Samsung UE22D5010 22-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p 50Hz LED TV with Freeview - White

The picture clarity was the best in the store for its size, and much appreciated back home.
The clear plastic coated white frame is very clever, as it reflects the room colours; so the TV blends in with the decor; also having a white controller means it is not confused with cordless telephones lying around -which are nearly aways black.
A Usb socket is a great asset- and it makes it so easy to view your digital photos and videos - it becomes a giant photo frame!
Also the software is easy to use.

This 27" Samsung UE27D5010 is essentially a nice, crisp, genuine 1920 pixels by 1080 lines HD, LED-lit, LCD monitor. But it is let down by the addition of a barely average analogue SD tuner and a rather poor SD only Freeview tuner.

It has lots of connectivity for such a slim package:
. two HDMI inputs;
. a USB input;
. VGA and associated stereo jack audio inputs;
. SCART via adaptor lead for analogue RGBS input, and Composite and stereo audio input/outputs;
. phonos brought out via another adaptor lead for analogue Y,Pb,Pr component and stereo audio inputs;
. Headphone output;
. TOSlink Optical Audio out;
. Common Interface card slot via sideways facing adaptor pod on the back (not tested);
. and of course an aerial socket;
. and figure-8 mains lead socket.

Many people will be quite happy with the TV pictures, provided they are not too fussy and don't look too closely at them, or compare them with another set. But I was disappointed, because over the last ten years I have become used to the excellent quality possible from the modern digital broadcasts, and in my opinion the pictures from the tuner in this set are distinctly substandard.

As a retired video engineer with a background in developing digital TV and plasma display technology, I make no apologies for producing a really boring and technical review here. I have also uploaded some photos of the screen showing an industry standard test pattern, Test Card W, to illustrate my points regarding the viewing angles and the TV Tuner. Because Az reduces the resolution of posted pics, two of the photos contain special bits from the test card (here enlarged) to help illustrate the differences in how much fine detail is possible from the various sources.

Viewing Angles.
Horizontal range of viewing angle is quite good, plus and minus at least 45° before the picture tends to darken and lose contrast, provided one keeps level with the centre of the screen.
Vertical viewing angle range is very limited with only about plus and minus 20° before the picture changes unacceptably, with greys being over bright when seen from above, to being too dark when seen from below.
It seems as if the gamma is changing with the vertical viewing angle, see the three photos of a JPEG 1920x1080 Test Card W from a USB stick; `TC W USB from above', the nice and clear `TC W USB' seen from the centre, and `TC W USB from below'.
The matt screen means that specular reflections are not a problem, and incident light such as a sunbeam from a window merely produces a diffuse bright patch.

Gamma.
This has the wrong shape of transfer characteristic, as factory set. Blacks are crushed and highlights white out, upper-mid greys are too bright, regardless of the back-light setting to match room brightness. It seems not to have the correct power law (to emulate a CRT) and looks more like a raised cosine, but by putting Gamma on -3 (0), reducing the Contrast to only 90 (100), raising the Brightness to 60(50) I get a passable imitation of correct gamma as measured on a special Monotonicity test pattern. Fortunately, the characteristic is quite smooth and almost always incremental with no obvious monotonicity errors. A photo of the displayed test pattern did not add any value so I've not included it.

Colorimetry.
It tends to be rather too blue for domestic use; even the red primary on its own is slightly magenta when compared with a proper reference monitor. I have set it on the warmest colour temperature, and also needed to tweak up the Red Offset (blacks) and Red Gain, and pull down the Blue Offset and Blue Gain.

HDMI inputs.
These work nicely, and accept the full range of formats that my Sony CX115 camera can produce on live pictures, from SD 576i to HD 1080p. And the quality difference between a good live `1080' picture and the playback of the same but now heavily compressed recorded H.264 picture is all too obvious! The display is clearly very much better than the camera's recording system. And the HDMI also carries the sound.
I also tried a PC and a Humax PVR, each worked as expected.

VGA input.
This supported the full range of PC inputs up to 1920 x 1080p, but looked a bit soft compared with the HDMI, perhaps because the bandwidth requirement is too high for the analogue interface of my PC graphics card and the expensive, thick VGA cable.

USB input
It knows about FAT32 and NTFS on Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices like USB sticks, but not much else, eg MTP or USB HDDs are not supported.
It will play full-license MP3 files, but none of my own original MP3 live recordings, nor WMA files, even though the various decoders are included. It is over-fussy on the DRM.
It will show most JPEG pics, but none of my TIF or BMP.
I've not bothered to put any movies on a USB stick, apart from one of my own DVCAM clips from the CX115, which the Samsung refused to play; the manual claims to play several formats, but I'm not going to waste any more time to find out if is going to be fussy about DRM.

SCART socket
All the SCART pins are connected via a short adaptor lead with a single overall screen, and most of the functions performed as normal with an external Sony VTX-D800U STB (RGB, Composite, audio, auto wide switching etc), and an old Panasonic VCR in and out. But it only showed monochrome when I sent it Y/C s-Video.

Sound.
This is surprisingly good for a very thin TV with no visible speakers (the sound comes out below, on the bottom edge) and is only 5 Watts per channel. It does lack real bass however. For best sound, turn off the special effects such as SRS and Voice, and adjust the equaliser for a little more Bass and Treble.
When I plugged in an external speaker system the Logitech X540's surround sound Matrix mode effect worked nicely from the TV channels, and with the full bass, so the Samsung headphone output is not strangled (as with some other TVs).

Freeview Tuner
This is only SD and definitely poor, even for SD, showing plastic pictures sadly lacking in texture and low level detail, with only about half the available bandwidth struggling through the various filters, even after achieving a significant improvement with ALL the so-called `enhancement features' turned OFF. There can be no excuse for this; it is unforgivable when a high quality direct internal digital connection is possible. Even my antique ten-year-old Philips OnDigital and the more recent Sony VTX-D800U STB both produce a much better, cleaner, sharper TV picture on the Samsung via the analogue SCART input, despite that still having some undesirable reduction of fine low-level detail, ie there is some kind of (unnecessary) noise filter still active.
So I borrowed a friend's Humax Freeview HD PVR and connected it via the HDMI, and was impressed by how very much better the SD Freeview pictures were than those from either the internal Samsung tuner or the STBs via SCART. And the HD from the Humax was superb.
I have uploaded `TC W SamsungFreeview' a photo of the Freeview Test Card W as found on channel 105 by the Samsung, and also `TC W SCART SonyFreeview' from the Sony via RGB on the SCART. Look at the frequency bars immediately to the right of the picture of the girl and clown; all six blocks should be equally well defined, with the lowest block showing the finest detail. Compare these with the HD version I used on the USB stick (it has finer frequency bars - count them, and noticeably more detail in the girl's hair). Alas, I did not have the camera for the one hour I was able to borrow the Humax.
You can find Test Card W on Freeview as follows: select channel 105, wait for it to appear and then press Yellow; select any other channel; return to 105, wait for it to appear and then press Green for the menu, press Green again for the Test Card.

EPG
This is excellent; all the features you might want (bar one) are present, including the ability to skip down or up pages by using the fast-forward or fast-back buttons on the remote. The one useful function missing is that the EPG does not skip to the entry for a specific channel if that is selected by its number on the remote - the EPG on each of my two other Freeview STBs can do this.

PC Connection.
Both VGA and HDMI work as expected, albeit with slightly limited picture configuration options, eg maximum 60Hz refresh - the handbook mentions this. But, for a genuine 1920 by 1080 display (preferably using the HDMI), it is a better and cheaper way to upgrade my PC screen than buying a similar size monitor from the PC manufacturer!

E-Handbook
This is slow, and can be accessed by section, or simply sequentially. It covers all the 5000 series models, so one can become quite envious of the features on the bigger sets not supported by the 27". Questions not answered include how to change the PIN number, which popped up as a bit of a surprise obstruction when I attempted some routine set-up changes. I downloaded the pdf of the handbook from the Samsung website, and I still did not manage to gain access to the PIN number. Then I dug out the scruffy twenty-page paper User Manual, and there it was at the bottom of page 6 as part of the initial set-up. The lesson to me here is; don't lose those scruffy bits of paper!

VESA mounting. Read more ›

A brief insight to my rather frustrating shopping experience:

1. Ordered Samsung 22inch white LED from Amazon- great delivery & price.
2. TV arrived- looked fantastic- excellent picture & sound for size- exactly what I was after
3. After set- up TV kept turning itself off randomly- the TV was sent back for a replacement
4. TV #2 arrived- exactly the same experience & Amazon gave me a refund until the problem had been identified.
5. Email from Amazon said this was a widespread problem experienced by Samsung customers & suggested if I was keen to order the TV for a third time then I should be prepared to update the software from a download available on the Samsung site.
6. USB at the ready TV #3 was ordered & delivered. So far so good- it works perfectly without any software updates.
7. I have given a five star rating as the product looks brilliant & Amazon provided a first class service. If I could rate the Samsung QC department they would receive 1 out of 5!