Samsung HDTV?
 

The 28" LCD monitor that I've been using seems too small for me now. I couldn't justify getting something over 30" at the time I bought the 28", due to the outrageous increase in price from 28" to anything above 30". Last week, a friend of mine, who is knowledgeable about LCD HDTVs, looked at a Samsung LN52A650 52" HDTV, and the picture of BluRay movies and even SD DVD movies just blew him away. He said the picture was so clear that it was like looking out the window. Of course I don't want a 52" HDTV, that's just ridiculous for a computer monitor. However, I am interested in something of comparable quality, but smaller in size, like around 40", which is very common for HDTVs. I checked out the specs at samsungusa.com, and those things have 1920 x 1080, progressive resolution, with contrast ratio of 50000:1. Previous-generation HDTVs were lousy computer monitors because their resolution were not full 1080p. The reviews on cnet states that these 1080p "HDTVs" make excellent computer monitors. I'd like to read what you guys think.

Thanks,

There are 908 User Reviews at Amazon.com

Those may provide some answers for you.

John

Norris,

I have a 40" series 5 sammy (year old model now). I don't use it as a computer monitor... but rather to monitor my NLE output. The word I like to use is "stunning". I don't think you'll be disappointed.

On a side note, I'm not that keen on large computer monitors... I currently have a pair of 24" and wish they were smaller with the same resolution... I don't like having to scan that much realestate. What I'd really like to have is a single 32" with 4000x2400 resolution. But I think I'll have to wait a few years for that :-) My wife has a new 23" sammy monitor with 1920x1200 that is very nice... just thinking.

Mark

I personally use a 40" Sammy (LN40A550) as my only computer monitor. I have to say, I believe it's the best monitor I've ever owned. To set it up was not the perfect plug-and-play experience, but it wasn't terribly difficult (with one exception which I'll get to later) and it was well worth the trouble. To set it up properly, I had to do the following:

Plug my PC into HDMI 2, and, via the TV menu/remote, designate that input as the "PC Input." (Not too hard) When I did that, it abandoned its efforts to scale, sharpen, or otherwise mess with my picture and just showed the exact pixels that my Video Card gave it. Nice.

I also played with the color and contrast until I was satisfied with the picture. It's quite easy to do this with the Samsung model I have. Your mileage may vary.

Now, the difficult part. My sound comes from an analog input from my computer into the TV. Not something you have to worry about if you use external speakers, but that's where I'm at right now. I built a new PC at the same time that I got this monitor, so everything was new. Shortly after I got everything going, my sound quit working. After a lot of digging, it turned out that the problem was this:

My nVidia 9800GT Video Card does not have and HDMI output, it only has DVI, which does not carry an audio signal, yet somehow when I loaded the latest nVidia drivers, it began broadcasting a false audio signal through the cable to the TV, which caused the TV to shut off the Analog input to HDMI-2 and play. . . nothing. There is no way to manually say "I want the analog input, not the digital one" if the TV thinks there's something there. So I had to apply the following fix (not my genius here):

1. Get Phoenix EDID Designer, (Download Phoenix EDID Designer - Freeware Software - Tucows), unzip and run the exe (no install reqd)
2. Click Tools->Extract registry EDID, then double click the line for your TV/monitor in the popup
3. Click Tools->Byte viewer, and note down the values in row 00, columns 08-0B (4 bytes)
4. Start the installation of the latest Nvidia drivers and cancel out once the files are extracted
6. Open the file "nv_disp.inf" in a text editor. By default for the current drivers this is in C:\NVIDIA\...\169.21
7. Scroll down to the section [nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings], add the following line there, replacing the "XX" values below with the 4 values noted in step 3:

HKR,, OverrideEdidFlags0, %REG_BINARY%, XX,XX,XX,XX,00,00,FF,FF,04,00,00,00,7E,01,00

(In my case the TV code was SYN 0043, the four values being: 4F,2E,43,00 )

4. Uninstall your current drivers and reboot
5. Install the modified drivers by running the previously extracted setup.exe. By default for the current drivers, this is in C:\NVIDIA\...\169.21. You'll get a warning about the driver not being signed because of the modified inf. Just press OK.

After that, my audio worked and I've loved every second of looking at this beautiful monitor since. I hope this helps someone. It was REEEEAAAALLY hard to find this fix. Anyway, love my Sammy. Bottom line.

My Samsung 32" 1080p Series 4 has 3 hdmi inputs and one slot for pc connection with 30,000:1 contrast ratio. It's just perfect for my needs especially tv viewing in which my cable provider only broadcasts sd channels. Even then the picture quality is still great which is very much better than the one on my old CRT unit. Examining the LCD TV ratings was what helped me get the best value for my purchase.