Samsung LED questions...please help!
 

I just received my Samsung 7150 LED and I'm stuck on a few things.

Everywhere I read that screen fit is the setting you should choose so you always have the correct/natural aspect ratio on the screen.

However, I can't choose screen fit when I'm watching the tv through my cable box. It only allows me to choose 16 x 9 and some other zooming modes that I'll never use.

Now I realize that almost all cable is 1.78:1 anyway, but what about movie channels? Many movies now are shown in their OAR. With the setting stuck to 16 x 9 doesn't that mean I HAVE to live with overscan on any movies on HBO or Showtime that are 1.85:1 or, say, 2.40:1?

I can't really test the cable channels, because if I'm "stuck" in the 16 x 9, I will have no idea if the movie is simply being played in 1.78:1 or if it's happening because of overscan. I did watch a bit of the Abyss, which is in 2.40:1 and it did have the larger black bars you'd expect, but was there overscan that made those bars larger and causing me to lose some of the scope, I have no way to know. But since the picture setting tells me it's 16 x 9, would I have any other reason but to assume there's overscan on a 2.40:1 film broadcasted on cable?

As soon as I change to blu-ray, it changes right back to screen fit. Great for my blu-ray viewing, but what about my movie viewing on cable? With HD screen size 1 and 2 on plasma, you just chose the one setting that didn't introduce overscan and you were all set. Is this completely lost with LED?

I also went into my smart hub and played Taxi Driver and sure enough it played through my tv with the small black bars that it should have because it's 1.85:1, however I noticed you are locked out of changing the picture setting. Now, in this case, it really doesn't matter because I want OAR, but it did seem odd that it didn't let you fill the screen or zoom if you wanted to.

Oh, and, lastly, most recommended settings for this unit say you should chose the HDMI black level of LOW. That is also completely grayed out for me. I have no idea why. Not sure this is particularly important compared to the picture size settings, but I'd love to know why this might be if someone thinks they might know.

Thanks a lot.

Re: Samsung LED questions...please help!
 

Well, first, overscan would make black bars smaller and just cut off a little pic on the sides, because it is essentially a 3-7% zoom. I would say you do not have overscan if 1.85 films are letterboxed, overscan would tend to make them just fill the widescreen vertically with almost invisible bars, depending on the % of overscan.

It is the cable box output that is causing your zooming problems, the TV will allow different zooms depending on what signal it receives. Try different output resolutions if possible to see how the TV responds to them. Be aware it could change with each program or channel if you set a Native or Auto output that changes dynamically. Check the Picture Sizes and Input Signals section of your manual, although it looks incomplete. For instance, a PC connected to the TV will generally behave differently than a standard TV source (cable, BD, etc), and this page doesn't mention that.

Re: Samsung LED questions...please help!
 

I have a Samsung plasma. I've noticed that the available screen settings are different between component and HDMI. Nothing is grayed out, just more options are listed with the component connection.
On mine the 16x9 setting displays all 16x9 correctly and zooms 4x3 to fill screen, slightly cropping the top to reduce appearance of stretching.
WIDE FIT(component only) stretches to fill sides
I can't figure out what FIT TO SCREEN does. Have to look it up. It appears if you choose it, you then have secondary options to choose from.

Re: Samsung LED questions...please help!
 

Samsung settings seems a lot more complicated than Panasonic, which is all that I've ever had before. Don't know if Sony would have been easier or not, but the only Sony I considered was either 60" and 70" and I needed 65". I wasn't going to buy a new thousand dollar stand right now and I'll probably wall mount it sometime in the winter.

Anyway, it turns out it was the cable box causing me to not get the screen fit option. It was incorrectly set up to send out 480i and when I switched it to 1080i, it recognized the HD signal and gave me screen fit. I do believe that's the "right" choice to properly display all content as it is meant to be seen with no zooming or possible overscan. I think that's called Full on my Pannys.

So, does anyone know about using Clear Motion Plus?

I've read about the soap opera effect and don't want it, so either off and clear (which has the least amount of effect on the picture from what I've found) seem to be the best choices most of the time.

However, I have read it can be really useful during sports, yet I can't seem to find anyone who specifically states which setting might be best for sports or any discussions about several of the other settings people try to use to get a "clearer" picture watching football, hockey, tennis and other sports with fast movement.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Re: Samsung LED questions...please help!
 

Seems like Screen Fit should be right for most things, if the networks are actually sending proper data. If you get something strange, like today's CBS US Open past year highlights in weirdly stretched SD-not-properly-converted-to-HD garbage....you may have to still pull out the remote and change the zoom function occasionally.

Clear motion is pretty subjective, try it out and see what you like. Try it on everything.

You may also want to check the cable box output settings occasionally. CBS is 1080i, so that's fine. ABC is 720p, and your cable box is probably the least capable device you have to do video conversion. If you let it just pass thru and output 720 for those channels, it may look better.