SAMSUNG SUPER STYLISH TV OFFERS GOOD FUTURE PROOFING (Samsung LE-37R87BD)

Member Name: monkey_daz

Product:	Samsung LE-37R87BD
Date:	03/06/09 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: BIG, NICE TO LOOK AT WHEN OFF, CONNECTIVITY, RELIABILITY, DETAIL ON HDMI

Disadvantages: SLIGHT GHOSTING SOMETIMES, 1 DEAD SUB-PIXEL, ATTRACTS LOTS OF DUST WHICH SHOWS UP EASILY ON THE CASE

I have owned this TV for 24 months and it is still going strong. I bought it back then for £652.90 from Top Electricals (Also known as 121 Electricals) as I think they came out the cheapest including delivery. I was going to buy a 32" but after a trip to Comet I saw that 32" looked "small" and this one had an excellent picture from the video game console they had it hooked up to via component.

My main use of it is for upscaled DVD playback via HDMI which it does very well. I am using a Sony DVD player for this. I had to tweak the settings quite a lot to get the picture right and found that most of the "features" the TV has needed to be turned off to get the best picture. [INSERT SETTINGS LIST] I used settings from a forum as a starting point.

The detail that can be picked out of a good quality DVD is amazing and the colours are really well balanced. With motion it has no problems at all. Shades of black can sometimes look like they have a slight hint of green/purple to them but this could be the DVD player- I have no way to tell!

In terms of appearance I don't think Samsung ever made a more beautiful TV- It looks fantastic even when it's off. The speaker is built into the back so is completely unobtrusive. I use the built in speaker when watching Sky on it but for movies I turn the volume down to 0 and fire up the Surround Sound System. The sound quality from this built in speaker is not very good at all for films but OK for watching the news on TV.

Connectivity wise this is a beast:
*2 HDMI on the back (1 says it accepts DVI but I found they all accept it) The DVI one (HDMI 2) also has a pair of stereo phono sockets for sound from PC
*1 HDMI on the side + Composite + S-Video + Stereo Phono + Card slot for freeview
*2 SCART (only one with RGB)
*1 set of Component inputs (3 phono) with 2 additional phono for stereo sound
*Optical Digital Audio Out (For the freeview I believe)
*Stereo Phono Audio Out (I ran this to my AV Recevier so sound from Sky and video game consoles can be routed to bigger speakers)
*VGA 15-pin D-sub connector for connecting to PC with 3.5mm stereo jack for sound from PC
*When you scroll through the inputs in the menu there are 11 inputs: TV/DTV/Ext1/Ext2/AV/S-Video/Component/PC/HDMI1/HDM I2/HDMI3

This works like a dream connected to a PC. I used a 15 metre DVI to HDMI cable on a GIGABYTE GV RX80L256V with no problems at all. That PC is my media centre PC and playing DVD's through it looks the same as the upscaling DVD player. It is so easy checking your email or surfing the web on such a big screen too and I bought a wireless mouse and keyboard to add to the laziness.

It did develop a slight fault after a few months whereby the red standby LED would be on all the time rather than only while in standby. This was remedied by mistake when I left it unplugged from the wall for a few hours and then found the problem had fixed itself.

I think it has either 1 or 2 dead sub-pixels. That is 1 pixel is permenantly blue, another is sometimes also stuck on blue. This is not noticeable at all unless you get about 10cm away from the screen and it happens to be displaying the right background colour to show it!

Sometimes there is a little bit of ghosting on text or sharp edges on upscaled DVD and most noticeable on the Futurama movie DVD's. I don't know if this is the DVD player or the TV.

On Sky via RGB SCART the picture is very smooth and the black colours are amazing, better than HDMI somehow.

The remote control is a comfortable shape to hold and accesses the plethora of menu options. The TV itself has touch sensitive buttons for power, source, channel and volume. You only have to use these to get it out of SHOP MODE (which was a nightmare) but are useful for changing source sometimes if that's all you want to do.

Summary: Despite niggles its stilla No-regrets-purchase. Does all I want and more. Recommended.

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