Samsung LE32R73BDX = Bad Picture Quality!

Pablo72

Pablo72

Pablo72

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OK, keep with me as I'm new to LCD's.

I've seen tons of revies on this TV, all of them stating what a smashing TV it is... however, I've also come across a few downers on both the picture and sound quality, which forgive me, is the essence of a TV isn't it?

Anyway, can someone give me a definitive breakdown on this telly. My set-up is very basic at home... I have an outdoor ariel and a freeview box, and that's it.

Am I going to suffer from picture quality because I don't have SKY?

Any help would be greatly apprciated as I'm totally conflicted on this TV and a Sony Bravia one.
 
It's a great Tv, the sound is okay but if you are watching a DVD or a film it may suffer, but personally mine is in my bedroom and it doesn't bother me.

If you use the built in freeview tuner on the TV, the picture is very clear, better than the picture I get on Sky.

If you plan on using Sky, then get a good quality scart lead as the picture improves a lot with one, but overall the freeview produces a very good picture providing you have a good signal.

I use a Samsung upscaling DVD player on mine, connected via HDMI and the picture is very crisp, and I also use mine as a monitor for my PC and the picture is amazing.

Basically, if you are near the TV the picture quality is noticeable, but, if your about 5' from it, you can't notice it much. The HD picture on the TV however is brilliant.
 
it's a known fact that lcd's arent that good for SD pictures, but throw it a HD feed and it is perfect.
 
I have the R74 (basically the same other then cosmetics) and I can't get a good picture on the TV (analogue) input, however the DTV even though it is only SD is excellent. I did however have to play with the setting for colour,sharpness, brightness etc. Again I belive most people have too tweak there LCD TV.

Sound is not the best, although I find it sufficent for most things, however if you want really good sound you need to get a Surround Sound setup.
 
i feel people are a little harsh on sd performance. whether they are just repeating what they heard on the grapevine or not i dont know, but my tv is supposed to be one of the worst with sd and honestly im perfectly happy with it. it doesnt compare to hd (massive difference) but its perfectly watchable.
 
When people discuss SD, do you mean analogue or digital? Even on a CRT TV I find analogue looks shocking and on an LCD I wouldn't even attempt to watch it. I don't see why anyone even has the need to tune analogue channels in nowadays. Freeview on all the LCDs I have seen, including this screen in particular have looked awesome, followed by the HD which has looked outstanding.

No TV in my house, bar the one in the kicthen has any analogue channels tuned in. I guess if you're unlucky enough to live in a non DTT area then yes, but in a digital area or with SKY nowadays I find it pointless.
 
SD is standard definition, i.e not HD, so anything non-HD wether it be analogue or digital. SD on LCD'd is at it's worse with football :(
 
Kol said:
When people discuss SD, do you mean analogue or digital? Even on a CRT TV I find analogue looks shocking and on an LCD I wouldn't even attempt to watch it. I don't see why anyone even has the need to tune analogue channels in nowadays. Freeview on all the LCDs I have seen, including this screen in particular have looked awesome, followed by the HD which has looked outstanding.

No TV in my house, bar the one in the kicthen has any analogue channels tuned in. I guess if you're unlucky enough to live in a non DTT area then yes, but in a digital area or with SKY nowadays I find it pointless.
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Analogue is uncompressed so it is a higher quality if you get a good enough signal. Digital is compressed with mpeg2 at about 4 Mb/s so it doesn't look as good.

I find the samsung r74 series to have poor sound quality.
 
wez130 said:
SD is standard definition, i.e not HD, so anything non-HD wether it be analogue or digital. SD on LCD'd is at it's worse with football :(
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Aye, I re-read my post and see that people may think I was asking that. I was aware of SD being both, but everyone seems to slam SD as being really bad, but in my experience analogue has looked awful (mainly due to the fact it's still broadcast in 4x3 and 14x9) compared to digital, which relatively looks pretty damn good.
 
Interesting discussion as I want one of these and recently went into a high street retailer and thought that the picture quality was very poor. I asked the assistant what connection and feed they were using, and it was an SD feed (not sure where it came from) via component. Now it may have just been the settings, but the two LCD's either side (LG and Panasonic) looked much better than the Samsung, which worried me a bit.
 
Kol said:
When people discuss SD, do you mean analogue or digital? Even on a CRT TV I find analogue looks shocking and on an LCD I wouldn't even attempt to watch it. I don't see why anyone even has the need to tune analogue channels in nowadays. Freeview on all the LCDs I have seen, including this screen in particular have looked awesome, followed by the HD which has looked outstanding.
Click to expand...
No, I'm talking about digital SD too. Going from SD CRT to HD LCD with the same signal, the LCD does a clumsy job of upscaling the picture, plus there's something about LCD technology which really brings out all the defects in a signal, whether that be noise on the original recording, or compression artifacts introduced by the digital transmission. The softer picture of the CRT hides a lot of signal defects, plus there's no upscaling.

The upscaling thing, sadly it seems most HD LCDs (from what I saw looking at many sets in a big retailer before I bought my LG 32LC2D) just don't have good upscalers in them. I've had good results by buying an upscaling DVD player. In picture-by-picture tests, it's clearly upscaling better than the TV.
 
So, let met get this right. This TV is perfect, providing you watch TV through the built in Freeview box, otherwise the quality drops considerably?

Would you say this is a fair conclusion?
 
no, the TV is great with a decent quality connection to another source (dvd / stb etc) but SD on any LCD won't be anywhere near as good as it is on a CRT tv.
 
I have this TV also - not totally happy with it - checked out some details about the Panel used and apparently samsung use a few different ones in this model.

It should use (as advertised) the S-PVA samsung panel - but mine and many others use a CMO panel - you can check in the service menu (from standby enter info - menu - mute (i think) and turn it back on) - or the Model Number on the stick on the back - check out the AV forums for more details.

Luckily the retailer I got mine from has offered a cheap upgrade to the R87 new model.

If you're happy with this TV don't check which screen you have - if its CMO you'll only start wondering how much better the S-PVA might be!
 
grahamjenks said:
I have this TV also - not totally happy with it - checked out some details about the Panel used and apparently samsung use a few different ones in this model.

It should use (as advertised) the S-PVA samsung panel - but mine and many others use a CMO panel - you can check in the service menu (from standby enter info - menu - mute (i think) and turn it back on) - or the Model Number on the stick on the back - check out the AV forums for more details.

Luckily the retailer I got mine from has offered a cheap upgrade to the R87 new model.

If you're happy with this TV don't check which screen you have - if its CMO you'll only start wondering how much better the S-PVA might be!
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Yes and the R87 uses the cheap panel as well :eek: (according to the av forums)
 
I have this TV, on telewest with a crappy scart cable the picture is still good better than a normal tv imo. I bought it into my room for the week because I got my 360 this weekend and HD content is awsome I cant fault it at all. I think for normal content it wont blow you away. But if you have a PC capable of HD then hook it up you will see the difference. Lost 24 prision break in HD on my PC with this screen just sexy :D.
 
bobbyboy uk said:
Yes and the R87 uses the cheap panel as well :eek: (according to the av forums)
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I didnt want to know that, at least the R87 will be no worse than my R74 which I'm not unhappy with - just could be better! And the newer model should have greater resale value should I decide to trade or upgrade again.
 
This previously mentioned panel lottery totally put me off this Samsung when I was looking at which set to get. From what I've read on avforums the CMO panel is significantly inferior especially with black depth (the guy on avforums even said his had poor viewing angles which sounds like TN+Film :eek: ), and the one I saw in Comet had probably the worst black depth of all the HDTVs I looked at. I found that really odd because I thought all the Bordeaux range had LED backlighting which should give excellent black depth. Who knows though, maybe someone had messed with the settings.

Needless to say the OP should get into a store and check out the sets he's interested in (just don't buy from the store ;) ).
 
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Im on an R72 26" Samsung, and I do agree with a lot of what is being said here.

Im running mine through a freeview turner, adn whilst its not crap, its not amazing either, not as good as a normal SD TV, and the sound in short is terrible. From day 1 ive used a seperate speaker setup for the TV as the ones with the TV are really bad. The picture through a normail aerial is nto too bad is you ahev a good signal, to be honest its a lot better than i expected. The freeview tuner gives off a quite pixellated effect at times, but id by no measn call t crap or unwtchable, just different and needs getting used to, it doesnt boher me in the slightest any more.

BUT, connect an HD device, you will be blown away, I didnt think HD would make that muc difference, but it does, my 360 ha became a whole new machine now. I also hve to admit, its nice to be able to use the TV ia VGA for a bit of web browsing ;)

In short, sont worry, the picture quality isnt as bad as gets made out but i will admit it takes a bit of getting used to. If you want to get it, then go ahead as its an amazing buy, I love my Samsung, and im a right picky bugger when it comes to spending large amounts of money.

However, im commenting on the R72 spec, so i dont knwo if the R73 is differnt in any way?
 
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