Samsung HL S5687W Report
Samsung’s latest line of 1080p RPTVs are getting a lot of internet hum these days. The HL-S models are being feted as worthy successors to the prior HL-R line, which was itself extraordinarily well-regarded. The company sent us the HL-S5687W to use in our review of the BDP1000 Blu-ray player, and we made a decision to do a full review of the display too.
The video inputs are abundant, with two HDMI ( which can accept up to 1080p ), 2 element, 2 S-video, three composite, one VGA, and 2 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 pictures 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 1920×1080 signal onto one pixel of the display, which is superb for avoiding overscan artifacts. There’s just one problem : this feature is essentially unavailable! It can only be enabled in the service menu, to which users have no access.
The remote is a standard Samsung design : long and fairly skinny, with the ability to control up to four other devices using codes in its database. It isn’t illuminated, though the most used buttons are laid out in a reasonable manner. The Menu and Exit buttons are near the 4-way cursor cluster, and Mute is next to Volume Up/Down, which is good. Not so good is the single Source button, which cycles thru the inputs.
The menu system is O.K, but not great. Seven main sections appear in a scrolling bar across the bottom of the screen, every one of which has its own menu and, in some cases, submenu.
naturally, the out-of-the-box settings were wacko, far too bright and too blue. Looking at the HQV baseline DVD, detail looked quite good, as did low-angle diagonals and the waving flag. DNIe really increased the noise level, and it introduced some color shift, so I strongly recommend leaving it off. Horizontal video text crawls over film looked fine, but vertical crawls broke up rather badly.
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 consultant Dave Abrams thinks it got picked up at the last instant of the clip. With the 11 mode disabled, the set exhibited some heavy overscan as well as obvious banding in a 1080i 1-pixel-on/1-pixeloff pattern. With 11 enabled, the pattern was totally resolved with no Problems, though there had been still a bit of optical overscan about 1 to 2 %, which is fine.
Black level looked better than I’d have anticipated from the measurement ( see’Measurements’ ). I suspect this is due to the high peak white level, which results in a high contrast proportion. Shade detail was also amazingly good, as shown in the below-deck walk at the start of Master and commander and the interior of the duck-blind observation post at the start of Star Trek : Insurrection. I saw virtually no false contouring in the blue backlight that starts The Mask of Zorro or in the transition to a foggy morning in Master and commander.
My observations were confirmed with HD DVD : the subjective black level was excellent in Constantine when the street lights go out as Constantine is explaining to Dodson about the battle between God and the demon for humanity’s soul. The black of space was deep and rich in Apollo thirteen and The Chronicles of Riddick, which also exhibited good shade detail.
This limited the best viewing position to right in front of the screen’s center point.
For the main part, the Samsung HL S5687W is a worthy successor to the prior generations that were so highly rated. The first drawbacks were the effective lack of a 11 mode and some serious hot-spotting. Other than that, this is a fine 1080p RPTV well worth consideration.
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About the Author
Technical writer for baby products.
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