Offical HTF Review:Samsung SP-A800B and SP-A900B

Review: Samsung SP-A800Band SP-A900B

One of the most exciting ways to watch a movie is in a dedicated home theater room with a front projection system.  While this is an expensive proposition to setup, both for light and sound isolation, I find it to be consistently more pleasing than the movie theater where I get to deal with noisy people, exit signs that glow on the screen, weak contrast ratios and dirt on the film stock.  When using well encoded HD content, I would rather be in my home theater than any other place.

One of the critical components of watching a movie is the projector.   This review is comparing two of the Samsung’s reference projectors.  Both of these projectors were done under the watchful and scrutinizing eye of Joe Kane.  Everyone who knows Joe is aware that he is obsessed with viewing the picture the way that the cinematographer designed it to be or as Joe puts it “reproduce color the way it was intended”.  From the projector stand point this means that the project must have an accurate gray scale, correct primaryand secondarycolors, accurate gammaand a great lens for maximum sharpness and little to no chromatic aberrations.  The Samsung projectors accomplish all of the above with aplomb. 

Cosmetic Overview:

Both the 800 and 900 series projectors share the same chassis.  The chassis is a high gloss black finish that is in a turtle shell form factor.  Wearing white gloves is recommended when moving the projector as it loves to attract finger prints! 

The only discernable cosmetic difference between the 800 and the 900 is the extra logo that says “JKP Special Edition” on the 900.

Features:

Mounting:  The projector can be ceiling mounted or can be placed on right side up using the adjustable feet to accommodate for unleveled surfaces.

Resolution:  1920X1080p

Connections:  2 HDMI (HDCP), 2 Component, Composite, S-Video and PC (RGB)

Focus:  Manual focus and zoom.  This can be a blessing or a curse.  It’s great to have electronic focusing as that allows focus to be done at the screen where focusing on the pixels can be done very accurately.  However, many projectors do not have course enough controls for electronic focusing and it is difficult not to overshoot the ultimate focus.  With the Samsung I use a pair of binoculars to nail the focus to the pixel level with the manual focusing ring. 

24FPS support:  With devices that support 24FPS, the Samsung will provide 48FPS playback, representing what is seen in the movie theater without the 3:2 pull-down judder artifacts.

HD, SMPTE-C, ECU color gamut support:  The Samsung will support the HD (rec 709), SMPTE-C (SD rec 609) and ECU (European) color gamut.  This allows the user to easily switch to the correct color gamut via the menu depending on the source material. 

Calibrated from the dealer: Samsung projectors in the US can only be purchased from authorized dealers, which includes calibration as part of the purchase price.  In order to become a Samsung dealer the dealer must go through a mandatory and rigorous training to understand how to reproduce a picture like the cinematographer intended it to be.  This includes how to calibrate the Samsung projector specifically for the customer’s home theater environment.

Out of the box:

I had the opportunity to be trained by Joe Kane himself on how to calibrate the 800/900 series of projectors, thus having access to the service menu that is available to Samsung dealers to do the full calibration. 

The differences between the 800 and 900 are minimal, but the calibration process for these two projectors is the easiest and most straightforward process of any display device that I have encountered and always produce an accurate color gamut and gray scale against any screen material. A calibration is typically less than 15 minutes.  This is compared to other display devices that I have spent hours calibrating. The calibration process is done using the projectors internal test patterns and then adjusted from those readings in the service menu.  The beauty of this is that the projector is being calibrated without any outside sources that could introduce errors.  While it is always necessary to test the settings with the source equipment after the initial calibration, it is very nice to be able to do it from the projector itself. 

Primary differences between the 800 and the 900:

Since there are very little cosmetic differences to view between the two projectors the key benefits of the 900 over the 800 are increased on/off contrast ratio and a more accurate gamma curve.  The details of this will be discussed below with the measurement readings.

Performance:

Contrast Ratio: In comparison with some recent LCOS technologies that are on the market, this is not the Samsung’s or DLP’s greatest strength.  While this feature is not recommended by Joe Kane, both the 800 and the 900 provide a feature called “Dynamic Black” which is a dynamic iris which can significantly improve on/off contrast ratio’s.  A dynamic iris works by constantly opening and closing the iris of the lens based on the light that is in the scene.   A scene that is primarily white, causes the iris to be fully open, a scene that is primarily black will cause the iris to close down thus providing a darker picture.  The iris is constantly moving in various increments during a movie.  While contrast ratio does improve with the dynamic iris, there are some side effects.  Some side effects  are altered gamma and sometimes consciously being aware that the iris is closing by seeing the overall brightness of a scene going darker.  I have not noticed the later in my viewing of either Samsung with “Dynamic Black” enabled.  This feature can be turned on and off by the user via the remote control.  Below are the reading from the 800 and the 900 taken from my 87” wide Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130screen.  The 800 has 20 hours on it and the 900 has 300 hours on it.

Another option to help improve “blacks” is to use the manual iris feature by reducing the overall amount of light hitting the screen, thus having better blacks.  The screen size will determine how much the iris can be shut down and still produce enough light for bright scenes.  There is a difference between the 800 and the 900 on how to accomplish this.  The 800 has three predefined settings that are accessed from the “dynamic black” button on the remote control.  The dealer can also go into the service menu to manually change the aperture for one of the settings to be specific for the screen.  The 900 has a much easier interface to manually control the aperture without going into the service menu.  I typically like to have a 100 IRE pattern (i.e. solid white) produce about 14fL of light and I have adjusted my aperture to allow light output for the content reviews below.

De-interlacing/ 3:2 pull down:  Most projectors in the price range of the Samsung’s incorporate a video processor to properly do 3:2 pull downor de-interlace480i/1080i content.  Unfortunately the Samsung does poorly in this area.  Using test video clips from Spears & Munsil’s Blu-Ray calibration discthe Samsung was unable to pass the 3:2 pull down tests or the de-interlacing tests.  With my setup, this isn’t an issue as both the Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray player and the Toshiba HD-XA2 player’s output film based content as 1080p/24 and do de-interlacing of 1080i content to 1080p/60 without any problem.  When I watch HDTV content, it is coming from my Xbox 360 acting as a Windows Media Center Extenderand outputting at 1080p/60.  Many new AVR’s or pre/pro’s also have a video processor in them.  While this may be considered a shortcoming for some, my configuration never calls for a video processor to be in the projector.  Also, since I primarily only watch movies in my theater room, I always want 1080p/24FPS coming out of my BD and HD DVD players.

Gamma:  One of the weaknesses of many projectors is an accurate gamma curve.  The 900 addresses the shortcomings with the 800 in terms of a flat gamma curve.  For my viewing, I prefer to have a gamma of 2.35 and the 900 nails this.  As discussed above, one of the trade-off’s with using the dynamic iris is accurate gamma vs. better black levels.  When turning on the “Dynamic Black” feature, the gamma curve starts to shift.  Below are graphs showing the gamma curves between the two projectors with “Dynamic Black” turned on and off.  This is the primary reason that Joe Kane recommends that this feature be left off, but at the end of the day, the user needs to determine if they are more interested in better black levels or details in black that are more accurate to what the cinematographer envisioned.

800 with Dynamic Black Off: 

800 with Dynamic Black on:

900 with Dynamic Black off: 

900 With Dynamic Black on:

Light uniformity:

Gray scale: 

This is an area where both Samsung’s really shine with a perfectly accurate gray scale, but is also an area where the “Dynamic Black” feature can cause some of the accuracy to sway.  Below are color temperature graphs and DeltaE measurements for the projectors with both “Dynamic Black” feature turned on an off.  It should be noted that anything below lower than 5 is consider excellent and anything less than 3 is considered to be not perceivable to the eye.

800 with Dynamic Black Off:  

800 with Dynamic Black On:

900 with Dynamic Black Off:

900 with Dynamic Black On:

Color Primaries and Secondary’s:

This is the other area where the Samsung’s are phenomenal.  There are very few projectors on the market that can produce 100% accurate color primaries and secondaries.  It’s the combination of accurate color, gray scale and gamma that allows the Samsung to achieve Joe Kane’s dream of accurately reproducing the picture.  Many display devices oversaturate colors and show an image that was not what the cinematographer ever envisioned.  Below are graphs of the CIE graph for both projectors, specifically for the SMPTE-C specification.  

800:

900:

Picture Sharpness:

One of the areas that the Samsung exceeds every projector I have seen is in picture sharpness.  This is primarily due to the single chip DLP design, but also because the lens on the Samsung is such high quality.  Many projectors suffer from chromatic aberration, which causes something I call “purple fringing”.  This causes reduced sharpness and is easily discernable by looking at a grid pattern.  A great lens shows minimal fringing from top to bottom and side to side.   Both Samsung’s provide the least amount or chromatic aberration that I have seen.

Remote Control and On Screen Display (OSD):

The Samsung remote is an oblong shaped remote control that fits easily into the hand.  It has a backlight button that allows for easy control in a pitch black setting.  The OSD is intuitive and easy to use, though I rarely needed to go into it.  The one feature that I did use a lot was the “info” button on the remote that would always tell me resolution and frame rate that the projector was receiving and outputting.

Observations with HD content:

While I probably spent over 80 hours watching HD content on the Samsung 900, I wanted to point out some of the highlights of the projector with specific content.

The Hulk HD DVD:

The first chapter of this film has always been a reference source for how great HD content can look.  The Samsung lens really shows off the crisp detail in the texture of the paper that is being written on, the starfish and lizard that are being experimented on and the human eye.  The level of sharpness that this film has is really brought to light with either of the Samsung projectors.

Casablanca HD DVD:

Chapter 10 of this film is another great example of reference HD source material.  Some of my favorite scenes are with Victor’s polka-dotted tie and the detail in the ring that is presented showing the dust that is in the black velour. 

The Matrix HD DVD:

Outside of being my favorite film of all time, The Matrix presents an opportunity to show great detail in blacks.  The opening scene where Trinity is escaping the police shows off the excellent gamma of the Samsung.

Disney Nature Earth Blu-Ray:

Going to chapters 3 and 4 shows off the color accuracy of the Samsung by properly reproducing the greens and blues without oversaturating the greens. 

Digital Video Essentials High Definition (HD DVD):

One area that many displays fail on is faithfully reproducing skin tone.  Joe Kane’s HD DVD calibration disc has demonstration material that has a restaurant scene that was filmed by Allen Daviou.  This is what appears on the cover of the HD DVD calibration disc.  The restaurant scene provides for many items that are familiar (i.e. carrots, wine) that validate accurate primary and secondary colors.  The part that I always use this test clip for is validating proper calibration by validating the skin tone of the woman.   Both Samsung’s nails the skin tone of this woman and prove out what the accuracy of Samsung’s color gamut.

Conclusions: 

The “perfect” projector doesn’t exist.  The areas that the Samsung is perfect is color accuracy, gray scale and for the 900, gamma tracking.  The areas that the Samsung is excellent in are sharpness and no lens artifacts.  The areas that the Samsung is weak are with contrast ratio (i.e. black levels) and video processing, though for my viewing purposes this is not an issue. 

There are other projectors on the market that significantly exceed the contrast ratio of the Samsung.  The JVC-RS35 is one such projector.  However, there are some trade-offs and they are primarily with sharpness and chromatic aberration.  Since the Samsung is a single chip DLP, there are no convergence issues that are a common problem with 3 chip designs.  Bad convergence causes artifacts of fringing and affects the sharpness of the image.

A small percentage of people can experience “rainbows”, which is an artifact of the color wheel used on any single chip DLP.  It’s important for any potential purchaser of the Samsung to view the projector to see if “rainbows” are noticeable.  I would recommend even doing a viewing of the Samsung at night when the eyes are tired as sometimes a person is more susceptible to “rainbows” when the eyes are more fatigued.  Fortunately, I don’t notice the “rainbows” on either Samsung model.

The Samsung is a top contender for any serious home theater enthusiast.  If you are susceptible to “rainbows” then this projector isn’t for you.   I always struggle with having “inky blacks” vs having an accurate picture that is tact sharp and fully representing a HD picture that is properly encoded.  I wish that there was a perfect projector that provides all of the above, but it doesn’t exist yet. 

While the Samsung is on the high end for price, it comes with a great feature set, two year replacement warranty and trained dealers that will ensure the projector is setup to provide a picture that will never disappoint.  I highly recommend either Samsung projector and prefer the 900 because of the increased contrast ratio and better gamma tracking.

Pros:

Cons:

Specifications:

Review System Components:

Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player

Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD player

DVDO iScan VP50(used for pattern generator)

Xbox 360 as Windows Media Center Extender

Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray Player

Lexicon MC-12 HD EQ

Stewart Film Screen StudioTek 130

Casablanca HD DVD

Disney Nature Earth Blu-Ray

Hulk HD DVD

The Matrix HD DVD

Test/Setup Discs:

Digital Video Essentials High Definition (HD DVD)

Spears & Munsil (Blu-Ray)

Calibration Equipment:

Minolta CS-200

Minolta LS-100

Spectracal CalMAN professionalv3.67