You get quite a bang for the buck for this HDTV, February 26, 2010

By 

oldpink “Dark Side of the Moon” (Indiana, US) – See all my reviews

  

I recently bought this TV for my fiancee from a local retailer, and I am quite pleased with it.

I am quite sure there are HDTVs out there that have a much better picture quality, but this is a massive improvement over my fiancee’s old analog tube TV.

There are also several inherent advantages this has over the old tube monster.

1) Even though this TV has a bigger screen, it still takes up not even 1/4 the space of the old tube.

2) This TV weighs about 1/8 of the old tube.

3) Being this is an LED illuminated TV, it uses considerably less power, drawing a mere 12 volts instead of the tube’s 115 volts.

4) This TV has an expected operating lifespan around double that of a tube TV.

About the TV, I had already read multiple reviews about it, many of them deriding the sound quality.

There is, however, a very good explanation and solution for that problem.

First, you need to go into the menu, then look under the Audio settings and switch off “Surround Sound” to put it back to standard stereo.

Unfortunately, the default setting has that switched on.

The so called “Surround Sound” on this is a cheap imitation not even as good as Dolby Pro-Logic, and it does indeed make it sound as if the sound is being played underwater, with a lot of gimmicky swirling effects.

Very annoying, that.

Switching that off produces a very acceptable stereo sound image.

However, yes, this is a super thin TV of only one inch thickness, and that necessitates very shallow speaker cones, so this makes for rather undersized speakers that are about as good as standard computer speakers.

However, the manufacturer had the presence of mind to have a headphone jack built into the back of the unit, which easily allows you to simply plug in a better set of speakers to improve the sound.

Besides, I suspect most serious movie watchers will dispense with the sound from the TV altogether by having their DVD player and satellite tuner play through a proper high end 5.1 setup.

As for myself, until I get around to moving my Yamaha 5.1 setup over to my fiancee’s house, we are both perfectly content to watch movies on this nice little TV with its integral speakers.

Another aspect of this TV that is noteworthy is that it includes two HDMI jacks, making it a simple matter to hook up the satellite tuner to HDMI1 and the DVD player to HDMI2.

We then simply use the “Input” button on the remote to select between the two HDMI jacks to watch either what DishNetwork is broadcasting or a DVD.

For anyone who wants to know, yes, this includes an ATSC tuner, so anyone with a rooftop antenna or rabbit ears for over-the-air broadcasts will be able to seamlessly watch TV without requiring a separate converter box.

It also includes A/V jacks (Yellow-Video, Red-Right Audio Channel, White-Left Audio Channel), so you can easily hook up your three wire A/V cable to it.

It also has an RF connector for those of you who hook up your TV to coax cables.

Finally, for input, it also has the component video hookups (RGB) for the best picture short of HDMI.

Other jacks this TV includes are:

1) A COAX connector for hookup to a 5.1 COAX connection

2) Headphone jack (already mentioned above)

3) Two HDMI jacks (already mentioned above)

4) VGA connector that allows hookup to a computer’s standard D-Sub video cable

5) Audio jack that allows an audio device to play through the speakers on the TV => often used with a computer sound card

6) Power

7) USB, which I seriously doubt anyone will have occasion to use, as it is intended strictly for updating the TV firmware

Are there better TVs out there?

Absolutely, and the one I intend to get when I can eventually afford it is the 32″ Samsung LED TV.

However, this is small enough that it sits nicely on my fiancee’s rather top heavy DVD cabinet, and it is quite nice for spending an afternoon sitting on the couch together.

You will really enjoy this TV, and you can even completely bypass the speakers if you don’t like them if you so choose.

***ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION***

Having used this TV for the last few months, I have discovered two useful bits of information.

1) If you are looking to program a universal remote to work with this TV, I would suggest you look under the Samsung TV section for a valid code.

I did that with our DishNetwork remote, and we can fully control this TV with it.

2) This TV has a COAX jack to allow an external A/V receiver to decode digital audio to output to speakers.

The jack works for that purpose, but with one small problem, which is that the audio that comes out of it is limited to stereo ONLY.

Anyone wanting to listen to stereo only through his receiver won’t mind that, but you will not be able to get 5.1 or other surround…

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 Comments (7)

LED 22 VF60, December 16, 2009

By 

Russell Grove Jr. “TVcritic” (Portland, OR) – See all my reviews

  

Very nice TV especially for the price. Has 2 HDMI plugs for easy hookup. My only complaint is that the sound is absolutley horrible. Very “tinny” and adjusting the Bass or treble does not fix this issue. It gets very annoying. I hooked up a couple stereo speaker to it and that seems to work pretty well, but be warned about that, since if you do not allready have speakers, this will add to the cost of the TV. This is the only reason this product did not get 5 stars. Mounted easily on my wall and the 1080i picture is fantastic.

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Almost perfect, March 4, 2010

By 

Darren J. Dewey – See all my reviews

  

My wife and I purchased this TV from Amazon and it arrived today.

Scott Conway already covered most of the details in his excellent review, but there are a couple things I feel I should add.

1) Contrary to Scott’s account, ours did not come with the “surround sound” enabled by default. The sound from the internal speakers is downright horrible. enabling “surround sound” makes it worse. Interestingly, while I was underneath the unit (plugging in my external speakers) I noticed that the sound was actually better. I believe their attempt to hide the speakers by aiming them down was a mistake. Maybe it sounds better if used with the stand on a table or something, where a flat surface can reflect the sound, but when mounted on the wall, the sound is thin and tinny and no amount of adjusting of bass/treble will make it sound good. Luckily, I read the reviews here and elsewhere and knew the sound was a major setback for this TV and I had my external speakers ready to go. The surround sound option works pretty well with the external speakers, providing some good simulated separation, but I would probably only use that for movies and such, not for regular viewing.

2) Its slim form factor comes at a price, that being a laptop-style power brick with a 3-prong power plug. This really blew my wiring setup I had for the set I replaced. I’m going to have to do some major rework in order to get cables hidden from view again.

Ok, that said, I will confirm that the screen is clear, bright and provides a stunning picture. Set up was easy and the remote is uncluttered and even has braille markings for power, channel and volume buttons. Unfortunately, it’s a one-trick pony and is not a multi-function remote, so I’ll probably be using my cable remote for the most part, once I get it programmed for the tv.

As mentioned, I have cable so the TV itself won’t venture from channel 3 so I don’t know how responsive it is to changing channels. I was happy that I was able to quit the auto-scan after it found channel 3, instead of having to wait for it to slowly make its way through a complete scan.

All in all, this seems to be a pretty solid tv for the money. 5 stars if it had better sound and had a use for the USB port other than firmware updates.

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