Thinking about a shiny new plasma HDTV? Sure, they seem cool enough, hanging attractively 6' or more off the showroom floor or suspended on risky-looking yardarms behind network news anchors.
But after you've spent some time in front of this overachieving CRT-based rear-projector from Samsung, you may find yourself considering the wisdom of investing in plasma at this stage in the game. That's because Samsung has generously taken the wide 16:9 aspect ratio and 42-inch screen size of a 'typical' plasma screen and put it into an attractive, affordable package based on enduring, mature CRT technology. What's more, this plasma-killer parks its gorgeous picture right where it belongs for comfortable seated viewing. If you can spare only a few extra inches of depth and floor space versus a current generation plasma screen, read on and find out why I think this TV should be on your list of TVs to look at.
You might have a hard time initially picking this Samsung from others that approximate its size, shape and dark color scheme. But if you give more than a passing glance to the picture it's putting out you'll be drawn to it. It seems... sharper. More detailed. It may not be obvious at first (the manual almost grudgingly makes mention), but this Samsung is doing some magic with the standard video image it's being fed in the store - or your living room. Specifically, it is scan converting the interlaced signal - from a VCR, broadcast (standard definition) TV or DVD player - up to the much higher resolution and non-interlaced HDTV display format of 720p (720 lines progressive scan). What this means for you is: every non-HDTV source component in your system will get the 720p upgrade treatment! Video games, video cassettes, your cable feed. What if you've got a 1080i HDTV source, you ask? The Samsung will display this ultra-high resolution interlaced signal just as easily.
Not only is the picture detailed, sharp, and contrasty, this TV has a wide video signal to noise ratio as evident in its accuracy in portraying color and brightness data contained in your source material. Watching the DVD of Behind Enemy Lines for instance, I noticed an extremely realistic color and brightness range and balance as well as exquisite image detail. Also I noticed for the first time how the lighting changed very minutely from shot to shot within even the same scene. On other DVDs as well, I found that some scenes were not consistently lit and/or that minor lighting changes were made apparent - in every case the TV accurately relayed what was going on in the source material. Running through the THX video test screens on the Shanghai Knights DVD, I found that this TV can be easily adjusted to reference levels and that it had a wide envelope of adjustment that exceeded what most any viewer would consider desirable for each parameter - brightness, contrast, color, tint, color temp, sharpness.
What's more, while the auto-convergence works relatively quickly and precisely, there is an excellent multi-point manual convergence (Red & Blue indendently adjustable) feature which allows you to dial in the perfect settings using the remote control. For example, viewing the DVD of The Four Feathers after completing manual convergence for the first time, I was happily surprised at the degree to which the image "popped" in this often dramatically backlit and vividly colorful film. This TV will take component, S-video, composite and F-type (cable/antenna) inputs and I got very good color with S-video cable fed from Sony, Toshiba and Pioneer DVD players. Switching to custom 1.5m Canare LV-61 component video cables, I got better color definition especially in the red and orange range, and I found that adjusting the color, brightness and contrast levels DOWN yielded the optimal picture. Many TVs and computer monitors on the market need to be set almost to MAX on color, brightness and contrast to approach a reference picture. This was simply not the case with the Samsung, a pleasant surprise.
The Samsung offers other niceties such as PIP, above average built-in speakers, an easy-access input complement on the right front side and a nice full-featured remote which can control multiple brands of source components. The remote easily toggles the selectable aspect ratios ('4:3' standard - displaying gray sidebars, 'wide' 16:9 aspect ratio and the 'zoom' settings 'DVD', 'Zoom' and 'Cinema'. The 'DVD' setting should not be mistaken for the 16:9 setting (a little confusing here, Samsung) - 'DVD' does allow you to shift the letterbox edges up or down using the remote which is a nice touch. This will help you prevent screen burn-in from watching hundreds of letterboxed DVDs, or just put the image a tad higher or lower on the screen according to your preference.
Physically, this Samsung looks from the front like a plasma TV sitting on a matching stand. Only when you approach it will you notice the sharply sloping rear/top which houses the optical system at its heart. Three 7-inch CRTs (cathode ray tubes) provide the Red, Green and Blue color components of the image. A little bit of math shows that only a little magnification and/or manipulation of the image is required to yield the 42-inch (diagonal) screen size. Samsung's newer models feature a tiny DLP micromirror array to do much the same job, but much greater magnification is necessary for the resultant 43" screen size of the DLP projector TVs. I'll leave it for you to decide which has the better picture but I can say the CRT is a proven, mature and rather durable technology, and it's also more affordable. This TV weighs only a scant (for screen size) 120 or so pounds, but the new DLP Samsung's are about only half as much as that! Amazing.
One criticism of this TV was that the best image quality was only viewable in the area afront the TV and at a distance of at least a couple feet. Outside that envelope the brightness drops off noticeably. A basic knowledge of optics will show that it just is not possible to get a projection TV as shallow as this Samsung and have an ultra-wide viewing angle. The optics in a TV must follow the rules of physics... getting such good picture geometry, brightness and contrast out of such a compact system is not easy and Samsung has done a very commendable job here. Nonetheless, if you have a large group to seat all around the front of the TV or you like to watch TV from the sides of the room, you may not be best served by this model. I can't criticize this TV for much more, other than the built-in stand (actually it houses portions of the TV's internal systems and is not physically separate from the rest of the unit) would be even better if it could stow a VCR or DVD player. This is the case in the larger screen size models in this series but the 42" doesn't offer the user any place to put a source component as the top is too shallow. Components will have to go to the right or left of the TV in most cases (cable connections are the right side of the TV when viewed from the front). No big deal here. One final criticism involves the display of DVD subtitles. Most subtitles exhibited a minor case of the jaggies (text edges were not smooth, had some pixelation). Everything was legible, however.
This Samsung offers a lot of bang for the buck as I have seen it at big box stores (like Costco) for around $1000 (July 2003; the model was discontinued some time ago). You can have much of the benefit of a shiny new plasma TV while giving up only a little space and only a fraction of the cash.
