We were however, very impressed with the accuracy of the colours reproduced. The measured output curves remained almost unchanged after calibration, as they were already pretty much spot on. Cheap TV monitors often produce rather unconvincing images when actually watching TV. The Samsung P2370HD, on the other hand, does an excellent job.
The studio flat monitor of choice?
Unfortunately there’s some visible backlight bleed apparent when viewing dark scenes. This can be helped somewhat by activating the dynamic contrast option, but many users will find the constant and rather obvious increasing and decreasing of the backlight level quite distracting. Despite this quibble, we found the display quality to be generally very good indeed.
Verdict
The Samsung 2370HD is a good-looking and generally rather impressive TV/monitor. It lacks some desirable features, such as picture-in-picture support or multiple HDMI sockets, but overall it’s a great choice for a small flat or bedroom where there might not be room for both a second TV and a PC. ®
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Samsung P2370HD TV-monitor
COMMENTS
Comments
Overscan is weird in this day and age, but you can turn it off on most tellies. I've had a Samsung, Sony and Panasonic in the last 3 years, all were able to turn overscan off. (Of course, it had a different name on all of them!) So quit moaning about overscan and turn it off :)
As for TV vs monitor, there are loads of other factors, from things such as design (most TVs are not this nice looking or compact) to response rate and frequencies etc. When I was in the market, I looked at a normal 1080p screen for dual duties, but couldn't find a TV that looked as nice as the Samsungs. Also, 1080p might be fine at 32" and up for movies, but I think maybe too low res for a desktop (and too big really if you're normal PC distance away). I find 1080p @ 23" on a normal desk to be just about right in terms of text size, web etc.
What swung it for me was I wanted dual desktop, and Samsung do a TV version, and a non-TV version of their models, with the monitor only version being much lower priced. I was tempted just to use a TV card and get two cheaper monitors, but then you wouldn't have a nice remote, would need to have sound thru PC speakers etc.
Samsung seem to have this nailed...
I've been using a 46" Samsung as my PC monitor for about 18 months now, and it does look exceedingly good - and whilst it does have some odd resolution omissions. it does support pretty much everything you will need, vfrom 640, 800, 1024, 1024 and 1200. I'd recommend any Samsung telly, actually!
No, I don't work for them, why do you ask?
RE: Talking of monitors vs TVs...
BEcause for some reason the people who came up with the standards decided that no-one was interested in picture quality ! At least that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Using HDMI, the picture is automatically scaled to create overscan - so when you nice shiny hi def source feeds it a nice 1920x1080 image, it doesn't simply map those pixels onto the 1920x768 pixels of the display panel, it rescales them first to guarantee a loss of quality. On many sets, there is an option for scaling (sometimes called something like "full pixel" mode), but not on Panasonic (according to their non-help centre), and generally not on smaller sets.
It's an epic fail IMHO to designa system that's guaranteed sub-optimal quality.
I was pleasantly surprised that my Samsung LE26B350 automatically does this mode if you use the HDMI input that's labelled as HDMI/DVI - I get the impression that Samsung actually understand that you might want to use one of these as a monitor. Just a pity they don't have S-Video, only component and composite, on the SCART.
daft question?
Why would I want this rather than (say) a SyncMaster T220HD 22" model, currently under £200? Think of the beer I could buy with the difference. (So what if the T220HD is obsolescent, this one already is too as it almost certainly doesn't do DVB-T2 ie Freeview HD).
And for the gentleman who asked about digital optical out - isn't it so your home cinema system can take an audio feed from the TV tuner in the monitor?
BIGGER!
I want something like this but just slightly bigger. I've got a 26" space, but there's so little that fits the bill, without costing £600+ which is silly when a 32" TV can be had for < £300
