Just bought the TXM3098WHF HD ready Tantus set. Great picture with component prog scan dvd but snowy on Analog cable. Anyone have this set? Comments?
DCL
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I am thinking of buying the Samsung Tantus 30" TXM3098WHF TV. Is there anything I should ask my local cable provider before buying it? I have read that the 3:2 pulldown looks fairly poor, althought the picture is awesome with a full digital cable signal or when you buy the HD tuner. How do I know how many "digital" channels my cable company has to offer? I think HBO and NBC are HD and/or digital signals. Should I wait on this purchase? Confused...
tim
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Your cable company should be able to rent you a HDTV box. I would not buy the tuner outright now. In my area (toronto) I get NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC and PBS in HD. PBS and CBS offer the most HD programming with true 1080i transmission. PBS is HD all the time but it is mostly repeasted programming. The 3.2 pull down looks good to me. For the money Samsung is asking I would go ahead and buy it and rent the tuner.
Ralph
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For those of you that own the TXM3098WHF, can you please share your thoughts on any issues this set may have. More specifically, does this set suffer from geometry distortion, red push, poor construction quality, etc. I am not able to find it in any stores here in NYC so I can't make my own judgements. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks
tim
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FROM CNET.COM this should answer your question Ralph. Ihave the 3098 and am very pleased with it
Samsung's 30-inch Tantus TXM3098WHF offers very good performance, a comprehensive feature package, and handsome styling. At less than $1,400, it's also a serious bargain. If you thought that a wide-screen HDTV was out of your price range, this midsized set will make you think again.
Design The TXM3098WHF is good-looking enough to hold its own against any wide-screen tube TV out there. The outer edge of the set is finished in silver, with a charcoal-gray bezel surrounding the perfectly flat screen. The remote is fairly well designed and easy to use and can control many other brands of DVD players, VCRs, and cable boxes. Unfortunately, it's not backlit, but you can't have everything in a budget HDTV.
Features Like any HDTV-ready set, the 3098 requires a separate set-top HDTV receiver to tune high-definition broadcasts, which it displays in the 1080i format. For standard-definition NTSC sources including TV, nonprogressive scan DVD, VHS, and so on, the set uses a line-doubler to up-convert the incoming video to progressive-scan 480p for a more stable, film-like picture. You also get five selectable color temperatures and four picture modes with different presets, as well as a best-of-breed 3D-YC comb filter for composite and RF video sources such as VHS tapes and cable TV.
Dual-tuner picture-in-picture with a split-screen function heads the list of convenience features. There's also a 20-watt internal amplifier for the left and right speakers, as well as a 25-watt powered subwoofer built into the rear of the set for bass.
This set's connectivity suite, while not totally comprehensive, is adequate for modest home-theater setups. On the rear panel, you'll find two HDTV-compatible, component-video inputs with stereo audio; two composite-video inputs with stereo audio; one RF antenna/cable input; and a set of monitor outputs for stereo audio and composite video. The major problem is that the back panel doesn't have S-Video inputs, so you'll have to use the side input to connect S-Video sources such as satellite TV or S-VHS.
Performance We were impressed by the 3098's performance, especially considering its price. Factory picture presets were typically dismal; contrast was set much too high, and the set had an extremely blue color temperature, even in the warmest setting. However, a full ISF calibration improved performance dramatically and produced a very accurate picture.
We used a Panasonic DVD-XP30 DVD player via its interlaced, component-video output to test the 3098's internal line-doubler. This Samsung's 3:2 pull-down processing--which eliminates artifacts caused by the different frame rates between film-based material (DVD movies) and video playback--functioned well. In chapter 4 of Jurassic Park III, the wings of the plane flying over the island were pristine, with no crawling, jaggy artifacts.
After adjusting the picture parameters with test patterns from an HDTV-signal generator, we used a Sencore HDTV hard drive to evaluate the high-definition picture. The recorded 1080i NFL footage popped off the screen with incredible realism and deeply saturated color. The color decoder in the 3098, while not perfect, is better than many on the market. It exhibits only a small amount of red push, which is a tendency to accentuate red to compensate for an overly blue color temperature.
The 3098's biggest drawback is that only a single Custom memory slot saves the changes that you make to picture parameters--contrast, brightness, and so on. This makes it impossible to optimize the set for a variety of sources such as DVD, HDTV, and satellite without having to change the picture settings when you switch inputs.
All in all, Samsung's TXM3098WHF is a solid performer, especially when you consider its price. Compared to the similarly featured, 30-inch Philips 30PW9817, which sells online for $2,299, the Samsung is an incredible buy. Currently, this is the best 30-inch, 16:9-aspect-ratio, direct-view HDTV on the market, which is why it earns our coveted Editors' Choice award.
Just bought a TXM3096WHF. I hooked it to my Digital Cable and have a small problem. The bottom 4th of the picture has a green tint. If the color blue is in the picture - then it changes to a purple.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong - or how to correct it. I am having a leased HDTV/Digital cable box installed next week. Will that take care of the problem. Other than the color problem - I love the set.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Anonymous
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Obviously I am a rookie when it comes to all this, but hey...you got to learn sometime! Would someone please explain what 3.2 pulldown is?
Thanks
tyte000
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Does anyone know if the AKAI 30" at Sams Club is a clone of the Samsung 30" except for the fact that the Akai is a analog set box. Has anyone heard anything about the Akai 30" in general or any Akai products?
anyone know why with this tv that whenever I use my DVD or Xbox which are both Prgressive Scan I am forced to have the picture stretched to the full 16x9 even if it is supposed to be Full-Screen type? I have many TV shows on DVD and video games that run in standard size and I am forced to turn my DVD to Interlaced or my Xbox to normal connection in order to keep the picure from being stretched. Whenever I hit the P.Size button, it says "not available" on the screen. Anyone know why? any help is appreciated.
Anonymous
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Does anyone have darker or wider vertical scan lines near the outer left and right side of their 30" 3098whf tv? It isn't really noticeable but the screen seems to be a little darker on the sides than the center.
Tracker
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I talked to a sales rep at Best Buy who said that the Samsung 30" wides were getting returned alot because people found that they looked terrible with analog cable. I didn't buy one because if you put it into 4:3 mode (standard) you get a screen roughly 25" in size! Since I play PS2 I didn't want to go down in size from my old RCA 31".
Anonymous
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Does anyone have any linearity problems(especially at the top bowing out) with their 3098whf?
I as hoping someone could tell me how to get into the "service menu" on my Samsung TXM3096WHF television, I have heard people talk about adjusting their TV's from there but no oe has said how to get into the menu. Thanks in advance! -Jacob
Anonymous
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Jacob,
Here's what I found on the Net: (NOT TESTED, BE CAUTIOUS!!!) Turn TV off. Press MUTE+1+8+2, then POWER Select the Option menu.
Chet
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"I didn't buy one because if you put it into 4:3 mode (standard) you get a screen roughly 25" in size! Since I play PS2 I didn't want to go down in size from my old RCA 31"."
I thought the gaming consoles had a widescreen mode. Is that not correct?
Paul
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My xbox has a widescreen mode, but not all games officially support it.
Anonymous
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To Chris: Xbox is not progressive scan, or so i have been told by many
The Xbox is progressive scan; all games support 480p, several support 720p, and one supports 1080i. It does not do progressive scan on DVD's. And as meantioned above, not all games are widescreen.
Ross
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Dows the TXN3098WHF not have a DVI input??? (says it does on the samsung website - but I cannot find owner confirmation)
James
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After reading the reviews here, especially the one from CNET, I went out and got a TXM3096WHF (same tube but missing PIP and BBE sound). What a disappointment. Sure DVD signals look good, but DVD signals look good with pretty much every TV.
The question is how does it do with a typical cable signal. The answer is not so well. The picture seems dull and there are a pair of snow bands, one in the top third of the screen and one in the middle third. Turning on the LNA and digital NR reduce the snow substantially, but not completely. An hour fiddling in service mode had no effect upon the snow.
I went to the local Best Buy and they had a 3071 on display. It exhibits exactly the same behaviour. This leads me to believe that this is a design flaw in the Samsung line.
It may be of interest to some to know that some of the features of the 3098 (PIP, BBE) can be activated from service mode (instructions earlier in this thread are correct). The second tuner is lacking for PIP, but if you have a VCR you can route its signal to an AV input.
Because I plan on viewing analog signals in addition to pristine DVD or HDTV, this unit is going back and I am getting a SONY that does a much better job of handling analog signals.
JoeP07
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Let's say I was going to play Halo on a Widescreen HDTV, will it look distorted or will it just increase the span of my view left to right? Also, can video games look good on widescreen? Thanks...
Anonymous
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The most recent model seems to be the TXN3098WHF. TXN replaces TXM. Does anyone know of any significant differences?
Anonymous
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The reviewer at Audioreview.com had this comment about typical cable signal: when i hooked it up to cable, i thought it had a terrible picture. then i put the video setting on "movie" and i couldnt believe the clarity.
Give it a try.
Steven Smith
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Wow. I thought I had found my new TV but these reviews are leaving me undecided at best. I am limited in physical space but the TXN3098WHF would fit perfectly. My choice of input would be DVD Progressive Scan, Digital Cable but also older analog VHS as well along with PS2 games. Is this a good choice for me??
Was just wondering if anybody could post settings that they changed in the services menu to enhance the picture quality.
Thanks
Aravind Rao
Unregistered guest
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TXN3098WHF replaces TXM3098WHF. The obvious difference I have noticed is the addition of DVI input in the TXN. I wished I waited before I bought my TXM. The picture quality on the HD programming is just out of this world. I loved the price and i also have the space restriction due the armoire. Picture quality of analog cable does look bad on a digital tv and I have read an explanation for it(don't remember now) Any other good / bad experiences from their TMX/TXN TVs? I would love to hear. Thanks
I have the TXM3071WHF, the grainy/crappy picture seems mostly to be a result of very poorly chosen default picture setting modes. Both "normal" and "dynamic" look terrible on cable, "movie" is much, much better, but if you really want the set to shine, get a copy of either the Avia guide to home theater, or Video Essentials DVDs and calibrate the picture output. The graininess largely seems to be a function of certain settings being boosted well past NTSC spec in the default modes. Properly calibrating the set yields an excellent quality picture, without getting into fiddling in the service menu.