Cons: Tinny sound; picture needs adjustment to be really good
The Bottom Line: A good choice at this size screen and for a smaller room. Its slight deficiences in sound (replace) and picture (adjust) are fairly easy to remedy.
teamtempest's Full Review: Samsung LN22A450 22 in. HDTV TV
I bought the Samsung LN22A450 as a present for a sister who wanted just one for Christmas: an HDTV in time for the scheduled February 2009 changeover from analog to digital broadcasting (a changeover which has already been delayed several times over the last few years, but as of this writing is still subject to enough whining that it may be delayed yet again).
The Samsung LN22A450 comes packaged in a box not much larger than it is, which has a handle strap and is easy to carry.
Inside the box the screen itself is separated from its base, so one of the first things to do is put the two together. The instructions say to have two people lower the screen onto the stand. I cheated by upending the heavier screen and inserting the lighter base, then turning the pair over again (very easy for one person to do). Tighten a few screws and that's about it as far as assembly goes.
The Samsung LN22A450 is just about the same size as the 20" analog TV it replaced, but is widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio instead of 4:3). It is also much thinner and lighter.
It is interesting (to me, anyway) that although all the Samsung Series 4 HDTVs are advertised as 720P (having 720 lines of vertical resolution), the Samsung LN22A450 actually has 1050 lines of vertical resolution. Thirty more lines and it would be 1080P. The Samsung LN22A450 actually has the most vertical lines of resolution of all the Series 4 HDTVs; the others, larger and smaller, have only 768 lines.
The fact that many if not most 22" LCD computer monitors also have a resolution of 1650x1050 leads me to suspect that what we have here is basically a very common flat screen display with a HDTV tuner bolted on. But that's just a guess.
There are fewer input connections on this HDTV as compared to larger ones. One HDMI, one component audio and one composite. Each of these also has stereo audio inputs, part of the connection in the case of HDMI and separate for the other two. All these are on the back of the HDTV. There are no side connections at all.
Oh, and of course there is a 75-Ohm antenna connection for over-the-air broadcast reception. After connecting an old combo antenna (just VHF "rabbit ears" and a simple UHF loop) and performing a channel scan I noticed the built-in tuner was quite sensitive. The Samsung LN22A450 found all the broadcast channels I knew about, both analog and digital, plus a few that I didn't know about (my five-year old Samsung ATSC receiver doesn't do this good a job!).
Going through the channels it's easy to see that content from any one station which is duplicated on both analog and digital channels looks much better in digital. So it's nice that any particular channel can be dropped from what the Samsung LN22A450 remembers, but not so nice that it's a multi-step process that has to be repeated for each one you want to drop (it would be nicer to be able to select them all at once, then drop them as a group).
Sister loves to time-shift, as even with only broadcast content it frequently happens that there is more than one show it would be nice to watch. Up to now she has been using a separate analog VCR for this (a solution which will not survive the digital changeover unless a converter box is connected directly to the VCR inputs). So I connected that to the composite inputs.
Eh. The picture doesn't look too great, with the colors seeming off. Could be the HDTV, but it could also be because she tends to record at the slowest speed in order to get the maximum run time. The picture always suffers when you do that.
In fact that's likely the problem, discovered this way: I connected a Magnavox DVR to the component inputs. This was supposed to be the long-term solution to the time-shifting problem in the digital age, but the picture was horrible, all yellow and green, missing the red component completely. The problem might be the DVR output, the cable, or the HDTV input. I replaced the cable: no difference, so that wasn't the problem.
As a stopgap I disconnected the VCR and connected the DVR to the composite inputs (this is where the limited number of connections makes life more difficult). That looked just fine, all the colors present and much better than the VCR looked on the same connection.
Eventually I grudingly obtained an HDMI cable and used it to connect the DVR to the Samsung LN22A450. Grudging because these are expensive cables compared to component, even at the discounted price I found one for. On the other hand I discovered how very pleasant it was to deal with only one cable instead of five (three video and two audio), which I had not experienced on my own older setup (it doesn't have HDMI connections).
The DVR picture with the HDMI cable is very good. The colors are all there, and my perception is that fine detail is easier to see as opposed to the composite connection.
At this point I still don't know if the DVR or the HDTV is responsible for the bad component connection. It is probably a moot point as there are no plans I know of to connect a third input device to the Samsung LN22A450. Pinning it down means dragging another component device to her house, and after that trying to get a warranty honored months after purchase (I bought early! On sale!) from a company that no longer sells it (DVR) or is going out of business (HDTV).
That the HDMI is only a stereo audio connection is not a difficulty as there are also no plans to hook up a surround sound system (which would require using the digital audio output connections from both the DVR and the HDTV to digital audio inputs on the receiver). Next year I plan to give sister a better stereo system and connect it to the analog stereo audio output of the Samsung LN22A450. I hope this will relieve sister's only complaint about the HDTV, which is that the sound isn't as good as she would like (a common complaint about built-in HDTV sound).
I lied. She also doesn't like how long it takes the Samsung LN22A450 to wake up from its resting state. It doesn't seem that long to me, roughly the same amount of time my setup takes, but apparently noticeably longer than the analog TV she was using.
All the playing about with input connectors revealed something I like about the way cycling through input sources via the remote works: only the connections that actually have something connected are included in the cycle. No more passing through unused connections on the way to something useful (I am beginning to feel an urgent need to update my own HDTV!).
My limited playing with the remote has also revealed that I can't easily find the controls needed to adjust the picture tint, contrast and brightness. I believe this is needed, particularly as the default factory brightness setting seems much too high. Yes, the colors are nice, but sometimes I know that the screen should be black, and instead it looks gray (a red/green/blue flecked gray at that). Light seems to "leak in" at the edges of the screen. I notice this; my sister doesn't.
So - once the sound system is replaced and the picture adjusted to home use instead of display floor use, this should be a pretty good HDTV!
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