Dan’s Tech-n-Stuff Weblog

I’ve had a Westinghouse 40″ LCD TV for I guess close to a year now and it’s really nice. Standard definition is good, high definition is good, DVD’s are good, colors are nice–all around a solid TV.

I didn’t know that I was unhappy with it until I was browsing the TV’s a local chain electronics store and happened across a TV that literally forced my mouth open with amazement.

The Samsung LN-T4071F looks like pretty much any LCD or plasma TV these days when it’s turned off. Black bezel, 16:9 screen aspect ratio, just a few inches thick, etc. But…BUT….when you turn it on and give it a high definition source it’s apparent right away that this TV is a little different.

Before I get to far, this is a good time to point out that this isn’t going to be an in-depth product review. I don’t have a review budget, I don’t have industry contacts that send me things to play with/review, etc., so if you’re looking for product impressions from a tech enthusiast, perfect–you’re in the right spot. If you’re looking for a little more, maybe you’ll still enjoy this and then you can Google a few more detailed reviews.

Let’s get started:

One thing that’s difficult to do at large chain stores (e.g. Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics) is to compare picture quality.

Have you ever been looking at TV’s noticed that the picture looks pretty much the same on all of the TV’s and they’re not sharing a high-quality, blow your socks off quality…more of a “is this really HD” kinda quality?

A lot of times stores will take one video source, say from a satellite TV provider, and split it hundreds of times. There are various ways to amplify the signal along the way so the quality is bumped up a bit, but the noise can be too.

But lets say that they signal is fine and no noise is being introduced or amplified, why else would the pictures look largely the same?

Take a look at the wires being used to send the signal to the TV. No, I don’t mean one brand versus another, I mean the type of connection that’s being used because it matters.

The top of the food chain is HDMI (the cable you see to the right is HDMI). Its all digital and with that one connection you can carry a 1080p video signal AND audio. If that’s the cable being used, if anything isn’t quite right then it’s not the cables as the quality should be excellent.

The next best would be component video (the cable to the left is a set of component cables)The picture quality with component cables is still very good and can deliver a 1080i signal (not quite 1080p but it can be difficult to tell the difference). It’s technically 5 different cables in one–three for video information (red, green and blue colors plus sync information) and two for audio. If component video is being used, the quality of the audio and video should be great and no worries.

Technically there are a few other options you COULD do (e.g. optical for audio and VGA for video) but that’s really beyond what I’m trying to cover here, so for the purpose of this article let’s just say that those are the two ways of getting an HD signal to your TV.

If it’s anything else then you’re looking at a standard definition broadcast, not high definition so the quality will be most likely less than what you’re expecting to see.

Okay, that part was longer than I thought it would be…back to the Samsung TV.

So while browsing through the TV’s at a local chain store I came across the Samsung LN-T4071F 40″ LCD TV connected to a Blu-ray player and the picture quality I saw was hands down the highest quality HD video I’ve seen to date.

Looking at other TV’s with the same sort of setup (a dedicated HD player, either Blu-ray or HD-DVD connected to it) nothing else was close. Sure, the others looked like HD and were amazing, but the Samsung–it was different.

I decided to spend some time playing around with the TV’s menu to try switching off various settings trying to find the one that made this TV different from the others.

After trying nearly them all I noticed one I hadn’t played with yet called DNIe. Switching it off immediately brought the image quality down to the level of the other [still very capable] TV’s.

What is DNIe?

DNIe is a proprietary Samsung technology that is basically an advanced color, contrast and image detail rendering engine. With it switched on everything on the screen comes to life in a way I haven’t seen before.

The amount of contrast and the richness of colors and textures is just amazing.

Sometimes this were so realistic looking that it seemed more like you were sitting in the front row of a play than watching a pre-recorded video on a television. Things almost seemed to pop off the screen as if they were 3D…though sometimes with that good came a bit of bad.

My only complaint with the TV and with DNIe was that I wish the user were given more control over DNIe than just a simple on or off. Occasionally it looked like the images were being over-processed and the 3D-like appearance seemed to sometimes make backgrounds a bit blurry and things sometimes came out looking a bit fake.

That one complaint aside, I remain blown away by the Samsung LN-T4071F and came away with way, way more good than bad.

If you should go see it yourself, make sure the DNIe is switched on and that the input source is HD and is using the proper cables and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

If my wife is reading this, yes–I will help you hang it on the wall if you want to bring it home for Christmas.