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Samsung Syncmaster 172MP LCD Monitor Review
Author: Jakester
Date Posted: September 29th, 2003
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Bottom Line: Samsung gave us another monitor to review, sort of... The Samsung 172MP is a 17" LCD multifunctional display unit with the capability to perform as a monitor, TV (using its optional TV tuner) , or both with its Picture-in-Picture feature. This monitor looked very promising. Did it stand up to our expectations? Find out in our official review....
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Performance Continued:
Time to disconnect the computer and plug in the cable TV. Switching from
being a monitor to a Television took only the push of a button -the 'Video'
button on the front panel to be exact. The default input is the Antenna. At
first I was worried that the TV tuner may not have been working because I
couldn't seem to get any channels to come in except a few basic ones. Then I
realized that the input was on ANT (Antenna), so I switched it to HRC (explained
below) and the channels came flooding in. The possible choices for input were:
ANT, STD, HRC, IRC, and AFN. Here is some information from Samsung about those
technologies:
"Some cable systems purposefully shift the video and audio carrier
frequencies of some or most channels. Two common carrier shift schemes are the
Harmonically Related Carrier (HRC) and Incrementally Coherent Related Carrier (ICC
or IRC). The main advantage of an HRC or ICC system over the Standard system is
to reduce a form of interference called triple beat. Triple beats cause
interference lines in the cable pictures after long cascades of amplifiers or
from improper signal levels or amplifier operation. Please check the following
website to learn more information about these channel allocation schemes.
http://www.sencore.com/newsletter/Feb02/Understanding%20MeasuringVideoTVRFSignalsPartII.htm
"
The included remote controller provides access to all of the
functions of the 172MP. It has the normal features of a TV remote with options
like mute and previous channel. It also provides access to the menu system to
configure each display mode. Basically any function you can do from the front
panel buttons you can do from the remote. Now it is time for some 'telly'.
The picture above is an actual picture of the display taken
while watching football, I just cropped out a section of the picture. The TV
picture looked very sharp, but as you can
see the picture isn't exactly crystal clear when there is fast motion. Another
thing to note is the quality of the signal was
just regular cable, not the supported HDTV quality. Sadly we don't get HDTV at
college so I won't be able to test out the quality, but I would be willing to
bet it looks quite nice. Watching television on an
LCD screen was different but in a good way. There was absolutely no glare on the
screen since it obviously isn't a glass surface and with the 170˚/170˚ viewing
angle, the picture was visible from all around the room.
Another cool feature of the 172MP is Picture-In-Picture
(PIP). With PIP you can watch two video sources at the same time. For example
you can surf the internet and watch TV or a DVD. While in PIP mode, the sound
that will be heard through the monitor's speakers will be the sound of the TV or
video input and not the computer's sound. I didn't have any other inputs
connected to the monitor at the time of taking this picture which is why the PIP
is blank, but you get the idea of how it would look. The PIP window can be in a
normal square shape or in a rectangular wide screen shape for watching movies.
You can also position the PIP using the remote to any of the four corners of the
screen.
Yea that's right, Halo. With the 172MP's ability to connect to
pretty much any video source and my roommate having an Xbox I simply couldn't
resist. The quality of the picture was pretty good and it was definitely cool
playing halo on a LCD monitor. The last thing I wanted to talk about were the
172MP's 3W speakers. They provide the quality and volume that you would expect
out of a normal set of television speakers.
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