HDTV Reviews

The cabinet of the HL-S5687W is quite beautiful in its high gloss black trim. There is less of it than with the Pioneer Elite display – about 3/4” around the screen – but what there is is equally classy-looking.

In dead center of the front of the display just under the bezel portion is a very large round button. It’s the not-to-be-missed on/off button. Over on the right side of the bezel area are LEDs for Standby, Timer and Lamp – the latter coming on when you need to replace the single light source in the rear of the display.

Although the 5687W has 1080p native resolution, it achieves this high performance using “wobulation” technology which effectively doubles horizontal resolution. The DLP chip itself only has 960×1,080 discrete pixels, vs. the 1,920×1,080 discrete pixels of LCoS displays. All the various sources, including standard-def TV, are scaled to fit the pixels available.

The image quality was a knockout from first turning the Samsung on. Of course the brightness, contrast, sharpness and red push all had to be reduced, using the DV Essentials test DVD. At first I had some difficult getting a decently low black level, but after tweaking of both the settings on the Oppo disc player and on the Samsung I was finally able to get it down to a reasonable degree of black – though still not quite as deep as with the Pioneer CRT.

I’m very pleased with the solid performance of the 5678W display. I vote it the best value for the money. Its picture knocks the socks off similar displays of even a year or two ago, it seems to have no serious “cons” against it, and due to both the recent price reductions of all large video displays, as well as the savings seen in this particular model – which dispenses with a few bells and whistles such as PIP and CableCard – purchase of the Samsung won’t break your bank.
Source: http://www.audaud.com/