Samsung's latest line of 1080p RPTVs are getting a lot of online hum these days. The HL-S models are being honored as worthy inheritors to the prior HL-R line, which was itself extraordinarily well-regarded. The company sent us the HL-S5687W to be employed in our review of the BDP1000 Blu-ray player, and we decided to do a full review of the display as well .
The video inputs are abundant, with two HDMI ( which can accept up to 1080p ), 2 part, two S-video, 3 composite, one VGA, and two RF, which feed the internal ATSC ( digital terrestrial ) and NTSC ( analog ) tuners. Other connections include RS232 ( for service only ) and USB, which Samsung calls Wiselink, to let you view JPEG footage and listen to MP3 audio files on USB storage devices.
One very important feature in the
Samsung HL S5687W is a 11 mode that maps each pixel of a 1920x1080 signal onto one pixel of the display, which is superb for avoiding overscan artifacts.
The remote is a standard Samsung design : long and fairly skinny, with the facility to control up to 4 other devices using codes in its database. The Menu and Exit buttons are near the 4-way cursor cluster, and Mute is next to Volume Up/Down, which is good.
The menu system is OK, but not great. 7 main sections appear in a scrolling bar across the base of the screen, each of which has its own menu and, in some cases, submenu. Each time you enter the menu system, it starts at the same section ; some TVs enter the system at the place you last left, which I prefer.
The best grayscale we could get with the picture-mode and colortemp presets was pretty good, but it was still a bit blue. Having a look at the HQV baseline DVD, detail looked quite good, as did low-angle diagonals and the waving flag. Digital noise reduction dropped noise a little, but not enough to matter much. DNIe really increased the noise level, and it introduced some color shift, so I strongly counsel leaving it off.
The processor picked up the 3:2 pulldown cadence quickly and reliably with a 480i signal, but not with a 1080i signal from HD DVD. In fact, it seemed to miss the cadence wholly, though TPV's video specialist Dave Abrams thinks it got picked up at the final instant of the clip.
With eleven enabled, the pattern was totally resolved with no Problems, though there had been still a bit of optical overscan about 1 to two percent, which is fine.
Black level looked better than I would have predicted from the measurement ( see'Measurements' ). I believe this is due to the high peak white level, which results in a very high contrast ratio. Shadow detail was also shockingly good, as shown in the below-deck walk at the start of Master and chief and the inside of the duck-blind observation post at the start of Star Trek : Insurrection. I saw virtually no fake contouring in the blue backlight that starts The Mask of Zorro or in the transition to a foggy morning in Master and chief.
The black of space was deep and loaded in Apollo 13 and The Chronicles of Riddick, which also exhibited good shadow detail.
This limited the best viewing position to right in front of the screen's center point.
For the most part, the
Samsung HL S5687W is a deserving inheritor to the prior generations that were so highly regarded. Color, grayscale, detail, subjective black level, and shadow detail were all excellent. Other than that, this is a fine 1080p RPTV definitely worth consideration.
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