This 46-inch 1080p offering from Samsung has turned more than a few heads, style-wise. And it’s a pretty good performer, too.
Samsung has been one of the more aggressive brands when it comes to advancing the LCD revolution. They’ve got several lines of TVs with different finishes and low (768p) and high (1080p) screen resolution. But they’ve also priced these sets to move, keeping within a few hundred dollars of the LCD pack during the 2006 holiday selling season.
The LN-S4695D is a newer cut from Samsung’s Gen7 fabs in Korea, and this screen size is also the dividing line between 768p resolution and 1080p. While there are still some 768p models in the line, like the LN-S4692, 1080p resolution is what’s driving the big screen LCD market these days.
Like Sharp’s LC-52D62U, the LN-S4695D is a fully integrated, set-it-and-forget-it HDTV product. But it’s got more A/V inputs than the Sharp and includes a second RF jack. And while its screen is six inches smaller, its street price is about $1,000 lower.
OUT OF THE BOX
The LN-S4695D is something to look at, even when it’s off. Like Pioneer’s PRO-FHD1, the LN-S4695D has a piano black luster finish and a nice swivel base that matches, so there won’t be too many arguments about where this HDTV will fit into a room. Indeed, it would likely be the focal point of more than one living space.
The famous Samsung “blue eye” power indicator is there, below the center of the screen. All other buttons are discretely placed under the lower right frame (not on the side). The 10-watt stereo speakers are also hidden along the bottom of the frame, which makes for a compact package, given the screen size. It’s not particularly heavy either, at 77 pounds.
Samsung has provided a full rack of connections. For starters, there are two RF inputs, one marked “Cable” and one marked “Air”. That’s because one tuner is set up to handle cable channel assignments and QAM reception, while the other is configured for terrestrial channels and 8VSB signals. Both inputs also receive analog (NTSC) signals.
One important distinction to note about this particular LCD HDTV is that it is not equipped with a CableCARD slot. The LN-S4695D will tune in any unencrypted (“in the clear”) QAM digital cable signals, which typically include your local off-air channels and some oddball cable networks like C-SPAN. But you won’t see any program guide information for these channels – that only comes through a CableCARD or cable set-top box.
As for AV inputs, you’ve got a pair of composite video jacks, one S-video jack, two separate component (YPbPr) inputs, a 15-pin VGA jack for PC connections, and two HDMI slots. Each input has a stereo audio input jack to match, and there’s also an optical (Toslink) digital audio output connector for your multi-channel AV receiver. (You do have a multi-channel AV receiver, don’t you?){mospagebreak}
REMOTE AND MENUS
The supplied remote is Samsung’s new black baton style, a big improvement over the old gray batons with their squirrely thumbstick navigation system. While you don’t have direct access to any input from the remote, pushing the Input button takes you to a display of all active AV inputs, as determined by connected signals. Scroll to the one you want and push the Enter button to change sources.
The remote design is nice but a bit cluttered, particularly the 12 tiny buttons at the very bottom that operate things like the Picture-in-picture function. It’s easy to hit the wrong button – in fact; it’s difficult to push the correct button in this area! There are also buttons for switching the antenna selectors and going into the channel manager function that are closely spaced and not easy to find.
The menus are easy to navigate, although they’re not particularly feature-rich. The Channel Manager is where you perform your initial scans for terrestrial and/or cable channels. Note that analog and digital channels are scanned sequentially by physical channel numbers (analog), then virtual channel numbers (terrestrial digital), and then physical channels again (digital cable).
Samsung provides a limited amount of control over image parameters. There are four factory image presets – Dynamic, Standard, Movie, and Custom. You’ll notice quite a difference in image brightness between Dynamic and Movie modes – the latter is 2/3 as bright as the former. You’ll also see quite a shift in white balance, somewhere in the range of 3000 – 4000 degrees.
Samsung has provided five basic aspect ratio settings, some of which are locked out when receiving or showing 720p and 1080i content. They are 16:9, Zoom1, Zoom2, Wide fit (sounds like a line of jeans!) and 4:3. 16:9 is used for anamorphic DVDs, while the zoom modes provide different degrees of image cropping.
Wide Fit is used to show letterboxed 16:9 content, such as is prevalent on analog NBC TV shows these days. 4:3 brings up side gray bars around standard definition TV, although the LN-S4695D will usually stretch these programs to fit the width of the screen as a default setting.
In addition to basic image adjustments, you can select from five different color temperature presets (Samsung calls them “color tone” settings): Cool1, Cool2, Normal, Warm1, and Warm2. My experience with other Samsung products is that Warm1 is usually a bit below D6500 and Warm2 is closer to D5300, so it will be difficult to get an exact match to D6500 unless you go into the service menu.
There is an intriguing control set labeled as “Color Weakness.” The owner’s manual describes these settings – sliders for red, green, and blue – as compensating for “the user’s specific color weakness.” Do they mean color blindness? Or do they mean a preference for over-saturated reds, or greens, or even blues? I’d stay away from these.
ON THE TEST BENCH
The LN-S4695D got a pretty good workout as one of the featured HDTVs during the 2007 Super Bowl HDTV Party. In fact, it was the only HDTV set that used an indoor antenna for reception, sitting atop an antique side table in my dining room with a Terk UHF yagi connected to it. I really liked the images I saw and expected good things from my test bench measurements.
After calibration for best grayscale images, I measured 173 nits (50.5 ft-L) in Standard mode, which is plenty bright enough for viewing in a sunny room, but a bit too intense for nighttime. That number fluctuated from a low of 145 nits in Movie mode to a high of 230 nits in Dynamic mode. The LN-S4695D has ample photons to spare, so don’t worry about dialing the contrast and brightness back a little.
Image contrast was lower than I would have liked, clocking at 195:1 ANSI (average) and 223:1 peak, both measured in Standard mode. Switching to Dynamic mode raised those numbers to 284:1 and 318:1, respectively. The problem was relatively high black levels, about .8 nits across the board. That’s about four times higher what the best plasma displays can achieve.
The gamma curve seen in Figure 2 looked nice and smooth in Standard mode and I didn’t see any evidence of white crush or clipping at high luminance levels, even when approaching 300 nits of brightness. The actual curve plotted out to a gamma of 1.94 (2.2 is good for video). There’s no way to adjust gamma other than in the service menu, so you’ll have to be happy with that number.
The LN-S4695D also does a bang-up job of tracking a clean, plasma-like grayscale from 20 IRE to 100 IRE. The total shift in color temperature between those two points was 570 Kelvin, about 70 points higher than what I consider to be acceptable. Figure 4 shows the erratic tracking using factory settings and the more stable results I was able to achieve after calibration.
Where the LN-S4695D falls a bit short is in its color accuracy. While the blue, magenta, and red coordinates are very close to the REC.709 HDTV standard, the green coordinate is shifted considerably towards cyan and yellows are very de-saturated. Figure 5a shows the raw color gamut, which resembles an equilateral triangle but misses many shades of yellow-green. Figure 5b shows the effective constrained color gamut, which misses about 30% of the REC.709 color space.
VIDEO IMAGE QUALITY
As I mentioned earlier, the LN-S4694D had its shakedown during the 2007 Super Bowl and did an acceptable job with 1080i and 720p content. However, a closer inspection with the Realta HQV standard and HD DVD discs revealed the HDTV’s shortcomings.
The LN-S4695D failed the HD DVD video and film resolution loss tests, indicating a simple “bob” process is used for 1080i-to-1080p conversion. In a “bob” scheme, sequential 540p odd and even fields are presented as frames with no motion compensation.
Surprisingly, I saw the same thing with standard definition DVD tests, including the waving flag and rotating bar sequences. About the only HQV test the Samsung did pass was the film mode detection. Here, the HDTV locked into 3:2 mode very quickly. But it wasn’t able to make sense of any other oddball HQV cadences, especially the anime (5:5) and Varispeed (3:2:3:2:2) clips. Other tests showed the noise reduction and DNIe circuits to have little if any effect.
What did surprise me was how well the Samsung processed analog component video. The Zone Plate target from Video Essentials was remarkably clean of moiré and flicker at 300 and 400 lines, and the scaled images, although somewhat aliased, were of acceptable sharpness at a viewing distance of seven feet.
While live 1080i sports had problems, HD movies from HD DVD and cable were much better (that 3:2 detection again!). Colors were pleasing and not over-saturated and there was plenty of image detail in titles like Superman Returns and King Kong. Note that the high black levels on the LN-S4685D make watching low-light films like World Trade Center a difficult task. Animated films and older movies with full wash stage lighting will display much better.
You’ll also find viewing angles, while not as wide as those on a plasma HDTV, should be sufficient for a normal living or family room with a total viewing area of about 90 degrees (45 degrees either side of the screen centerline). Outside of this area, you’ll see the screen start to wash out.
CONCLUSIONS
Samsung’s LN-S4695D is full of contradictions. Its color quality looks good at first glance, but green and yellow are undersaturated. Its 3:2 performance is excellent, but it can’t deinterlace 1080i or 480i video cleanly. Yet the LN-S4695D does an outstanding job decoding and scaling composite video, and tracks a very clean grayscale once calibrated.
I’d have to give this HDTV a qualified recommendation, mostly because of its 1080i-to-1080p performance. The average person may not even care that the Samsung’s color gamut is way short of that required for HDTV, but I’ll bet they notice the scan line artifacts when viewing 1080i telecasts of sporting events like NASCAR, basketball, hockey, and football.
Power consumption: During a six-hour test cycle, the LN-S4695D consumed 284.4 watts displaying a mix of normal SDTV content and commercials, operating in Standard mode. Total power consumption during this test was 1.581 kWh.
SPECIFICATIONS
Dimensions: 44.5"(W) x 31"(H) x 12.8"(D) (with stand)
Weight: 77.2 pounds (with stand)
Pixel matrix: 1920×1080 TFT LCD
Video Inputs: 2x composite video, 1x S-video, 2x YPbPr component (BNC), 2x HDMI, 1x 15-pin VGA
Audio Inputs: 6x RCA analog stereo, 1x Mini stereo
Outputs: Toslink (SPDIF) digital audio
Compatibility: NTSC/PAL, VGA-SXGA, 480i/30, 480p/60, 720p/60, 1080i/30, 1080p/60
Audio: 10W stereo speakers
www.samsung.com
Reviewed by Peter Putman
