The words “flat-out huge” come to mind when I try to describe Samsung’s HPN6339. This massive panel claims the title of the world’s largest plasma TV — at least until the Korean electronics giant begins selling its 70-inch model, announced last spring. Despite the bragging rights that come with owning this TV, not many folks will want to shell out the 22 grand it costs to make this set a part of their lives. Naturally, your buck will go a lot further with rear-projection or front-projection technology, but that’s hardly the point. The most important thing to remember is that you can hang the HPN6339 on the wall.
The biggest plasma TV in the world is almost all screen. A 1 3/4-inch-wide border of charcoal-gray plastic surrounds the massive pane of glass on all sides, and a pair of full-height, detachable speakers can be hung on either side. Samsung also offers an optional stand, but since it requires a 13 x 44-inch base to adequately support the massive set, most owners will probably mount this baby on the wall using the optional bracket. Amazingly, the HPN6339 is no thicker than its smaller-screen brothers, measuring only 3 1/2 inches deep. A fan-less design keeps the set whisper-quiet during operation.
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FAST FACTS
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KEY FEATURES INPUTS DVI (with HDCP copy-protection), VGA, composite/S-video, standard and wideband component video, all with stereo audio; RF antenna/cable OUTPUTS L/R front speaker-level and subwoofer line-level audio DIMENSIONS 59 1/4 inches wide, 35 1/4 inches high, 3 1/2 inches deep WEIGHT 153 pounds without stand PRICE $22,000; optional stand, $350; wall bracket, $350; speakers, $230 a pair MANUFACTURER Samsung Electronics America, Dept. S&V, 105 Challenger Rd., Ridgefield Park, NJ 07660; www.samsungusa.com; 800-726-7864 |
The input/output bay faces downward to keep the cables flush and out of sight. Many plasma TVs these days come with an external A/V control center so you don’t have to connect any of your sources directly to the panel, but the HPN6339 does not. That makes wall installation trickier because all those wires must be hidden. Of course, you could always avoid this problem by connecting your program sources through a receiver and then running the few remaining wires from the receiver to the panel.
Using some sort of switcher or an A/V receiver makes the most sense anyway, since the HPN6339 has only one composite- and one S-video input. The side input bay does host a nice ensemble of higher-quality jacks, including a pair of component-video inputs, a VGA-style computer input, and a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) input, which incorporates HDCP copy protection so that it will work with the latest HDTV set-top boxes and satellite receivers as well as DVI-equipped DVD players.
A computer can be connected to either the VGA or DVI jack, and the display can accept resolutions up to 1,024 x 768 via DVI or 1,280 x 1,024 via VGA. A convenient PC menu control allowed me to size the image correctly, although it wasn’t accessible with a high-definition DVI source.
Samsung has redesigned its hallmark silver remote for the better, and I liked its friendly layout and well-differentiated buttons. Selecting inputs was a matter of pressing the TV/Video button and choosing one from the menu — an arrangement I found more convenient than cycling through them all, but I still would have preferred a group of direct-access buttons. An LCD at the top of the remote shows the name of the device to be controlled, but neither the display nor the rest of the remote is backlit — c’mon, guys, we’re talking about a $22,000 TV here! Preprogrammed codes for various brands of DVD player, cable box, and VCR allow the remote to command other gear, but it can control only Samsung-brand HDTV tuners.
As with most HDTVs, the number of available picture modes — accessible via an Aspect button — depends on the input source. There are five choices for standard sources, including a Panorama mode that stretches the edge of the image more than the center, and a pair of Zoom modes that allow vertical positioning so you can, for example, catch the score at the top of the screen. When I switched to 480p (progressive-scan) format, or HDTV connected through component video, the Panorama option became inactive — but I was able to vertically reposition images in every mode. Using the DVI input only gave me a choice between Normal mode, which places gray bars to either side of a 4:3 image, and Wide, which fills the screen with 16:9 material.
Happily for anyone who wants to surf the Web while watching TV, the versatile split-screen/picture-in-picture (PIP) function works with every source. You can display any input source along with any other, either as a smaller inset image or in a split-screen arrangement. In spilt-screen mode, widescreen sources are squished horizontally, making everything look tall and skinny, but the images are still so big that warring couch potatoes don’t have to compromise — you can watch Dr. Phil and check out the scores on ESPN at the same time.
If you like to optimize your TV for different video sources, you’ll appreciate the HPN6339’s ability to remember different picture settings individually for each of the inputs. In addition to one custom picture preset, Samsung also provides three factory presets: Dynamic, Standard, and Movie. I liked Movie best for low-light viewing.
After calibrating the HPN6339 to NTSC color temperature (see “in the lab”, below), I settled down to watch the new DVD of X-2: X-Men United. It became immediately apparent that high resolution really pays off at 63 inches. When the mutant kids visit the museum, the closeup of Jean’s skin on the huge screen was almost too close, revealing pores and bumps and tiny wrinkles. The scene also made a great showcase for the set’s excellent color. Jean’s hair was tinged a lustrous auburn, the forked-tongued mutant Arty’s rugby shirt was a vibrant red, and the lime shirt and subtly tanned skin of his pre-teen crush were both brilliant and realistic. Thanks to the Samsung’s precise color decoder, I could crank the color control to more than 50% without tinting everyone’s skin red.
The movie’s opening scene gazes over a star field and, as I expected, the blackness of space wasn’t quite the deep, deep black you’d expect to see. Instead the spaces between the stars looked dark gray, causing the image to seem a bit washed out in the dark room. Although viewers who expect the kind of well-defined shadows produced by tube-based sets might be disappointed, the HPN6339 handled detail in darker areas better than many plasma displays I’ve seen. During the initial sequence where Nightcrawler invades the White House, for example, I could see the ridges of tattoos in his black forehead as he peers through a doorway, and the gradation from the depths around his eyes to the lighter shade of his cheekbone came across relatively smoothly.
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When I connected the TV to 1080i (interlaced) high-def sources, I was surprised to see some areas of the picture jitter. I first noticed this while watching a special on Japan from PBS’s HDTV loop, where the white flowers in a bouquet behind a businessman seemed to vibrate slightly. Next I tried Samsung’s own HDTV tuner via both DVI and component-video connections: the vibration was most obvious on the menu system, and it disappeared when I switched the output to 720p or 480p resolution. It also occurred on many test patterns from the 1080i D-VHS tape version of Digital Video Essentials (DVE), but again, the 720p version looked rock-solid. The upshot here: Any HDTV receiver or other high-def component connected to the HPN6339 should be set to output only 720p. That’s not a huge handicap as far as I’m concerned, since 720p tends to produce more stable, filmlike images anyway.
I watched the restaurant sequence from DVE at 720p, and the clarity of the 63-inch image blew me away. The closeup pan over the food revealed garden-fresh colors in the salad vegetables and subtle textures in the chicken skin, and the raspberries were replete with fuzz. The only glitch I noticed was some dancing motes of video noise and gradations in the shadows on the plates and wrinkles in the tablecloth.
Dancing motes and gradations notwithstanding, the Samsung HPN6339 delivers an immense, jaw-dropping picture. Its facility in rendering the exquisite detail of high-definition TV is matched by its highly accurate color, and the bright image will be especially welcome in day-lit rooms. The stratospheric price makes owning one of these slim monsters a privilege only a few people will enjoy, but if you want the biggest flat-panel set available, there’s no other game in town. Anybody who sees this huge yet skinny TV will walk away flat-out impressed.
In the Lab
Color temperature (Warm2 color temperature, Movie setting before/after calibration)
Low window (30-IRE): 8,219/6,485 K
High window (100-IRE): 7,387/6,525 K
Brightness (Warm2 color temperature, Movie setting before/after calibration, 100-IRE)
40.2/39.2 ftL
Before calibration, the HPN6339 came fairly close to the NTSC standard color temperature of 6,500 K, but it was so blue at very low light levels (20 IRE and below) that I ended up adjusting the low end at 30 IRE. Calibration improved the numbers significantly, and grayscale tracking was average, varying by 250 K from one end of the scale to the other. (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician with specialized equipment, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or call the Imaging Science Foundation at 561-997-9073.)
Both before and after adjustment, light output was excellent. The set’s NTSC color decoder was very good. Video processing was excellent, and there was no sign of edge enhancement with sharpness reduced to zero. DC restoration was average; the level of black varied somewhat with changes in the average brightness level. Overscan was higher than average, showing a 5% picture loss along the top and right edges.
With a DVI input from Samsung’s TS-160 set-top HDTV tuner, there was a vertical stripe along the left edge, and the entire image was shifted to the right, but I was able to fix this in the service menu. While geometry was perfect, brightness uniformity was not: I saw slight variations in the gray field patterns from the Digital Video Essentials test disc. Viewing angle was as good as with any direct-view TV.