jump to navigation

Samsung 32″ Series 6 LED LCD TV December 28, 2009

Posted by kewlhunter in LED LCD TV, LED TV, Samsung, TV, Technology, Television, Video, cool, kewl, tech.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
trackback


Samsung 32″ Series 6 LED LCD TV

Amazon.com Buy Samsung 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV

Well my old TEAC CRT TV was giving up the ghost. It took about 20 attempts to get it turned on and then you couldn’t change channels for at least 2 minutes or it would shut down again. Clearly it was time for a new TV. I decided that due to space I have and the distance I sit I couldn’t go bigger than a 32″. Unfortunately most brands only have their better technology in 40″ and above. This is a real pity as I am very fussy about picture quality, having sold TVs for over 15 years, I was quite happy to pay for a decent picture.

A little interweb research and I realised it was down to 3 brands. Panasonic, Sony and Samsung. Then I re-entered the real world and used my eyes, and it was down to one. The Samsung 32-Inch 1080p LED HDTV. All the others were traditional LCDs and only the Samsung featured LED back-lighting technology. This has a huge impact on not only colour depth but also how deep the blacks are. This is an area traditional LCDs have performed poorly in.

Traditional LCDs use single florescent light to back-light the screen. The problem with this is the Liquid Crystals used to create the picture, don’t fully block the light when the screen tries to display black. LED back-lighting  has lots of LEDs fitted to the edge of the screen and these can be switched off completely, resulting in much deeper blacks. It also improves the colour gamut, meaning it has a wider range of deeper more natural colours.

Another issue with traditional LCDs is ghosting or motion blur on fast moving scenes, like sports or action. The Samsung is a 100 Hz model(120HZ in US), which means it displays twice as many still frames as a standard screen. I have seen traditional LCDs with 100Hz processing and they still suffered motion blur, but the Samsung hasn’t exhibited any ill effects when watching sport or fast moving action. I am not sure if this is partially due to the LED back-lighting or whether the processing has improved.

When I first turned on the Samsung and got it tuned, I wasn’t happy with the picture, so I spent a few hours playing with it, till I was happy. My method has always been to turn the colour down, and adjusting the picture till it looks great in black and white, and then bring the colour back up. Then I changed the channel and played some more, until no matter what I watched, it looked great.

That night David Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood was on in HD and it looked stunning. I really only watched to see how the TV performed, needless to say I was extremely happy with my choice of the Samsung. The Samsung is the thinnest 32″ TV made at this point and although that’s kewl, it didn’t really impact on my choice. It uses a lot less power than CRT, traditional LCD or plasma which is great and I’m glad but for me its all about the picture.

The Samsung has 4 HDMI inputs which should be enough for the immediate future and probably longer. It also has most other standard inputs. I would have liked an SD card slot, as my HD Video camera uses them and I could just slide card into to check what I have shot. It does have USB input but doubt I’ll use that. It isn’t DLNA compliant, which isn’t a big deal but would have been nice at price, but a games console gets round that limitation anyway.

I rate this product 9.5 out of 10.

Here is a link to the US version of the TV on Amazon.com if you are interested in buying it
Samsung UN32B6000 32-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTV

Here is a link to Life in cold blood on Amazon.com if you are interested  in buying it
Life in Cold Blood


Comments»

No comments yet — be the first.