HDTV: Getting Information, Part Two

In my own first report I wrote how there is never been a much better time for you to purchase a high-definition (HD) television, and I had only pre-ordered the Samsung HLS-5087W 50 inch rear projection DLP unit. The Samsung was delivered last Thursday and here is a summary of my initial response.

First I would like to give some back ground on finding your way through the new H-d television. I’m a satellite TV prospect and needed to improve my DirecTV equipment to become HD-compatible. So last month I logged on to http://www.directv.com and ordered the HD upgrade offer. For $200 DirecTV arrived on the scene and changed my old satellite dish with a fresh 5-LNB oval H-d dish. The HD offer included the rent of DirecTV’s new H20 HD recipient, and also included adding a new UHF antenna on my top to get other-the-air (OTA) HD local broadcasts. The dish and receiver were required for HD party since DirecTV is sending local HD contacts within the new MPEG-4 compression structure instead of the older MPEG-2 standard. Cable and satellite services will be moving to the new MPEG-4 standard over-time, since H-d material requires a whole lot more bandwidth than standard definition movie and DirecTV is leading the means for now.

I had been now prepared to obtain HD development as soon as Samsung HLS-5087W came with one exception – the digital video/audio signal to be output by an HDMI cable from the H20 to the Samsung. I am a huge believer in investing in top quality cables for analog connections between audio/video elements. But HDMI is a digital interface that transmits a stream of 0’s and 1’s. Therefore either it works or it does not. For a different interpretation, please consider checking out: HDTV: Getting Guide, Part One · Storify. I therefore ordered a $20 HDMI cable on line instead of committing $90 or maybe more to get a Monster cable that I thought would provide exactly the same audio and video quality. One great thing about HDMI is that it provides both video and audio signals (in uncompressed, electronic form) to help you easily decrease the cable litter behind your home theater system.

Now every thing was all set – I just needed the newest Samsung to become sent. I bought the television from Crutchfield, that includes a great reputation for customer support, is an official Samsung o-nline retailer, and provided the television with no tax or shipping charges. The delivery guys brought the tv in to my living-room, took it from the field and put it on my home theater stand. I connected the power cable, changed the TV display sort on the H20 from 4:3 to 16:9, turned on the power, connected the HDMI cable kind the H20 to the Samsung and amazingly the new television only worked, right out of the field!

I was easily in HD nirvana – watching local contacts entirely 1080i and Dolby Digital 5.1, in addition to advanced services such as for example HBOHD and the various HD programs which can be part of DirecTV’s HD package. But how could the 150 DVDs I own (most of which I trade via Peerflix) look around the new HD Samsung? I first had to talk about the menu on my Panasonic DVD recorder/player and stimulate 480p result over the part wires that I linked to the Samsung. Most DVD players sold in the last 3 years can result a modern sign (the ‘r’ in 480p) over portion wires rather than the standard connected picture carried o-n composite and S-video connections. 480p is a large visible development over 480i and you’ll want to be sure you’re watching all you DVDs on the HD tv using 480p.

I chose Shrek while the first DVD to present about the Samsung. Dreamworks did an amazing work with the movement quality of Shrek and thought the DVD could be a good test of the picture quality of a standard description DVD on a HD tv. So just how did it look? One word sums it-up – wonderful! I do not expect I’ll be going out to the movies much anymore – I will only wait for the DVD to come out.

I saw a broadcast of Steve Winwood in Dolby Digital 5.1 and HD on KQED, the local PBS affiliate On Saturday night. Being a massive Steve Winwood fan, and having seen Winwood with this trip at a local venue in 2005, I was eager to see what type of audio/video experience the new HD product could deliver using a local, OTA HD broadcast. Once more, I was just surprised by the picture quality and quickly went to KQED’s web site to see what potential Soundstage broadcasts are scheduled. I’m now eagerly awaiting Garbage’s performance premiering the following month.

There was something else left to complete though before I can feel the maximum picture quality in the new Samsung – I had a need to calibrate the picture for maximum video quality. Practically all televisions bought today ship from the manufacturer with video options which are far from ideal. Colors are usually oversaturated, with too warm a tone, and contrast, brightness and sharpness controls that are far from optimal as-well. So I made out my copy of ‘Video Essentials: Optimizing Your Audio/Video System’ DVD and spent a half hour altering the color, brightness, contrast and sharpness settings. I discovered galaxy tab 4 7.0 case by searching books in the library. The HLS-5087W has numeric display of each one of these settings, which is really a good touch for those people who have the trouble of tweaking every location possible for maximum picture quality. It had been hard to believe that I could improve upon the grade of the Samsung’s picture out-of the box, but fine-tuning the picture settings led to an infinitely more ‘film-like’ appearance of movies from both my DVD player and H20 phone.

I am looking forward to watching the time premiere of HBO’s Entourage collection completely HD fame tonight. It’s also going to be difficult keeping off buying a HD DVD source with HD-DVD and Blu-ray participants and games now beginning to appear. But I’ll speak about that in my next article..