Over the July 4th weekend I decided to buy a 3DTV. I was not unhappy with my current HDTV, but with a daughter hinting how her new condo lacked a TV, and the need to evaluate 3D display in general for Insight Media, it was not too hard a decision to make. I thought I knew what I wanted, but bought something else. Here is what I experienced.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

Having seen a number of 3DTVs at demos and trade shows, I know these are first and foremost really good HDTVs. That’s important as 99% of the time it will be used as a 2D, not 3DTV. In 3D mode, I have seen ghosting at various levels with the LCD 3DTV and, once you know what to look for, this can be annoying. The PDPs I have seen are much better in this regard and offer excellent 2D performance.

Being most familiar with the Panasonic PDP 3DTVs, I set out to buy a 50" model along with the Blu-ray player. This Blu-ray player is nice as it has twin HDMI outputs to drive side-by-side 3DTVs with identical signals - a handy feature for reviewers. However, no discounts were available on the 50" Panasonic sets (if they could be found). So, for the Panasonic PDP TV and the Blu-ray player, I was looking at close to $3K for the package.

Looking in the Best Buy and PC Richards circulars, I saw a Sony 3D bundle that included a 46" LCD 3DTV, plus 2 pair of glasses and a home theater system for $2,429. I didn’t want a home theater system, but did want a 3D Blu-ray player, so this didn’t work.

Then I saw a Samsung package for $1,999. This included a 1080p 50" PDP 3DTV, Samsung Blu-ray player with wireless Internet, 4 pair of shutter glasses, the Monsters vs. Aliens 3D Blu-ray disc, plus Geek Squad delivery and set up. The TV was priced at $1,684, so for a little over $300, you got all the rest. That’s a very good deal. No wonder Samsung is seeing sales success.

The local store had this display on demo, but not showing 3D. Fortunately, I had recently seen a side-by-side comparison of the Samsung and Panasonic PDP 3DTVs and found the image quality quite similar. Needless to say, I took the package, but skipped the Geek Squad delivery and set up, as I figured that it would be a good experience for me.

I got the components home and immediately started the set up. Assembly of the TV on the stand was quick and easy, with connection of an HDMI cable from the set top box to the TV a snap. I turned on the TV and immediately had an image.

After some minor tweaking, I can see both good and not-so-good aspects of image quality. On the good side, brightness is fine, whites are whiter than one might think from a PDP, colors are great, blacks are black and the viewing angle is wide. I did see some very bad mosquito noise and graininess on one channel, but this appears to be a bandwidth/compression issue as that night, image quality was fine. I am not sure if this is a PDP artifact or a Samsung video-processing artifact, but I did not see this on my Sony LCD HDTV.

The one thing I find disturbing is the image processing, which makes every source of content look like a video source. There is no obvious way to change or adjust this, so I may have to access the service menus to fix it. The processing also produces some subtle motion artifacts.

I also tested the connection to the Blu-ray player. Upon boot up, it immediately detected my wireless network and prompted me with a password to access, which was successfully completed. This initiated access to the dozen or so widgets to web-based content. After 15 minutes of updates and downloads, I was able to connect to and see Internet content streaming to the TV. Full HD content does not play well as my download speeds are not up to snuff, but SD content seemed to stream ok. This scaled very well and was quite watchable.

To test the Blu-ray player, I first set the TV to 2D mode so it would not auto-detect the 3D Monsters vs. Aliens disc. This was accomplished fairly easily and the image appeared in 2D. I then tried to switch to 3D and, after several failed attempts, finally got a 3D image. There was no ghosting and the image was crisp, but the 3D effect did not feel quite right. I have not had time to analyze and optimize this 3D image, however, if it is possible.

Control of functions via the remotes is a nightmare. Each component (set top box, TV, Blu-ray player and AV receiver) requires its own remote to control various functions. I will be testing a universal remote later to address these issues, but most households won’t consider this option. As a result, control becomes a big problem.

For example, I can’t get the STB remote to control the volume coming out of the STB. I think there is a command to do this, but it is some obscure pressing of buttons that will require a call to the cable company. Also, I can’t access web content from the TV as that requires a hard wire LAN connection in the back of the TV, or the purchase of an $80 wireless dongle. I can access the content via the Blu-ray player, but that means turning that component on and using that remote. Want to watch cable TV? Go back to the TV remote and change sources to HDMI 4 and then pick up the STB remote to change channels. You get the picture. Surrounding yourself with 3-4 remotes is not a solution.

For the 3D @ Home Consortium, we recently interviewed a number of people who just purchased a new 3DTV to see what their experiences were like. This information was presented at the recent CEA Line show and showed generally favorable responses from the purchasers. My experience was less satisfying, but many of the issues were not specific to 3D, but a feature of the technology, interoperability and other decisions beyond my control. If I had taken the Geek Squad install, they probably would have been faster that I was in the set up and they could probably have fixed some of my audio issues much more quickly. But I can’t believe they would have optimized the system for ease of use.

If you purchase a new 3DTV, please write and tell me your experiences.