bonnie & jason

Samsung HL-5087W 50″ 1080p DLP HDTV initial impressions

By jason, October 21, 2006 on 10:14 am | In commentary, tv | No Comments

With the Canon HV10, of course, I needed an HDTV to view the footage.  After much research on LCD, Plasma, DLP, cost, brand, etc., I decided on the Samsung HL-5087W.

Amazon had a great deal compared to any other vendor and even included free shipping.  I got it for $1699 and I just noticed the price has now dropped even further to $1550 from Electronics Expo.  (You need to pay shipping with them though.)

Why?

At the end of the day, I decided that I wanted  1080p and 50″ but was not willing to pay the premium for the LCD and plasma versions.  Also, the extra width of the modern DLP really wasn’t an issue for me.  Neither was the “rainbow” effect that some people can see with DLP displays.  As such, I was trying to decide between the Samsung and the Sony KDS-50A2000.  At that point, it was more a matter of price than anything else.  (The Samsung was more than $300 cheaper.)  I suppose I also liked the aesthetics of the Samsung better.  Finally, when I went to the store, I couldn’t tell a difference in picture quality.

Performance

I have a DirecTV HR-20 HD DVR hooked up via component cables.  It pulls in what would be off-air HD via the satellite so I don’t need an extra antenna.  (I’ve heard image quality is actually better off-air though.)  Overall, image quality seems to be what I expected.  HD channels look great.  SD channels look ok.  The only complaint I have is that the HD channels occasionally look over-compressed.

sidebar: The DirecTV DVR interface is lacking in many ways.  The UltimateTV (which has now been relegated to the basement) interface works much better.  The biggest complaint is that the 30-second jump doesn’t actually jump.  It basically just fast forwards and then stops.  So instead of instantaneously shifting through commercials, I need to watch them go by semi-quickly.  It’s also harder to manage recorded shows.  I’m hoping many of the issues get fixed via automatic firmware downloads… we’ll see.

The best image quality I’ve seen, however, is from the Canon HV10 connected via component cables (it doesn’t have an HDMI output.)  The TV resolution really shines here and color and sharpness are fantastic.  I also don’t notice any of the compression artifacts that I noticed with the DirecTV receiver.  I can’t wait to see what it looks like with HD DVD/Blu-Ray 1080p sources!

Final Thought

I’m not sure if TV’s need to break in like speakers and receivers, but I feel like the image quality has gotten better after the first week of use.  Maybe my eyes are just getting used to it.  I’ll update this again if I notice any other changes.  Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this, I’d love to hear it.

Canon HV10: initial thoughts

By jason, October 21, 2006 on 12:09 am | In commentary, photography, tv | No Comments

I haven’t had a chance to put the camera through it’s paces yet, but here are my first impressions:

Handling

The camera is small!  The vertical format isn’t a problem for me as it has been for some reviews have stated, but my hands aren’t all that big.  For point and shoot stuff, it works just fine.  I will say that some of the buttons are kinda small so you won’t want to make adjustments while shooting.  The zoom function works ok… although in my opinion it’s a little too “on-off.”  You move it a little and nothing happens and then wham-o, it zooms too quickly.  It’ll get better after I get some practice, but I still think they could have done a better job with the calibration.  The only other comment I have is that I found it easier to put my middle three fingers in the hand strap instead of my last four fingers.  This way, I don’t have to hold my arm at such a vertical angle.  The only caveat to this would be if I was using the electronic viewfinder instead of the fold out screen, which I don’t see happening all the much.  To tell you the truth, the EVF is so small and hard to use, I’m not even sure why they bother including it.

Picture Quality

In a word, “fantastic!”  Resolution is great and the low-light performance that camcorderinfo.com bashed isn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be.  The zoom lens has pretty good range and the digital zoom up to 40x is actually quite usable.  (I probably wouldn’t go with the 100X range though.)  The best part about the camera, however, is probably the optical image stabilization.  When zoomed out, the image is rock steady.  When zoomed in (even at 40X digital zoom) you don’t have the headache inducing jitters that accompany non-stabilized images.  Aside from the actual stabilization, however, is the quality of the image itself.  Unlike electronic image stabilizers, optical systems don’t have to go through any processing mumbo-jumbo to get stabilized.  As such, the image quality is as good as if you had the camera on a tripod.

Battery Life

Not good.  The battery is small and might be able to get you through an hour of shooting.  I haven’t tested it all the way from fully charged to failure, but I’m definitely going to get the larger capacity battery.

sidebar: I got a generic BP-315 from eBay… sucks.  Never again.  At first, it wouldn’t charge beyond 75%.  When I tried to “reset” it at the seller’s suggestion by draining it all the way and then charging it fully, it wouldn’t charge at all!

Digital Camera

The camera actually works quite well.  The picture quality was better than I expected and the controls weren’t as awkward as I expected.  I suspect the fact that the camera uses a CMOS sensor has is a good thing.  Also, the image stabilization that works so great in camcorder mode works just as well in still image mode.  Even the flash works essentially the same as any other point and shoot camera.  Finally, you also have the option of doing some manual control with shutter speed and aperture which I did not expect.  To tell you the truth, I did not expect to use this feature of the camcorder all that often, but now, I’m thinking I can probably leave the Powershot S400 at home if I’m taking the camcorder with me.

Other

I still have to spend some more time with the camera and play with more of the manual features.  I also was hoping to find some way to use the image stabilization only in the vertical direction so I can pan without getting any jerky movements in the horizontal direction.  I don’t think that’s an option though.  (Disappointing as my SLR lenses do this quite easily and effectively.)  Finally, I need to figure out how much hard drive space this thing is going to suck up and decide how I’m going to archive footage.  Along those lines, I may need to upgrade the computer as well if I can get some clients to integrate some simple videography into my wedding business.  We’ll see.

That’s about it for now.  I’ll post more impressions as I get some more time behind the lens.