Engadget HD Review: LN-T4671F 120Hz HDTV

We simply love to see how a lot better HDTVs are every year. Half the fun is the when two applied sciences go head to head, — particularly when they do not require us to take sides just to get pleasure from out favorite motion pictures — and the one battle older than LCD vs plasma in the world of HD, is 720p vs 1080i; and thanks to developments in expertise the battle adjustments fronts yearly. This year, the large buzz in LCDs that is speculated to shake up plasma is 120Hz. With this newest addition to the LCD feature set, it makes the movement smoother and compatible with 24p. Samsung’s newest LCD is on the record of LCDs sportin’ this function and we had an opportunity to put it through the paces.Lets begin out by clearing one thing up, we love HDTVs but we’re not certified by the Image Science Foundation and we do not own big money tools to test them. So whereas we do our best to run TVs through the ringer, if you are looking for hard stats and figures, you’re not wanting in the proper place. What you can anticipate is a assessment of the overall product and any obvious imperfections in the image.

HardwareOne look at this set and it’s no surprise that Samsung is primary on the earth of HDTVs. Sure it’s the image that actually counts, but everyone knows that the external appearance will be just as important. The LN-T4671F would not disappoint, it has a nice glossy piano black body and a classy badge. The frame is little huge, however it’s obviously aesthetics, as the skin edge is clear on every facet. The base comes pre-installed which saves you time on the preliminary setup and the audio system go unnoticed — in more ways than one. The touch sensitive energy swap is a pleasant contact, but you in all probability will not use it a lot — assuming you will discover it. Like most Samsung TVs, it plays a bit tune whenever you power it on and off, we’re very pleased that Samsung permits you to turn it off, as it’s only cute the first few occasions. The opposite factor that’s cool at first is the blue light, and again you may configure when it is on (by no means/standby/on) using the sunshine Effect possibility below setup.

Three HDMI inputs are pretty normal these days and we actually respect the HDMI port on the side, however we’d really wish to have more. Samsung is betting you do not many older units as properly, because the set solely consists of two element and one composite/S-Video input. Overall we’re pleased with the array of inputs, however would really like to see an RS-232 port for residence automation programs and coaxial digital out. We notice that people do not use it a lot, however we would’ve liked to have seen a CableCARD slot, possibly when OCAP is on the market they’ll add it. The distant is a typical issued Samsung and for the most part we prefer it, but what’s up with the fact that only a few buttons gentle up whenever you allow the backlight?

UsabilityWe loved having this Tv in our labs and found the menus simple to navigate and features straightforward to entry. The info pane is actually nice and we had been blissful to have detailed info about the signal the Tv was receiving — like 1080p24 and many others. Also, we didn’t have any problems with HDMI hand-shaking between all the sources we tried. The audio labored via HDMI as did the HDMI-CEC control protocol (Anynet). While the HDMI-CEC did work, it wasn’t improbable, we felt like many of the functionality wasn’t easily accessible — nevertheless it was nice when our Blu-ray player turned on routinely once we switched to that enter.

There are two RF cable inputs, one for antenna and one for cable, which is sensible; the tuner simply found all of our OTA HD channels in addition to QAM. The QAM scan took a very long time, however we actually appreciated the truth that it mechanically eradicating the scrambled channels from the lineup.

The opposite cool thing is that on just a few channels — not sure why it isn’t all — it was truly ready to acknowledge the channels and the current present.

The picture modes were nice and like most 1080p TVs it supports 1:1 pixel mapping. The menus are good, however we found the edit channel record very cumbersome. While we’re speaking about issues we don’t like, man this remote really needs to be pointed at the bottom right of the Tv, — even if you’re a few toes from it — perhaps we need to verify the batteries. And like most HDTVs in the present day the PIP is nearly useless since you’ll be able to solely use it with the interior tuner, fairly than with a element or HDMI source.

Picture and sound qualityWe may be too accustomed to having a full surround sound system, but man the inbuilt audio system sound like tin can box cans, but who cares as long as you can’t see ’em right? As for the image quality, it does not disappoint and while we didn’t run any excessive tech diagnostic utilities, this set easily handled the entire tests on the HQV Blu-ray disc.

One among the largest attracts to 120Hz is to avoid 3:2 pull down which is nice for 24p. We related a Samsung BD-P1200 by way of HDMI and have been able to get pleasure from a movie at it’s unique frame charge. We’ll tell you one factor, this set is vivid! It has no issues with whites and the dynamic setting out of the field is like staring right into a flash mild. Once we discovered the movie setting things got higher, however to our eye the contrast and colours weren’t on par with our reference HDTV (PDP-6010FD) — but we’d be surprised if anyone complained about the general image quality. Since we are here to complain, there have been a couple of difficulty. The most annoying was what is sometimes called the triple soccer have an effect on. Here is more about tin can (visit this hyperlink) check out the website. Basically, when you are watching football and the QB throws the long bomb, you see three footballs as an alternative of one. We didn’t seen it during any other programming, but in the event you watch soccer as a lot as we do, it may be a problem. The opposite subject is that the LCD backlight is not even; you actually only discover it when your entire display goes black — like right before a industrial break — however it might probably nonetheless be annoying.

Bottom line

Pros: construct high quality, image quality and total rock stable usability.

Cons: Price, triple soccer effect, and uneven back gentle.

We really like this Tv and want we did not should return it; it isn’t perfect, however what Tv is? But, at ~$3000 we would be hard pressed to pay the premium.

**Update** Samsung knowledgeable us that this was really a pre-manufacturing mannequin and that it would differ from the production version.