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Date: 2007-07-16 Amazing, and a proven technology Much has already been said about the recent advancements in DLP technology. Sure, LED DLP sounds like an amazing idea; and I have no doubt that it will dominate the projection market for years to come. Here, now, in 2007, I have two major questions... 1: Will LED find itself with a failure rate higher than the Color Wheel models? If so, what will the replacement cost be? 2: Will the "blue-hue" effect be something we'll forget because of improvements, or will we simply forget it because we wont have Color Wheel models to compare? Question 1 will answer itself in time. Less moving parts, in theory, should lead to less problems, but is that reliable logic? Question 2 proves to be, at least in my mind, a bigger challenge. The mere nature of LED is to be super white. While some claim it to better represent flesh tones, I found everything a bit too "cool" even when the color temperature was set to warm. Make no mistake; LED DLP is what we'll get from here on out. In the mean time, a standard Color Wheel DLP is a great investment, especially when considering the often lowered cost of such models. So yeah, we all could get an LED model for the cost of this TV and a new bulb, just like we could get a Viper for the cost of a new Corvette Z06 and some engine work. That logic is a black hole. This TV is probably the last in a line of DLP TVs that has seen great success in the HDTV marketplace. With the HLT6176S, and other current color-wheel models, you're getting an amazing picture in a large, light-weight form factor, all with proven technology. What's not to like? Date: 2007-06-19 Great size - Average image There is no doubt that the size of this monster is impressive, at 61". For being a rear-projection unit, it is not too thick, definitely thinner than the slim version (this is the ultra-slim). The image is far from a plasma, though. Before this I had a 50" Zenith Plasma, where the image was much more nitid. I knew that with a rear-projection the image would lose, but I thought that the bells and whistles of the DLP and the 1080p would make up for it. They do not. Yet, a size like this in plasma would be about 2.5 times more expensive, so... Date: 2007-06-12 Perfect choice for a compact 60" 1080p TV We spent about 3 months researching and looking at TVs that were at least 58", 1080p, and that had bright clear image quality and wide viewing angles. None of the LED TVs came close to meeting the size requirement so we nixed them. All the DLP and LED DLP rear projection TVs seemed very dim and could not be viewed at wide angles (although their prices were right). The ony plasma that was 1080P and at least 58" was way too expensive, although it did have awesome picture quality. We were about to give up and wait for the price of the plasma TVs to drop, when we stumbled across the Sony XBR2. This was the only rear projection set we could find that had an image that came close to plasma quality. The only negatives was that it had a lot of extra features that drove up the price (like PIP) that we did not care about and took up a huge amount of space (24" deep and 71" wide). Since we really liked this TV, we overlooked the negatives and bought it. While it did look big in the store, once it was delivered to our living room, it became a gargantuan dinosaur. It dwarfed our living room and we ended up visiting 5 furniture stores trying to find a stand that was big enough. To make a long story short, the size and weight of this beast was too much and we decided to return it and wait for the plasma prices to drop. While we made the trip back to the store, we stumbled across the Samsung HL-T6176S (which had just been released that very day). We were amazed that this 61" DLP TV had: 1) Outstanding, near plasma picture quality 2) Was not dim like the other LED DLP rear projection TVs 3) Could be viewed at a wide angle (not quite as wide as plasma though) 4) Was 600$ less expensive than the Sony XBR2 (which was the best rear projection set we had found so far) 5) Was almost as compact as a plasma set! This set could be easily mistaked for an LED/Plasma. Samsung did a brilliant job of not wasting any space. You can hardly even see the bezel surrounding the picture! 6) Had plenty of inputs, connections, and features without the useless bells and whistles that drive the price up. The only real negatives are that the remote was not nearly as intuitive/nice as the remote we got with the Sony XBR2 and the picture is a little less bright than the XBR2 was, but still leaps and bounds brighter than the other DLP units we looked at. In summary, if you are dissapointed in the picture quality of the current DLP rear projections, small size of LED, high price for plasmas, and the huge size of the top of the line rear projection set (like the Sony XBR2), then this TV fits the bill. It does the best job of juggling picture size, quality, compactness, and price of any set we have seen (and we have seen them all).
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