Samsung UE40C6000 - Audio, video and input lag problems

[dan79]

Firstly, I'm new here and this is my first post, so I apologise if I've posted this in the wrong place, or if I'm asking some very basic questions; but here goes...

I've just got a Samsung 40" LCD/LED TV and I'm far from impressed. From what I can tell it has serious issues across the board. Here's my pretty basic setup:

TV: Samsung UE40C6000
Blu-Ray: LG BD550
Gaming: Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii
TV Source: Sky+ HD

All of the above are connected via HDMI, using Amazon basics HDMI cables @ £6.99 each, except for the Wii which uses the official Nintendo component video cable.

Problems:

• Choppy Image: On any fast moving scene, there is what I would call "chopping" of the on-screen image, like the screen can't keep up with what it's trying to display. This is most noticeable when playing games, but also affects Sky and Blu-Ray.
• Stuttering: The image also stutters a lot, when displaying smooth, slow moving images (e.g. when the end credits of a movie are rolling, or when the camera pans slowly across a landscape, the image stutters roughly once per second). This is seriously distracting and looks terrible.
• Input Lag: There is major input lag when gaming; most noticeable when playing games like Guitar Hero, where timing is everything.
• Audio Sync: The audio is out of sync with the video, when playing games and when watching Blu-Rays. It's not out by a huge amount, but it is clearly noticeable and very annoying. It's a bit like watching a badly dubbed 1970's kung fu movie. This problem does not seem to happen when watching Sky.
• The sound quality is awful, but I guess that's because there is no room for decent speakers on such a thin TV.

I'm hoping some of these problems can be sorted by changing various settings on the TV, but I've played around with the settings for a week now, with very little improvement. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Can the above problems be solved or have I just been sucked in by clever marketing and wasted my money on useless TV.

 

[Deleted member 432728]

sounds like youve found the weaknesses of LCDs, try enabling the 100hz

 

[dan79]

sounds like youve found the weaknesses of LCDs, try enabling the 100hz

Really? I just have to accept all these problems?

Yes the 100Hz is enabled by default - if anything I want to try and disabled it, as my old 50/60Hz, low-budget, "HD Ready" TV never suffered from any of these problems.

Should I really just ditch this LCD and switch to Plasma?

 

[HaRd2BeAr]

I would say try disabling 100hz as the stuttering you describe and choppy which i take to mean artefacts. Sounds like the 100hz struggling to process the image, also this will not help with input lag on games.

Try searching for a game mode in the menus but remember
each input needs the settings changed ie for freeview, for the blu ray for the
xbox.

First thing i would do is switch to the movie preset and try turning 100hz down
for freeview an see if this helps or of completely if it doesnt.

But have it off for blu ray and gaming as it will make films look like they are shot on handy cam and games laggy.

Hope this helps

If you had lcd before and liked it enough to buy lcd again it seems you, like most of us are happy with the few areas they are weaker than other tech and enjoy the many other ways they are better

100hz is your problem here not samsung and not lcd

 

[dan79]

Is there a way to simply switch from 100Hz mode to 50Hz? I've looked through the settings but can't see anything that mentions "100Hz" or "Refresh Rate".

Is it called something else?

 

[HaRd2BeAr]

It might be called motion plus and basically it should say high, medium, low and
off (i'm guessing as my tv doesn't have it) but that's how it should look.
it might also say custom but we wont go into that just see what its on and
turn it a notch down ie if its medium set it to low if that doesn't help turn it off.

Just to add the tv you watch on freeview is always 50hz its the tv that adds frames in which makes it
100hz if you press info on the gadget it will always say 50hz as thats what freeview broadcasts at.
So for example 576i @ 50hz is freeview. and if its blu ray it should say 1080p @24hz

 

[dan79]

It might be called motion plus and basically it should say high, medium, low and
off (i'm guessing as my tv doesn't have it) but that's how it should look.
it might also say custom but we wont go into that just see what its on and
turn it a notch down ie if its medium set it to low if that doesn't help turn it off.

Just to add the tv you watch on freeview is always 50hz its the tv that adds frames in which makes it
100hz if you press info on the gadget it will always say 50hz as thats what freeview broadcasts at.
So for example 576i @ 50hz is freeview. and if its blu ray it should say 1080p @24hz

Thanks for the advice guys. There is a feature called motion plus (and there's also another feature called LED Motion Plus). I've turned them both off, and things are looking much better. Almost no tearing, and movies no longer look like they have been shot on an HD camcorder. You lose of the crispness which is good to have when watching football, but I can live with that.

However, the problems with lip-sync on Blu-Rays, and input on Xbox 360 are just as they were before. Using game mode makes a tiny difference to the input lag, but no difference whatsoever to the lip-sync problem. The audio is noticeably behind the audio. My old Philips 1080p upscaling DVD player had a feature where you could adjust the audio timing to sync it with the video, but I can't find anything like that on my BluRay player (LG BD550).

PS: It's actually Sky+ HD that I'm using for TV, not Freeview, but I'm guessing the same rules apply.

 

[HaRd2BeAr]

Forgot about led motion plus i think this has someting to to with the
backlight scanning which is supposed to help motion blur but most find it
just makes things worse. you might still find motion plus on low helps sports.

What setting are you using as if you have it to bright this will make things look
bad?

i would suggest movie mode and turn sharpness down to 15,
my samsung backlight goes up to 10 and i have it on 5 so half way
and mine also has energy saving mode and i have this on medium.
If you find this dull just adjust to your liking, just remember bright isn't
how its meant to look. Oh and look out for anything called dynamic like
dynamic contrast as this needs turning off.

Not sure about the lyp sync issue as i havent had it and my sony blu ray
player has a setting for this. As for input lag i think its something lcds suffer
with to varying degrees sorry that's all i have