Samsung HL-S4266W 42" Widescreen DLP® HDTV with 720p Resolution

I recently purchased an HDTV for gaming. My reasoning was that current generation game consoles were designed for 720p, so it wouldn't make sense to get a 1080p HDTV. Also, games being the way they are tend to have UI that exacerbates burn-in. Therefore, I wanted an HDTV based on a technology that wasn't susceptible to burn-in. These two reasons and some extremely competitive pricing led me to choose the Samsung HL-S4266W.

Summary

Purchase Price: $799.99 (Black Friday sale price)

This is just one of many reviews on Samsung's 720p DLP HDTVs. Consequently, I'm going to skip the technical specs and cover some of the more subjective issues such as black grass and rainbow effect. I'm also going to cover pixel resolution as most of the aforementioned reviews don't cover this issue.

Black Grass

It's definitely noticeable when the picture is black. ie. when there's nothing on the screen. Usually this happens when your source (eg. DVD player, game console, etc.) is off. Then again, is it really an issue if it only happens when showing nothing?

Rainbow Effect

Didn't notice it.

1:1 Pixel Mapping

I attempted this adjustment on both the component input and VGA input. An Xbox 360 was used to display the test pattern. I tried various menu options to adjust the picture, but ultimately I wasn't able to achieve 1:1 pixel mapping using the menu. Although it's a disappointment, this is not at all unexpected. After all, the HL-S4266W is on the low end of Samsung's HDTV offerings. Their target demographic generally isn't too concerned about image resolution issues.

• I also did some research regarding this issue and came up with a couple conclusions.
  It's possible to disable overscan via the service menu. This option is available on Samsung's 1080p DLP HDTVs. However, it's not available on their 720p DLP HDTVs.
• The good news is that adjustments can be made to minimize overscan, but then additional adjustments will need to be made to compensate for geometry distortion.

Note: I didn't attempt either of these adjustments myself since I was satisfied with the pixel mapping regardless of the overscan.

Conclusion

Good: Black grass was a non-issue. Rainbow effect was not noticeable. Lots of inputs.

Bad: Not being able to achieve 1:1 pixel mapping was a disappointment.

This Samsung HL-S4266W is a great value. I would recommend it to anyone who's looking to purchase an HDTV under $1,000.00.