Bought my new HDTV!

Decided to go with the 120Hz ver. Last night, I was checking with Best Buy's website again and found they had an open box of their 6000 series LED, for $819. Long story short it wasn't just a opened return but rather an unknown repair requiring new parts and yadda yadda from Samsung, thus I'd rather not risk it considering how much I'm spending. Actual the new ones were on sale, so I could have gotten it for $768...a damn fine deal.

During that conversation and looking at the one I chose, the sales person straight up said I shouldn't get the opened LED and wait for Black Friday cause its possible the new ones would go on sale for $799, though thats of course not for sure, btu anyway ~ getting to my point he then said he'd mark my HDTV down $50 to $799 to seal the deal then and now. Couldn't refuse that and went with it.

Still though, I'm tempted to possibly exchange it for the LED if it does go on sale for the same price!

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So yeah this has been a very trying process to get it setup and the levels of every option just right that look good to me across all media. Been going at it for hours and I still keep finding little bits here and there are seem off, but then it messes something else up and yargh...

It might be that I just didn't get much sleep today and my eyes are a little tired, plus I started feeling a light scratchyness in my throat when I woke, so I've been hopped up on drowsiness inducing drugs as well.

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First off though, the extremely enhanced picture, contrast, and overall sharpness from what I've been used to using is insane! The clarity is mind-bogglingly awesome, but its also gonna take me awhile to get used too again.

I feel the same when I had just gotten the 40" Proscan, upgrading from a 22" ~ there is a ton more real estate to view, making me have to look further left and right and as I just said the clarity of using an HD signal vs the standard VGA mode is intense. I like it, but its gonna take a bit to adjust too.


Back to the setup process, and trying to remove mouse lag was annoying. After more research I found there is an optional hidden mode, just for PCs. When using the specified HDMI/DVI cable port, if you go in and set the name of the port to "DVI PC" it eliminates all traces of lag and makes the input response time even tighter down from 16-25ms, too 6-15ms! Its quite responsive now!

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Now for gaming, I loaded up Rage as I'm currently playing that as well as FFXIV, and few other minor ones to see the changes.

Apparently there are some serious issues with Rage in this mode, cause when I swing the camera, which you do very often being an FPS, the game seems to block up and shift in pieces around the sides and top of the screen. I was really worried at first that this was gonna be in every game, but thankfully its not and its just Rage. Shall see if there are any new patches that fix this soonish.

I logged into FFXIV, and O M F G, I seriously had no idea it could look even better. The detail of the armor alone is incredible, you can see different types of texturing along the surfaces, and the world looks so amazing!




Anyway, I'll try and get an image of it up soon...


Oh and lastly, I still need to buy a 4yr warranty for this HDTV, and it costs $140! I have 30days though, which gives me time to wait on Black Friday deals to see if the LED drops in price, then I could swap them out and due a warranty on that one instead!

Yes I've left all the new plastic stuff around the border and on the base for now. May remove it soon though. Oh and the reddish/brown strip along the bottom of the screen isn't as bad as I had thought it would be, and goes well with my black and brown decor...heh {Guess it just really stood out in the store being the only strip of brown around}





Doesn't look much bigger in this image, but trust me it is! The Proscan has a much thicker border all around and doubled on the bottom due to the speakers.

Gratz Khalus! That looks great - things are always worth the money if you get a real buzz from them

sexy setup you got there.

Thanks, and I think I'm going to keep this LCD, instead of trading it in for the LED. I read more on LEDs and was at Best Buy again yesterday to transfer the warranty ownership of my old Proscan to the new owner, and I stopped by and checked out the LED again.

After setting this LCD up to my preferences, the colors are much more rich and dark, whereas the LED seemed more white-washed and brighter and I don't care for that. Best Buy was also having an early look/competition for people waiting on the new Modern Warfare III{midnight release} setup on several of their largest LEDs there and while it looked ok, the back-lighting was also very noticeably not as uniform as it is on the CCFL LCDs.


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Besides that, I think I'm getting used to the new larger view and HD signal already. I know it took me several weeks before, so its good that I'm already adjusting and can enjoy it better!

oooh shiny.... gratz khal, looks nice indeed, you know why it looks about the same as the proscan? coz of the angle where you took the picture, everything closer to the camera would look bigger than everything else placed further away.

btw you really need to tidy up all the cables lol.

Ah true, but ah well...its long gone so no more comparisons...heh

As for the cables ~ yeah, I've been lazy lately. Most of them on the left are not even being used, and the blue and grey ones are for the new router I got a few months back. Keep forgetting to hang it on the wall ~ maybe I'll do that soon!




The last thing "I think" I need to fully complete this beast of a PC setup is to get an SSD. Anyone have any suggestions for which is the better brand and size to go with? There should be some rather good deals coming soon, however I'm still very adamant about not paying more than $1 per GB.

hmmm intel 320 is a good one that i know of, and you don't really need big ssd 100/120gb should be enough. mostly only for the os.
there are some new hybrid hds with only 4 gb ssd and 500/750gb regular in it which are a lot cheaper.
i did a little comparison with WoW tho, i tried playing it from ssd and then re-install it in my regular drive and i didn't really see any difference in fps.

so i assume ssd is only good for OS, for example my boot time from completely "shut-downed" notebook to full ready state (no more blinking hd indicator) is less than a minute even only 15 secs when i first got my notebook.
and we all know that starting up notebook w/ windows is a pain back then.

correct me if i'm wrong tho, maybe ill test it out w/ ffxiv later but i'm having a hard time finding a fps software for ffxiv.

Ah ok, well its not a really big deal atm. Everything works fine and if an SSD really only helps in booting up the OS, then that does me no good really, cause I never turn my PC off.

I only reboot ever so often when required from a driver install or whatever else.


I've thought about putting it in sleep mode when I go to work and when sleeping, but I generally have things downloading quite often.

yeah desktop shouldn't worry about getting ssd. the other thing that you might consider on getting an ssd is again if you have a laptop, is that ssd is shock proof. since it has no moving parts.

so yeah sleep is the way to avoid rebooting, only reboot your desktop once a week. and again 7200rpm hds are fast enough for most games imo.
or like i said getting the hybrid hd + ssd drive is cheap enough. though i really doubt its reliability.

So I've got a semi-small issue, but also have the opportunity to fix it...maybe!?

This HDTV I bought is amazing in every way except one I've been noticing that is kinda meh ~ that being the blacks are so dern black that in every show/movie I watch, if its a dark scene I can't tell at all whats going on, faces are so dark can't see who is who and the BG is so black you can't make out anything. And worst of all, it all runs together, showning no discernible lines between BG and Character or anything.


Turns out that Best Buy, has the LED ver of this HDTV on sale through Mon, for $897, {normally $1299} or $97 more than what I paid for the LCD. Its also a Smart TV and 240Hz, not that either of those would do me much good for now. And I've been to the store and checked it out somewhat extensively and while there are some slight lighting uniformity issues that all LEDs suffer from currently, the blacks, while still deep are not so black as I'm suffering with atm. At least not so black as to not tell who or whats-what. However the colors are also not as rich and vibrant and seem to be more natural, which I suppose isn't a bad thing.


Anyway, I'm able to switch them out and pay the difference if I want, and have until Jan 24th to swap them back if it doesn't work out, so I'm thinking about it...hrm Oh, and I have to do this before end of day Mon before prices go back up!

So semi-long story, semi-short:

I did go ahead and exchange my new LCD for the LED earlier today, and while the LED had a few superior features and a better, more responsive menu, the edge-lit technology drove me nuts. Basically in every scene or image that is black, you could see the edges of the screen lit up all around, and it was even worse in the corners, with a cone shaped light emanating outward about 3-5in.

It was horrible in Skyrim when I got into any dungeon, making it look really bad and the atmosphere not so great. Although when viewing brighter scenes and shows it looked great.


So anyway, I returned the LED about an hr or so ago and got the LCD I had prior. And upon getting back home and reapplying my personal settings, I dunno if it was the specific labeling of the HDMI port or running in Game Mode{neither of which I'm doing this time}, but everything is a lot brighter than is was before, especially the really dark scenes I couldn't quite make out in some of the shows I watch. {which was the main reason for trying the LED to begin with}

Ah well, all is much better now...

errrmmm thats LED backlit tv not Full LED tv?

Yeah, there is no such thing as a full LED TV yet. They're still an LCD, but with LED lighting or whatnot. You'd have to go read the technical specs about it, to get the full gist of it.