Yo! here comes more on HD compliant excellent LCD television which I laid my hands on:)
17 October 2006
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After you've been watching DVDs and playing games on a 40-inch LCD TV for a few weeks, it is a little depressing when you have to go back to your old 29-inch CRT TV.
But that's exactly what I've had to do since Samsung called at my house wanting its 40-inch Bordeaux LCD back. I was almost tempted to tell them, "Bordeaux 40-inch? What Bordeaux 40-inch", but I didn't. My living room is now LCD TV-free.
It's quite a shock going from 40-inches to a measly 29-inches. I almost have to squint to see what's happening now.
The Bordeaux range is Samsung's top-of-the-range LCD TV, and my review model had a smart black finish with a swivel base, which was invaluable at providing the perfect viewing angle, no matter where we were sitting.
The front panel is uncluttered, apart from an on-off button, rimmed in silver, with Samsung printed above it, and a stylish blue-tinted strip at the bottom. On the right hand side, you'll find connections for headphones, S-video and composite.
The Bordeaux is HDMI (high- definition multimedia interface) compliant and, importantly, HD ready, with a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels at 60Hz. It comes with a variety of inputs, including DVI, HDMI, S-video and component (Y/Pb/Pr). You can also connect your home PC.
Setting up the Bordeux was a breeze, and its easy plug and play system will automatically scan for television channels in your area and assign them. If some of the channels are slightly ghosty, you can use the fine-tune feature to sharpen things a little, and Samsung's digital noise reduction feature will sharpen the picture and reduce ghosting, as well.
The Bordeux has a response time of 8 milliseconds and aspect ratios of 16:9 and 4:3, and has a 5000:1 contrast ratio, which Samsung says will produce true black and crisper images. A pair of speakers sit on the underside of the front edge, which produce good sound using TruSurround XT decoding – but, to be honest, if you're paying this sort of money for a high-end LCD TV, you're going to have a decent 5.1 home-theatre system hooked up, anyway.
I tested the Bordeux with general TV reception, watching DVDs and playing high-definition Xbox 360 games, and came away impressed.
Testing the picture quality of my Xbox 360, I set the console to output to 1080i resolution and noticed a remarkable difference in picture quality when compared against my Philips 29-inch –which has a great picture in its own right but isn't high-definition.
Minute details and particle effects seemed more defined, colours seemed richer and more vibrant. I was seeing the game as the designers intended – without having the screen image cut off at the sides as is normal with non- widescreen TVs when using a compressed 16:9 format.
The Bordeux also features what Samsung calls Game Mode, a function that is said to offer faster reponse times and sharper graphics for games.
I was particularly interested in seeing how the Samsung would display the text in Capcom's zombie game Dead Rising – a game well known for its notoriously small text on standard definition TVs. As I expected, the text was noticeably sharper and easier to read than on my 29" TV.
When watching DVDs the picture was vivid and clear, with great colour contrasts – although at times, blacks seemed too dark. For standard TV viewing, the picture was clear and sharp, with nice bright colours.
Retailling for almost $5000, though, the 40-inch Samsung Bordeux isn't cheap, and there are cheaper LCD TVs out there, but if you've got the readies, and are looking at making the move to LCD, the Samsung Bordeux series is worth a look :)