Woot, My future DLP TV is available in canada.

[TheDruid]

Watched a few movies last night "unconverted" to 1080p, can't say i really notice much of a difference between 720p unconverted - 1080p unconverted. maybe some movies will up convert better then others?

I take it back, after spending a little bit of time with it last night, trying different movies and such, i can totally see a difference now. It looks sweet. StarWars IV never looked so good. The only way to get better would be to go right to HD or BlueRay. But since that battle will be raging for a while, this will do just fine for now. Plus i don’t have to replace my entire DVD collection.

I thought i had a problem with my HDMI port 1 with 1080p since the first night i hooked it up, there was distortion lines. Switching it to HDMI 2 seemed to fix it. But i found out that with this TV, the DVD player i have has a long "load time" when you first turn it on (Samsung HD960 DVD), and the DVD and TV have to successfully "handshake" otherwise you may get distortion. But i found if that happends just switch the source on the tv away from HDMI and then back. So all ports are working fine

The only annoyance i found so far is that the HDMI ports only recognize 2.0 digital sound. At first i thought that i could just run all my sound to my TV, and use the optical out on my tv to send to my receiver. Kind of like an optical switch. However since the HDMI only recognizes 2.0, and there are no optical in's on the TV, it kind of makes the optical out on the TV useless for anything better then 2.0, So im still forced to run separate sound cables to my receiver. I need to get a better receiver though, my DVD, XBOX, and cable box all can output in optical but i only have one optical in on my receiver. The DVD player wins for now. But im on the lookout for an optical switch.

TV impressions, Fantastic.
We've watched cable, 3 - 4 movies now (Narnia, StarWars IV, Robots, Jen watched foot loose) and played my Xbox 360. Cable is as good as you would expect it could be. The TV does up convert all signals to 1080p, so nothing is blocky and looks about as good as it did on my 32" Trinitron, except with smoother lines and scaled to 50", the picture is as clear as the signal can give me. My Cable is hooked up to my TV VIA S-Video (best available with my cable box)

Movie’s are phenomenal, im not just testing a new TV though, but a New TV and DVD combo. Since they are both Samsung, they ascetically look good together. Use of the HDMI is nice, keeps a component in jack free, however sound from the HDMI into the TV is absolutely useless! The TV only recognizes 2.0, so im running a separate optical line to my receiver, however to get the best possible sound i had to turn DTS and digitized signal on for my DVD player. The annoying thing now, every time i manually switch to a new chapter, select a menu option or play the movie the words "Sound output type not supported on HDMI port" shows up for a second on the screen. Ug!... there must be someway to turn that off?

Picture is more then i could have ever expected from a standard DVD. With Narnia as a new school test, StarWars as a "re-masterd" test, Robots as your classic computer animation test, and well Jen's Foot Loose movie from the stone age.

Narnia and Robots performed as good as i expected, highly detailed, very cinematic. But I was blown away by StarWars, i saw colors and detail that was never there before, i could almost see my face in C3PO It truly looked HD and i cant imagine its too Far off from an actual HD-DVD/BlueRay serving of this movie. Although i didn’t really watch foot loose, i must say that it was the best looking "old, non re-mastered movie" i ever seen I was a little skeptical about a 1080p up converting DVD player and truly thought it was just a gimmick for us early HD adopters to justify our big expensive TVs. But seeing it in action, it really does make a difference. It also made me feel a lot less guilty for spending tons of money on my DVD collection that i though would soon be obsolete with the new disc generation. Apparently i can have my cake and eat it to.

XBOX 360 looked about as good as it did on my 27" LCD, only 23" BIGGER! I switched the TV to "Game Mode" which is apparently optimized for 360 play, its designed for rapid fast moving action, and color platelets common to game systems. I got absolutely no complaints here, i stood and watched the Perfect dark intro like 4 times with sound pumping from 5 speakers for the first time. Then i played the second level of PD. Although the LCD looked great in 720p, im finding that with the bigger screen it amplifies the detail that i missed on the small screen before. Defiantly an improvement. You haven’t lived until you’ve played Frogger in 50" of 720p HD glory. And Shayne, yes Geometry wars is harder on the big screen. But that didn't stop me from getting a score of 370,000 

The TV looks great in my living room as well. Since it's a lot thinner then my 32" Trinitron, i was able to stuff my subwoofer behind the TV, so the front profile takes up no more room then my last TV. I bought new speaker stands to go with the TV (Damn highway robbery, $100 for these simple metal stands), no more cheap Wal-Mart end tables for my speakers. The 50" is defiantly the max size for this room, i couldn’t imagine a 56" in there, any bigger and i'd would have to start moving my eyes to take in the whole picture (which is a no no with DLP and the rainbow effect). On the subject of the rainbow effect, does it still exists on this TV?... yes, but very minimal. Only in extreme black on white contrast scenarios where im shaking my head or rapidly darting my eyes do I see it, and even then it’s very minimal. I’ve seen the rainbow effect on older DLPs and sometimes the rainbow would trail over an inch behind the object. With this TV it’s just a slight color tinge on its edge, very tolerable. They have made improvements in this area.

Overall great buy. It will be a while until the price on it’s comes down to a reasonable level ($2899.00 MSRP) but I’m sure you could talk the sales guy down to $2600 or $2500 on any day of the week. I also heard Samsung might be doing a $200 price drop soon on their stuff. But keep in mind, only the 56” has made it onto the display floor, the 50” are still in the warehouse, The BB guy said that they want to clear out all the older models before bringing out the newer one… understandable, you could get a kick ass deal on a 720p Samsung DLP right now.

[Mr. Analog]

Sounds impressive. I think I will wait on getting into HDTV, most likely when the upgrade mandate starts materializing around 2009/2010, that is to say when I'm looking at buying either a new TV or an HDTV converter for Das Tube. I don't really watch anything that has to be super high def (anime / cartoons, old 60s shows, crappy Sci-Fi movies where higher resolution makes it look worse, old sprite-based games, etc).

I'd like to see Star Wars in 1080i, but are you sure it was IV and not one of the prequels?

[TheDruid]

I'd like to see Star Wars in 1080i, but are you sure it was IV and not one of the prequels?

Yes, it was StarWars IV A New Hope

And i was watching it in 1080p (better then 1080i). I bought the first DVD release of it last year. So it has all the added CGI scenes. But i was mostly impressed with the original re-masted stuff. Apparently Tatooine isn?t just a big orange/yellow blob, there's rocks and stuff. Darth Vader?s helmet has smudges on it. All kinds of crazy detail was showing up.

[Ustauk]

Sounds like someone should have a movie night Revenge of the Sith, maybe?

[Cova]

And Shayne, yes Geometry wars is harder on the big screen. But that didn't stop me from getting a score of 370,000 

No wonder I have a hard time doing well - my screen is even bigger.


And yes - it must be almost movie night by now.

[Shayne]

HaHa!  I figured GW would be harder on a big screen, you just can't focus on the entire screen.

[Lazybones]

Stand further back... The controller is wireless after all.. Although I guess that depends how big the room is.

[Tom]

I wan't one of these:


It should only cost about $1,000,000 usd.