Rating: 
Summary: happy with the 56" one - assume this will be great too
Review: After long and arduous search for a big-screen TV, and having bad experience dealing with RCA's Scenium model (avoid at all cost!), we finally settled on the Samsung DLP. The technology is great. Pictures are crystal clear and much brighter. Best TV for Monday night football (with an antenna) and the great DVD movies you have. Network broadcasts of sports events are a whole new experience with this TV. Plus you can't beat the light weight. Highly recommended. The only drawback is that this TV makes those channles with poor signals that much more difficult to tolerate. To find out more about the DLP technology, you can visit:
www.dlp.com
Rating: 
Summary: Not so good
Review: DLP does not have good color contrast and black level, the black color on dark scenes came out as greyish/patchy shadow on the one I bought. The dark scenes are awful on the DLP. Tried to watch 28 Days Later on the DLP and the picture quality is just horrible. Looks like watching dot matrix picture quality. All these happens even though I have Monster component cables and progressive scan DVD player. The sales guy told me to move back my 6 feet viewing area and get the top level Samsung DVD player and use DVI cable, which will set me back 500-600 dollars more. Returned my DLP and got Sony Grand Wega XBR LCD. It's 300 bucks more if you bargain right plus it has the HDTV tuner built in and it's the same level of quality as plasma and the dark scenes on movies are excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Great TV - make sure to get HD TV service at the same time
Review: Everyone talks about how beautiful the graphics are on these tvs. Get an xbox with component output and you're in Halo Heaven. Try playing MVP Baseball or Top Spin on these pieces of junk. You'll find that the video and audio delay is too much to handle. Try swinging at a 95 MPH fastball and you'll find that the ball is in the catcher's mit before you even start to swing. Turns out that these digital displays require more video processing time. So they decide to delay the audio to match. Unfortunately all video gamers must now suffer from this. Any game that requires quick reaction time like stopping a moving line at a certain point on a bar is impossible. It's really sad that something this serious is often overlooked. I took my xbox to a circuit city and tried it on all the digital displays. They all had the same poor result. I try it on a cheap $200 tube tv and it's perfect. Not many people know about this, at least nobody I've talked to. So keep this delay in mind.
Rating:
Summary: Great TV , but buy the extended warranty
Review: Firstly, I love the TV. I bought it because I wanted good contrast, bright colors, and no burn-in (I play a lot of X-Box games) and it delivers all those. But I'm giving it only three stars because it's just not very reliable.
- it is incredibly sensitive to signal quality. I have digital cable; there was heavy snow on many channels and I was getting dropouts - the channel suddenly missing - on the others. The cable company diagnosed a bad ground line, replaced it, and everything was fine. But during the entire time, my spare TV (CRT) looked perfectly fine - no snow, no dropout. So it's this TV that's sensitive.
- It needs a lot of service. It blew the lamp (a $239 dollar part) after three months, the color wheel after six, and now, at 11 months, it's just blown the lamp again. I'm about to get a warranty replacement of the whole light engine.I am kicking myself for not buying a 3-year extended warranty from the dealer. And just as a FYI, I bought Samsungs HDTV DVD player and use the DVI conenction and the picture quality is awesome.
Rating:
Summary: The new ones are out now....
Review: Here's a feedback which I left for HLP model TVs also. HLNs are older thatn HLP and the feedback below compares HLP/HLN/HLM. It does not has the nunmber of input/output (composite/component etc) since that can easily be found on the product description page.
This reviews pretty much applies to all the DLP level TVs from Samsung. I researched for around more than couple of months before finally buying this one.
Samsung initially started with HLM/HLN series DLP models which were using HD2 chip from Texas Instruments and the contrast ratio was 1000:1. This performed very well in reviews, quality and black level as compared to Sony LCD rear projection.
The next series is the latest on which is HLP xx63 series where xx is the size in diagonal (HLP 4663, HLP 5063). The improvements in this are 7 segment color wheel instead of 6-segment, which gives better color. This also uses 3rd generation chip HD3 which has contrast ratio of 1500:1. The bulb are also better in this one since there were some problems in the earlier version of the TV. This is a great TV, light weight as compared to some other and plasmas.
The next series which is out only in 2 models is HLP 5085 and HLP5685. These are also 7-segment color wheel but they have HD2+ chip. This is 4th generation chip and is better than HD3. Its contrast ratio is 2500:1 which should mean better black levels. These are the ones with pedestal which looks cool in the picture but is kinda bulky looking in the store. I'm not sure why this model is not out in 46 inches, may be it doesn't make difference in smaller sizes.
Next, 5th generation chip is going to be xHD3 and should give around 4500:1 contrast ratio.
Overall, DLPs are better since they have better contrast than plasmas and weigh less. They also don't have a burn-in issue like plasmas. HLP series is the best one till now and Samsung is the oldest player in this.
Other manufacturers are also catching up, so this should drive the price down further. good for consumers.
Hope this helps and good luck shopping.
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Some more feedback on the picture and input modes after two weeks into the purchase:
The contrast ratio of HLN/HLP series are good provided you are watching the TV at the same height. If you watch from slightly above/below or left/right, then you'll see it slightly less bright. Just like a laptop screen behaves, maye slightly better.
It has following picture modes:
- 4:3 standard definition (SD) cable programming. puts black bars on the side of the picture if you watch it in this mode.
- wide mode (16:9). if you watch SD tv on this mode, it'll stretch the picture
- panorama mode. stretches only the outside portion of the picture making center of the picture in the correct proporting (aspect ratio) but the sides bit distorted
- zoom1/zoom2: they just soom in from the center with different stretching methods.
Component inputs (in SD and HD) aspect ratios only have normal and wide options. Normal being a little pinched, while wide is normal.
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Some more feedback after 5 weeks of purchase.
I started seeing some problems with the lamp. The manual says that when the bulb/lamp needs replacement, all the three lights on the front switch will start blinking. Atleast couple of times a day, the following was happening:
- when I switch on the TV, the lamp will try to bring the picture while the audio was there
- after couple of seconds tv will go to standby mode
- it'll turn on again after couple of seconds and try to bring up the picture
- and go again the loop to standby mode
something this happens 3-4 times and the pictures comes and sometime it just gives up and the tv turns off.
I'm glad that I bought the warranty after couple of weeks from Circuit city itself, otherwise lamps are not covered in one year Sammy warranty.
... to be continued ...
updated on 12/19:
The TV has been working great ever since, no complains what so ever. I've also tried playing DVD and asf format movies on the laptop connected to the TV thru 25pin monitor cable and stereo audio cables, and it all works fine.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy Samsung at your own RISK
Review: I bought a Samsung flat-panel television in March, and it the panel went dead in April. I brought it to a one of Samsung's certified dealers for repair, and waited and waited. Finally in May, I was told that the the television panel was indeed defective and couldn't be fixed, so the manufacturer was obligated to replace it under the warranty. It's now September, and guess what, I'm still waiting for the replacement. Buy from Samsung at your own risk. From my own experience, they don't stand by their products.
Rating:
Summary: Best BANG for your HDTV Dollar.
Review: I've had this set for 8 months now and I am still impressed with it's performance. I did allot of research before deciding which set would be my first HDTV. After weighing all of the pluses and minuses (for me) the Samsung DLP's came out on top.
No burn-in means you can watch your standard definition (SD) programs in their normal 4:3 aspect ratio (no need too stretch the picture). You could leave a static image on the TV 24/7 and it will not affect the screen. Also DLP's are not affected by magnetic fields, which means you can put non-shielded speakers right next to them. I would highly recommend a DVD player with a DVI output (like the Bravo D1 or Samsung's 931 ) which will provied the best possible picture with these TV's (I've run some tests). Be aware that with DLP's the better the source the better the picture. Now I'm not talking about high dollar cables (a $25 DVI cable will perform the same as a $100 one), what I mean is High Definition programming looks spectacular as do DVD's through a DVI enabled DVD player, but SD programming can look anywhere from good to preety bad. Very happy with my decision.
Rating:
Summary: This TV is great!!!
Review: in the past I worked at a major electronics store. The best TV we sold by far was this TV. It has the greatest color and the sharpest picture. Most customers would come in and marvel at this TV along with the employees. On the very rare occassion a customer would come in and tell us that the picture was horrable. After asking a few questions you would be able to find out that the problem wasn't with the TV but it was the way it was hooked up. Remember when you buy the best TV on the market you have to buy the best cables and you must have a high definition source. A power filter is also a great option which will make your picture even better. Monster cables and monster power filters work the best. Expect to tack on about another $1000-$2000 to get it working like you see in the store. If you don't have that extra money to spend don't buy this TV. Trust me from experience, when somone says "this TV is not good" it is simply because they are hooking it up wrong. Remember that hooking up a high definition TV is not like hooking up that old 20" RCA you have in your room. Make sure you leave it in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. In short, if the TV is hooked up correctly, it is the best TV on the market.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth it
Review: Looked at both the Sony LCDs and Samsung DLP. Samsung picture sharper and brighter (for my taste). Oversaturation of greens was not an issue and not distracting. Noticed it more where scenes were darker. Samsung 931 DVI works very well. Onkyo 701 receiver along with Polk Audio and Velodyne speakers sound great. Other concerns mentioned in other reviews I have not found to be an issue such as "fan noise" and "rainbows". Overall a very theatre-like experience and well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Samsung HLN617W 61" HDTV with DLP Review
Review: My wife and I purchased our Samsung HLN617W HDTV one month ago and we are very pleased with it! We researched a lot of products and technology before buying our big screen TV and surround sound system. We divided the large screen products into four categories, Projection High Definition TV (HDTV), Projection HDTV with DLP, Flat Panel Plasma display and overhead projectors. The overhead projector is a viable option only if you have a dedicated room with controlled lighting. The Flat Panel Plasma displays are still way too expensive for the size screen that we wanted. The HDTV with DLP has a brighter picture and wider viewing angle than HDTV without DLP. Plus the HDTV with DLP units are lighter and more compact than HDTV models (our Samsung 61" HLN617W is only 18" deep and weighs less than 100 pounds).
After deciding on a HDTV with DLP we researched reviews on the Internet and looked at lots of makes and models in stores (Circuit City, Costco, Sam's Club, etc.). One thing that I noticed looking at the TVs is that when the screen is dark, some models have a clear and distracting reflection in the background. You can see a mirror reflection of people and lights behind you. Other makes and models have a much more muted, diffused and subtle reflection that is less distracting. In a totally darkened room this might not be a big deal, but most people have some background light in their home theater family or living rooms. I HIGHLY recommend that you choose an HDTV-DLP model that has a subdued background reflection (like the Samsung HLN617W)!
I also recommend that you buy an extended warranty with any HDTV-DLP. The projection lamp for the Samsung HLN617W is rated for approximately 6000 hours or about 3 years and costs around $250.00.
Recommend you get a DVD player (or surround sound DVD system) with "progressive scan" video output for which you need special red-green-blue high quality video cables. You should also use digital audio cables whenever possible. If you have cable or satellite TV, you will want to subscribe to the new High Definition (HDTV) channels. I declined the more expensive option for the home theater setup-wiring-configuration because I am a technology buff, but I spent more than a few hours getting our home theater setup and integrated with a few of our other entertainment units. For those who are purchasing surround sound systems, the extra bucks for home theater setup, wiring & configuration might be worth it.
On a final note, do a Google search for "Samsung HLN617W reviews" and read some of the other fine reviews and prices before you spend big $$$ for your HDTV with DLP.
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