DVI input for high-def.