Video Asylum

Posted by Joe Blow (A) on December 09, 2002 at 14:23:19

In Reply to: Samsung Tantus 50" DLP Projector, any experiences? posted by Paul in Sterling on November 30, 2002 at 21:38:36:

I just helped my Dad setup the 43" version this weekend. We needed some cables and went to Best Buy. While there I did a quick comparison of HDTV. Hands down, the Samsung DLP was the clearest and sharpest of the projection TVs. Made the other projection sets look like mush in comparison. IMO it is a very nice setup and certainly should be considered.

Downsides IMO?

DLP "rainbow" effect - when you pan your eye's fast across the screen you see artifacts from the color wheel, namely the seperated RGB frames. Not very annoying or generally problematic, but it does happen.

Typical projection TV viewing angle (pretty much limited to a narrow angle infront of the screen or the image darkens)

Forgets screen strech settings (i.e. changing inputs it defaults to "wide" which streches a 4:3 image into 16:9, even if that input was changed to "normal" previously). There may be a way to force it to remember this setting but not that we could find. This is extremely annoying.

Manual seems complete on the surface but lacks all kinds of details. There is for example instructions to pull up the various menus, but there doesn't appear to be anything on what the settings in the menus do.

This is probably a result of the sharpness control being too high, but there was a light background "snow" in the picture. I never played with the controls to see if it could be eliminated as the possible cause didn't occur to me until I left. I noticed this too at the sets on display at Best Buy but just wrote it off as grain from the original film. It isn't though as it is visable even in the black bars on the side of a 4:3 picture.

You will need to periodically replace light bulbs (have no idea of cost)

Screen is acrylic and you are advised not to clean it - just dust with a clean dry cloth. This is not a TV for a house with kids.