What We Think

While it requires a little extra attention to coax out its best picture, this big Samsung packs plenty of visual punch.

America is ready for HDTV football. Every NFL-carrying network this year offers numerous high-def football broadcasts every weekend, and all Sunday and Monday prime-time games appear in HDTV. DirecTV even has a high-def version of its Sunday Ticket package, allowing you to watch out-of-market games. For a football fan, the beginning of the gridiron season is the most tempting time to consider buying a new TV, and all those “available in HDTV” promos and neighbors who’ve taken the plunge don’t help ease the temptation.

Neither do sets like the Samsung HL-R6168W. This rear-projection HDTV, with its massive 61-inch screen and 1080p resolution, seems tailored for the HD sports fan. It does cost a few hundred dollars more than the same-size 720p model in the company’s lineup, but stepping up to 1080p allows for a sharper picture with 1080i high-def TV shows, which are far more common than 720p broadcasts. More critically, the “wobulation” technology used in both models (see “Pixel Magic”) lets you sit close without being distracted by individual pixels.

From my seating distance of just 8 feet, the TV presented an immersive yet unobtrusive face. Its screen is bordered by a thick black bezel that measures 13/4 inches wide along the top and sides, 41/2 inches wide along the bottom. An inch-wide gap runs the width of the cabinet, visually separating the black screen from the silver speakers and base below. Samsung calls this a “floating screen” design, and it adds some much-needed panache.

The pedestrian Samsung clicker could use a dash of panache itself. The gray wand lacks backlighting and doesn’t do much to aid navigation by feel. Its worst offense is that the oft-used key for changing display mode is hidden under a sliding door. Samsung needs to work on this — the company delivers a similar remote with most models, and its nicely designed TVs deserve better.

SETUP The TV’s menu allows access in one place to every function from input switching to initial setup. Samsung includes the free TV Guide On Screen, a feature that’s designed to replace the guide you lose when you ditch your cable box for a CableCARD. TV Guide has a history of not working properly with some digital cable systems, but it grabbed program information successfully this time from Time Warner NYC.

I appreciated the selection of rear-panel ports, including a pair of HDMI inputs and a dedicated VGA-style PC input. Most current 1080p sets cannot accept 1080p sources via HDMI, and the Samsung is no exception, but it did accept full 1,920 x 1,080-pixel progressive signals via its PC input — good news if you have a PC with a compatible output.

The range of available picture tweaks excited me at first, especially because each of the four picture presets — Dynamic, Standard, Movie, and Custom — can be adjusted individually for each input, allowing a tremendous amount of customization based on source and ambient lighting. There’s also a control that’s supposed to affect the intensity of certain colors (My Color) and a second one that lets you adjust red, green, and blue (Color Weakness). For the most accurate picture, these settings should be left at their default values.

The Short Form

SAMSUNG.COM / 800-726-7864 / $4,700 / 57 x 41.625 x 18.375 IN / 95 LBS

Plus

•Deep blacks. •Accurate color. •1080p input for PCs.

Minus

•No off switch for DNIe processing.

Key Features

•$4,700 •1080p DLP light engine •Built-in HDTV tuner •Digital cable-ready with CableCARD slot and TV Guide On Screen •2 HDMI, 2 FireWire, 2 component-video inputs •1080p-capable VGA computer input •4 customizable picture presets per input

Test Bench

Multiburst resolution patterns revealed that the Samsung couldn’t resolve all 1,920 horizontal lines of a 1080i-format signal via HDMI, component-video, or VGA, nor could it fully resolve all 1,280 lines of a 720p signal. Standard-def 480i and 480p signals were fully resolved. Color temperature in Warm2 mode was relatively accurate if a bit uneven in the mid-tones. Color decoding was excellent for both high-def and standard-def sources. Geometry was slightly off, but focus at the corners was excellent. Overscan measured 4% on average, and the entire image was shifted 2% toward the bottom. Hot-spotting was a bit worse than usual on most full-raster gray patterns, but overall picture uniformity was very good. Full lab results

The one adjustment that was decidedly absent, however, was a switch to turn off Samsung’s DNIe (Digital Natural Image engine) processing, which adds edge enhancement and other effects that can improve the look of standard TV but degrades images from high-quality sources like HDTV and DVDs. The processing engages automatically as soon as you switch inputs, and the only way I found to defeat it was to manually change from one preset to another after switching inputs. For example, upon switching to an HDMI input I noticed signs of artificial edge enhancement until I changed the preset from Standard to Movie, where I had set the Sharpness control at zero. Samsung should put a global “DNIe off” option back in its HDTVs.

PICTURE QUALITY Like most DLP HDTVs, the Samsung HL-R6168W is capable of excellent contrast: its whites are bright and its blacks dark, creating a powerful picture. The two are more closely tied than on other DLP sets I’ve tested, however, so turning contrast up too high made the dark areas too bright. I settled on a contrast setting of 34, which still produced a bright picture in my completely dark home theater and kept the dark areas of the picture nice and inky — something I noticed immediately after I slipped the Ultimate Edition DVD of Carlito’s Way into my player.

During the nightclub scene where Carlito (Al Pacino) and his lawyer David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) celebrate Carlito’s release from prison, the black in their suits and in the letterbox bars was notably deep. As they discussed the future, the dark fabric of David’s suit faded realistically into the shadows, but in the dimmer areas of the picture I still saw plenty of detail, like thin gray pinstripes and folds in the fabric.

The party clothes of the dance-floor denizens stood out beneath the lights, the ladies’ purple, red, polka-dot, and leopard-spot dresses creating a riot of color. The ruby-red lipstick of the two women who accompany Carlito and Kleinfeld shone on their bored faces, and I detected natural-looking variations in the ladies’ skin tones.

To really push the set’s capabilities, I tuned in a Yankees game in 1080i. The pinstripes on Alex Rodriguez’s white jersey appeared realistically thin yet crisply resolved — a good example of the Samsung’s extra resolution. Individual blades of infield grass and the folds in the pitcher’s uniform were crisp and sharp, but I did notice a little too much “sharpness.” The sign behind home plate looked excessively bright around the edges of letters — a clear indication of edge enhancement. Sure enough, the exaggerated brightness disappeared when I switched picture presets to disengage DNIe. Without the ability to easily turn off the processing, I’m afraid most viewers will end up watching edge-enhanced images when they could be seeing sharper, cleaner high-def.

BOTTOM LINE Samsung’s HL-R6168W delivers a very good image overall, and an even better one when you take the time to disengage the DNIe processing. Its jumbo screen takes great advantage of the extra resolution afforded by 1080p, and the set’s punchy picture and vivid colors are just the thing for high-def Sunday Ticket holders. If the big weekend match-up calls for a big TV, this one can take you deep into the game.

TEST BENCH

Unless indicated otherwise, all tests were conducted with 1080i-format signals via the TV's HDMI input.
COLOR TEMPERATURE (Warm2 color temperature and Movie mode before/after calibration)
Low window (20-IRE): 6,972/6,553 K
High window (80-IRE): 6,941/6,556 K
BRIGHTNESS(100-IRE window before/after calibration): 72/38 ftL

The Samsung HL-R6168W gave mixed results on the test bench. Its out-of-the-box color temperature in Warm2 mode was still blue overall, and while mid-tones were more accurate, very dark areas were noticeably bluer. After calibration, the grayscale came much closer to the NTSC standard of 6,500 K overall, but it still showed variations in mid-tones, appearing somewhat greener from 40 to 70 IRE. Overall, the grayscale fluctuated more than normal for DLPs I've tested. (Calibration needs to be performed by a qualified technician, so discuss it with your dealer before purchase, or contact the Imaging Science Foundation at imagingscience.com or 561-997-9073.)

The television was capable of extreme brightness, maxing out in Cool2 mode with 100% contrast at 159 ftL. It had a difficult time maintaining a consistent level of black regardless of picture content, however, and achieved much better blacks and a better overall contrast ratio when contrast was reduced to around 35%.

According to multiburst resolution patterns from my Sencore VP403 signal generator, the Samsung couldn't resolve all 1,920 horizontal lines of a 1080i-format signal via HDMI, component-video, or VGA. It also couldn't resolve all 1,280 lines of a 720p signal.

Overall, component-video looked less clean than HDMI - a typical result. Color decoding was excellent for both high-def and standard-def sources, with no noticeable accentuation or desaturation of red or green vs. blue. Significant edge enhancement was still visible with sharpness reduced to zero and the DNIe circuit turned on, but disengaging DNIe eliminated edge enhancement. The ramp pattern revealed some striation (contouring), especially toward the darker end, but no worse than most DLPs. Geometry was slightly off, with a minor pincushion effect to the side and slight bowing along the bottom, but focus at the corners was excellent.

Overscan measured an average of 4%, but the entire image was shifted 2% toward the bottom, where overscan measured 6% - more than average. Hot-spotting was a bit worse than usual on most full-raster gray patterns, and a very slight shadow was visible along the edge of the image, but overall uniformity was very good.