These tips are somewhat brand specific but I just wanted to share a few things that might be helpful to those of you with shiny new Samsung LCD televisions. First off and this shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone familiar with consumer displays, but just keep in mind that just about every type of consumer grade display be it LCD, plasma, LCoS, front or rear projection will need to be calibrated; to get the best image the set is capable of displaying.
One of the biggest adjustment problems with off-the-shelf displays has to be brightness and contrast settings cranked up into the ionosphere. Honestly some of these televisions could light a small home, don’t be afraid to take the brightness down a notch or five. Getting to the HTPC specifics, if you’re using a VGA cable to connect to a recent “LN” or similar series Samsung (LCD television) you’ll want to select setup and then select “Home Theater PC”.
If you’re using HDMI and or a DVI to HDMI converter you’ll simply want to select “Just Scan” via the picture size control, this allows the display to operate in a 1:1 or pass-through mode which is preferable with HTPC’s. Note if you do use the 1:1 mode you may need to tweak the over scan controls of your HTPC to get an exact screen size match.
