Samsung HLP4674W DLP

[Crowman]

A friend is purchasing the Samsung HLP4674W DLP television and I was wondering whether the picture for a. DVD and b. HDTV would be better with DVI or HDMI verses component video? If someone could explain in semi technical jargon it would really help my understanding. Thanks!

[JonMarsh]

For DVD, you should probably run only 480 on HDMI. The problem is that if you use an upscaling DVD player, on HDMI, it will output encrypted component with the DVD component color space, but at the higher resolutions, you display would expect HD color space (different coefficients on the color difference signals), and you won't have the right color balance. At 480P, a good component ouptut and DVI are pretty close in quality- DVI and HDMI really pay off at the higher resolutions where the analog bandwidth of mid priced gear may not be so great.

One issue that's a problem with consumer RPTV's is that there is no clear standard about how they handle signal processing- some that receive DVI convert it to analog then re-digitize it in their core chip set. You'll note that the Samsung will report 1920X1080 as being the highest supported resolution, but the actual display is an DLP HD2 chip at 1280X720. At least it does take 720P native. The worst offender is probably the RCA DLP which doesn't even take 720P as an input resolution- only 480P and 1080i.

Making generalization about the technology and applying it to a particular set is potentially "dangerous" - there's really no substitute for trying it out with the gear you think you may favor using with it. In the case of HD, it's almost always going to be downcoverting anyway, because few transmissions are in 720P. DVI/HDCP may be necessary in order to get "high res" out of an HD-DVD player, so a wise path might be using a standard def component input for DVD, a wideband component input for HDTV OTA or cable, and HDMI for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

[c3dlc]

Post removed.

David Meek