Samsung HL-R5067W 50 DLP HD-Ready Projection TV with Digital Cable Ready Tuner

My mom just bought a Samsung HL-R5067W 50″ DLP HD-Ready Projection TV this past week and I got a chance to go down and set it up for her this past weekend. I’ve been slow on the HDTV bandwagon… I’ve been waiting for the new HD media to come out (either Blu-Ray or HD DVD) before really investing in an HDTV because I figure I should get it all sorted out at once.

After playing with this TV, I might go ahead and change my mind. The 50″ Samsung has the following basic specifications:

  • 720p resolution
  • Dual HD tuners for PiP (though you need two sources, more on this in a sec)
  • All the inputs you desire including “3 composite, 3 S-Video, 2 component, 1 DVI, 1 HDMI, 1 PC (D-Sub), 2 Firewire, 1 Monitor, and 2 RF inputs” plus some proprietary ones
  • DLP technology

There are other odds and ends that you’d expect (stereo speakers, digital audio out, remote, etc.). The TV is extraordinarily light (under 80 lbs.) which makes it easy to find a stand that you like that can hold the TV. It’s lighter than my 220 lbs. 32″ Sony Wega (at least 4 years old). The picture quality is excellent and because the tuner is built in, over-the-air HD programming is a snap. Just plug in an antenna and go.

My folks have a rooftop antenna that worked right out of the box. I had to re-aim it a slight bit to pick up all of the HDTV channels offered by the major networks in Philly, but once that was done I had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, WB, and a lot of random local channels in digital and analog format. I don’t think we were able to tune in Fox DTV, just analog, but I’m going down there later this week to set up their DSL service, so I’ll work on that next.

The Samsung looks like a single-chip DLP solution, but I saw none of the problems that people indicate with single-chip solutions. Don’t even know, quite honestly, whether 3-chip DLP Cinema TVs exist in a similar price range, but regardless, I didn’t see any picture quality issues typical of early single chip solutions.

The main complaint I had centered on usability and on DVD picture quality. The DVD issue I think is actually related to the source, the DVD player, and not the TV. DVDs are only 480i at best coming into the TV as an analog signal. Even with component inputs, the image was a bit blurry if you were closer than 8 ft. to the TV (not a recommended distance, to be sure, but that’s how close I was when I was working on the wiring). They make upconversion DVD players that will play a DVD and output a digital signal (say over HDMI) to the TV at 720p, improving the image quality. That might be something to try, but it’s not important to my parents. It is important to me and if I get a TV like this, I’ll be investigating DVD players that have this feature.

As for usability, I found the menus a bit annoying, especially when it came to adding or deleting channels into the programmed channel list. For example, when I first set the TV up and told it to auto-program the channel list, it didn’t find the NBC and CBS DTV channels. I knew they existed and checked the stations’ web sites to confirm that they were indeed broadcasting. The TV offers this nice signal strength meter to help you fine tune the antenna position, in fact. The problem was that I couldn’t get the TV to tune into that channel so I could mess with the antenna to find it. In fact, I couldn’t figure out how to tune into a channel that didn’t exist in the list so I could add it without going into the auto-program feature. It was the most agonizing part of the setup and something that shouldn’t be so hard to figure out. If I tune into 3-1 and it doesn’t exist, just tune me in and tell me that it doesn’t exist. I suspect that there’s some reason related to way these signals are broadcast that makes this kind of interface better, but damn it stinks.

I also thought that the PiP feature was a bit lame. There are dual tuners, but they have two different input sources on the back. Which is fine when you have two sources, but sucks when you only have the antenna. There was also some restriction on which coax source I could hook the antenna to, which is why I couldn’t just split the antenna source into both inputs. I was also worried about confusion for my folks. The TV autodetects sources with connect devices and would then show both Cable/Ant and Ant in the source list which would be odd. The PiP feature is nice, though, for checking on the game while watching a DVD. Any of the input sources can be used for the PiP feature. Switching between sources for the PiP view was cumbersome. I didn’t find a convenient button on the remote that would do it, so I had to go into a menu two choices deep to switch sources.

Overall, though, I really loved this TV. So much so that I’m considering breaking my HDTV plan and getting one sooner rather than later. Perhaps as a Christmas gift for me. Heidi will kill me, though, especially considering the cost of our upcoming wedding, so I’ll probably wait. But, if I were getting a TV now, this 50″ TV is nearly perfect for a casual home theater buff like me.