Samsung LN-T4053H & DVD-HD870 DVD Player

[jmet]

Well I just bought me a new TV (Samsung LN-T4053H) and a up-converting DVD player (DVD-HD870), both made by Samsung.

I love the TV! The clarity and vividness of the colors is breath taking! I won't lie, standard TV (DISH Network) looks like pure and utter crap! But DVD's look awesome! I watched Batman Begins the other night and was astonished at the clear and vibrant picture. I could see each individual wrinkle in Bruce Wayne's forehead.

I have yet to experience a HD on this TV, as it just cost to much money for get HD programming from DISH and I refuse to possibly buy the next Beta Max player.

Well yesterday I picked up a DVI to HDMI cables and proceeded to connect my desktop up to the TV this morning. I am having mixed feelings about the look. With this TV you need to sit a minimum of 4-6 feet away to get the best picture. Anything closer and you start seeing pixelation, artifacts, blockiness and other poor video qualities. But I need to sit closer when I am using the TV as a computer monitor to be able to read the text, etc. Pictures look horrible! 1280 X 768 is what resolution I have it set at right now. 60Hz is the only option it shows for refresh rate.

I was just looking some pointers and any help you might have on improving my viewing experience.

[Chewy]

Resolution 1360 x 768

does your video card support this?

have you adjusted the dpi?

[jmet]

Yes apparently my card supports it cause it worked when I did just it now. I tried all of them before and none of them worked except 1280 X 768. Thats weird....I did however change some settings and that may be why it works now.

Well that worked Chewy, THANKS!

Hey, do you know if there is anyway to tell what resolution (480i , 480, p , 720 p, etc.) my DVD player is using? I've got it set to 720p in the settings.

You know of any sites that would be helpful in reading about this.

<img src="http://www.digital-digest.com/~jmet/misc/res_setins.png" width="800">

[Chewy]

A little of this is starting to soak in, admin would be the one to ask hard questions of.

[jmet]

Using that resolution helped out big time compared to the way it was though...

[Chewy]

since you are using a 40" widescreen lcd television as a monitor I would suggest doing it from the recliner or easy chair or the next room

next thing you know you'll be trying HD playback, the new 2400/2600 support that

[jmet]

Man...I downloaded some H.264 720p trailers of Pirates of the Carribean - Dead Mans Chest and it was AWESOME!! And that was just 720p.

[jmet]

2400/2600 ? What do you mean?

[Chewy]

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=81659&highlight=ati+2400

your cpu goes off the chart with most any other cards, but the new ati ones are designed for HD

[jmet]

I downloaded the 1080p trailer of Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Mans Chest...it played but wasn't great....random pauses and audio started to lag behind

Edit: It looked amazing though! lol

[admin]

Using 1360x768 (the closest resolution to your TV's native res.) should prevent too much scaling from happening, which can make the picture too soft. If you're having problems text clarity, look into ClearType:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx

Otherwise, the only other thing you can try is to increase the text size and/or decrease the resolution (but the rest of the supported resolutions I think are not widescreen ones). If you find that you can't enable certain resolutions, you might need to go to the Samsung website and grab the monitor drivers for it. Also, are you connecting it through the VGA plug or the HDMI plug? I'm not sure with your TV whether the HDMI is limited to certain resolutions (although 1360x768 is probably the best resolution you should use anyway).

As for H.264/HD, try some of the newer trailers I've made (eg. The Bourne Ultimatum one: http://www.digital-digest.com/movies...ultimatum.html) ... the Pirates trailer is a bit old, encoded with a fairly ancient version of x264.

Or some of the clips on this page (the Simpsons 1080p High or SA-HD-DVD profile one is worth a try):

http://www.h264info.com/clips.html

[NightTran]

I downloaded the 1080p trailer of Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Mans Chest...it played but wasn't great....random pauses and audio started to lag behind

Edit: It looked amazing though! lol

you may want to check out another source of 1080 it is the same on my TV but I had others trailers 1080 that look very good

[jmet]

Thank you admin! The cleartype helped.

I have it connected via a DVI to HDMI cable.

I think your right, 1360X768 is the best resolution I could use with this setup. It looks pretty good right now. I'll check out those new trailers you made also.

[Chewy]

next mkv files, neat container

[jmet]

As for H.264/HD, try some of the newer trailers I've made (eg. The Bourne Ultimatum one: http://www.digital-digest.com/movies...ultimatum.html) ... the Pirates trailer is a bit old, encoded with a fairly ancient version of x264.

Well I downloaded that one...it played almost perfect but did drag in a few spots for a second. It looked awesome!

I think I am going to have to stick to 720P.

I just wish I could know for sure if my DVD player was outputting in 720p - "EDIT" - The reason being is the DVD's I've watched do not compare in video quality in the clips I've downloaded.