Digital Trends

Samsung HLN617W

March 25th, 2004 | by Brandon King

Features and Setup

Many HDTV buyers have come to the conclusion that DLP offers the best bang for the buck, and the Samsung 61” HLN series looks to be an excellent option. The screen size is massive, the price reasonable, and plenty of inputs to satisfy all of your needs.  The set's aspect ratio is 16:9, native resolution is 1280x720, at 720p. It supports a maximum 1280x720 pixels at a 60Hz refresh rate.

If you are looking for a multitude of inputs, Samsung delivers. The HLN617W offers two coax in, one coax out, three composite with RCA audio inputs, one composite with RCA audio out, three S-Video inputs, three sets of component inputs with RCA audio (one input supports 480i/p onlytwo support 480p/720p/1080i), a PC VGA input with RCA audio, one DVI input, and a mysterious RS232 port that has so far served no discernable purpose. 

For the most part, setup was pretty straightforward until we got to the component inputs. One of the connections support 480i/p while the other two support 480p/720p/180i. This was a bit confusing. We wish they would have made life easier and simply made all of them 480i/480p/720p/1080i compatible.

The inputs were plentiful, but somewhat disappointing. While there are plenty, many semi-serious gamers that have both the Sony Playstation 2 and the Microsoft Xbox consoles may run into problems.

Samsung DLP back panel connections

For instance, the Playstation 2 supports very few 720p and 1080i games, and otherwise runs primarily in 480i. But there is only one 480i input, which only scales to 480p. In addition, the Xbox dashboard (the load screen when you turn the unit on without a disc) only supports 480i, but runs primarily in 480p in games, and has more 720p and 1080i games. So in order to play most PS2 games, you have to connect it to the 480i/p inputs.  Since the Xbox dashboard is largely useless, we plugged it into the 480p/720p/1080i input, but we then split the Green output from the Xbox, plugging one into the component input (as is expected), and one into the composite video in. This allowed us to view the XBox dashboard in black and white on the composite input.

Another annoyance with the inputs was the inconsistencies in the aspect ratio options. Using the antenna input, composite, or S-Video, you can use view in the following modes: normal wide, panorama, zoom 1, and zoom 2. Normal places black bars on the sides of standard definition programming. Wide mode stretches the entire image.  Panorama stretches only the outside portion of the image, making the center of the screen appear in the correct proportions but the sides a bit distorted. Zoom 1 and 2 do just that — they zoom.in on the center of the screen, with different stretching methods.

Aspect ratio options for standard and high-definition programming on the component inputs have only two options — normal and wide. Normal is actually a bit “pinched”, and wide is actually normal. DVI and PC inputs have only “Wide PC” and “Wide TV” options. While “Wide PC” shows the border of the image, “Wide TV” is slightly over-scanned. We really would have liked to see better handling of the signals to enable all options in every view, and perhaps a manual mode allowing for fine tuning.