New Samsung 6168

[StacyT]

I just got my new samsung in last night. It took a couple of hrs to get everything unboxed and setup, plus had to move the old set out. I also received my oppo dvd player yesterday.

I'm still using a svideo connection for the TIVO box and the picture quality isn't anywhere near the quality of the DVD. Plus there seems to be some issues with the picture size on various channels. For some reason channels that broadcast 16:9 dont fill the entire screen, and some channels things seem stretched, but they fill the entire screen. I have both the TIVO & Smasung set to display 16:9. I've played with the various screen sizes and cant seem to find a setting that works well on all channels. Any suggestions on settings to correct this?

The quality on the DVD's is amazing however. I havn't really noticed any metablocking as I have read on some of the others reveiws. Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention.

Now just cant wait for the price on the HDTV Tivo receivers to come down in price. At this time I just cant justify the price for one.

[warhummer]

I remember having some issues with the aspect ratio jumping around on my set. I have a 6167 (the 720p native resolution) and I leave my picture setting to 4:3 (not the 16:9 setting that stretches a 4:3 broadcast to fill the screen). When an HD channel is selected, it automatically kicks it over to 16:9, and fills the entire screen. Most non-HD and even some digital cable channels look crappy on the 61" screen, however, the HD programming looks stunning. Additionally, you might still see some horizontal black bars at the top and bottom of some widescreen DVD-movies. This isn't a TV problem, but relates to the aspect ratio that the film was originally shot in. These black bars will be nowhere near as thick as viewing them on a 4:3 TV.

I have a Motorola DCT6200 HD cable box, set to 720p output with a DVI to HDMI cable. If you have component outputs on the TIVO, you might want to try them instead of the S-Video connection. All things being equal, the component cables provide a better picture than S-Video.

Currently, to my knowledge, there are no HD signals being broadcast in 1080p resolution. The TV should handle the conversion from a 1080i or 720p signal transparently. Additionally, I'm not sure about any production DVD players that upconvert to 1080p either. I have a Denon 2910 DVD player set to upconvert to 720p. Unfortunately, the upconverting can only happen with the HDMI cable and since the TV only has one HDMI input, I had to get a switcher to allow simultaneous HD cable and DVD connections.

[StacyT]

warhummer thanks for the reply.

I had tried setting the TV to 4:3, but than it displays a window that only fills a small portion of the screen. I wouldn't mind that, but than it has these white lines above, and below the picture that are distracting.

I wanted to use a component hookup, but the best output on the TIVO is s-video. I may go take a look at a couple of others today, or maybe I'll just wait a couple of months and get a HD TIVO unit.This unit does have 2 HDMI inputs.

Also another thing that I notice on some channels is there seems to be a line of static across the top of the screen. It's not real noticeable as it's only about an 1/8" across the top. It is only there on channels broadcast in 4:3 stretched to 16:9, and if I play around with the aspect ratio I can get rid of it.

Overall I am still happy with the display as it is much better than what my old outdated rear projection was capable of. :) Just wish they would get more channels broadcast in HD, and get the price down on the HD TIVO's. :D