Customer Reviews

Samsung LNT1953H 19-Inch LCD HDTV

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

My wife and I have been waiting a long time for this TV. It is the first 19 inch LCD TV that we have seen with an integrated ATSC tuner which is what we needed. You can't beat the price because last years 19" LCD was slightly more expensive and did not include the tuner. Futhermore this TV has excellent picture. Although the contrast ratio is not as high as the 23", surprisingly it has a higher resolution, 1440x900 as opposed to 1366x768. Having both a PC input as well as HDMI is also a major plus. I also own an older samsung HDTV and there have been several nice improvements sine then. For instance as you change channels it displays the signal type (e.g. 1080i) which wasn't the case with my older TV. It also has all sorts of timers you can set which is perfect for the bedroom. We are using this TV as our alarm clock. Great TV!

I love this tv, I usually buy Samsung, I have a 32" 3251D thats great other than crappy built in speakers. This Tv looks sweet and has great Std Def Picture, which seperates it from the cheaper brands. Most HDTV look great with HD signal but a good tv can handle dirty signals as well.

This tv is the brand new model that has both tuners built in, I can watch HBO without a cable box cluttering up my bedroom. I thought it was going to be to small even for my small Bedroom but it worked out great. best 400 buvks I ever spend on amazon, they had the best price on this model.

Havent had the bleed in problem mentioned, but all lcds have light leakage when no signal is present on an all black screen, its the backlight, this one has a pretty uniform backlight, maybe even better than the previous gen 3251D that I own. I also like the light at the bottom, it glows a nice shade of blue.

This tv woudl be perfect at 300-350 dollars but you get what you pay for, much better than the vizio 20" at costco for about the same price....

I was very pleased with the ease of set-up and the really sharp HD picture. I was less pleased with the harsh sound similar to my old am radio of my youth. There is not much room on this set for good speakers. I resolved my problem by plugging in a set of self amplified computer speakers that I had used with a now discarded computer.I plugged them into the earphone outlet and the sound is now very good.

I saw this set at the store and it was a magnificent picture. Has an integrated HDTV tuner and all the connections you will need. Looks sweet, too. However, I got one off Amazon which was a dud. Poor picture quality and white light bleed from the top and bottom of the screen (a problem another customer complained about). Samsung telephone service help was great and agreed it was defective. Amazon was terrific and paid for the return and refund. Be careful with this set and wait a little for other feedback.
Oh, one annoying feature. While the HDTV tuner works well, you cannot dial in a specific digital channel (like 10.1) unless the search program has previously found it. And there is no way to "save" the found digital channels so that you can reposition the antennae, search for signals again, and then have a compiled list channels locked into the memory. In other words, if your search found 10.1 in one antenna position but not 6.1, there is no way the TV will let you dial in 6.1 even if you reposition the antenna optimally. You must then reprogram the search to find 6.1, but then after that is completed you wont be able to dial in 10.1 after turning antenna back because the TV did not permanently store that channel prior to the new search. My 34" Sony 960XBR can do this no problem!

Samsung's 19" LN-T1953H HDTV has a lot of very nice features and is a good product, but a few things keep it from being great.

The claimed viewing angle is 160°, but, in reality, the small screen has to be viewed almost dead on. While overall color and saturation are good, blacks are weak.

Two annoyances with the LCD panel used in this unit are what keep it from being great: 1) The native aspect ratio of the 1440 x 900 panel is closer to 15:9 than 16:9, so HD broadcasts get cut off on the sides in "wide mode." In "16:9 mode" HD broadcasts don't quite fill the screen top and bottom revealing the second flaw; 2) backlight "leaks" (as some others have mentioned) cast a bit of a halo effect around the edge of the panel and become noticeable when the screen should be dark, or when viewing HD broadcasts in 16:9. (A 19" Philips unit using the same 1440 x 900 display panel garners the same complaint from some reviewers.)

Otherwise, this is a feature-rich set that looks great and performs very well. The set's audio characteristics may be adjusted via a 5-band graphic equalizer so that it doesn't sound tinny or hollow. The simulated surround sound adds a nice spatial effect without sounding unnatural. The sound and picture pre-sets work well, and may also be customized. The ATSC/QAM/NTSC tuners work well and the built-in digital noise reduction makes analog broadcasts look better. While it can take several minutes for channels to be scanned into memory, Samsung includes a very nice feature that automatically erases scrambled (cable) channels during the scan. Samsung also allows the viewer to "see" all of the channels stored in memory, though navigating through them can be a bit tedious. The unit's base comes pre-attached and allows for some tilting of the panel which may be beneficial when the unit is mounted below eye level. PIP works only with multiple inputs connected, i.e. when also used as a computer monitor.

Overall, a good 19" HDTV suitable for dual-purpose use as a computer monitor in a bedroom, den or kitchen.

I bought an LNT1953H about a month ago, and wanted to point out some things that are missed in other reviews or in the specifications:

1. While the LCD panel itself is 1440x900 resolution, when you use the TV as a PC monitor, the highest resolution you can use is 1320x768. The unused pixels on the top and bottom are black, and for some reason the Samsung puts grey bars on either side of the image. I hope this is something they can fix with a firmware update.

2. Because of the TV's native resolution, it's actually got a 16:10 aspect ratio, not the HDTV standard 16:9. Watching standard HD content leaves pixels at the top and bottom of the screen unused. You can scale up the image, but there isn't a setting that allows you to both fill the screen and keep the proper aspect ratio. Standard def programming is scaled to fit to the top and bottom of the screen, with the expected black bars on either side.

3. It takes a surprising amount of time for the TV to power on, at least as long as my old Sony 13" Trinitron TV took (about 10-15 seconds). I don't see why this is, as LCDs don't need to warm up like CRTs do -- my LCD computer monitor powers on in 3 seconds, why can't the Samsung?

4. There's an included wall-mount bracket with the TV, but it's not a flush-mount VESA bracket (though the TV does have VESA mounting points). Instead, you fold the TV's base back so it's parallel with the back of the TV, then hook it onto the wall bracket. Mounted this way, the TV sticks out from the wall a pronounced amount.

In general, for the $450 or so this unit regularly sells for, it's a good deal for casual watching. I wouldn't buy this unit with the intention of having it also serve as a primary PC monitor, however.

I've had this set for about 2 months now and I've been very happy with it. It gives a good, sharp picture from digital cable and off-air HDTV broadcasts. I like the multiple screen formats available - standard 4:3, 16:9, and widescreen. You can default non-HD channels to stretch to fill the screen, and in most cases it doesn't look at all distorted.

However, I do have one gripe, and it could have affected my decision to buy this particular set had I known about it beforehand. The picture-in-picture feature only works if one of the pictures comes from the PC input. And the other picture must be an analog signal. This means if you don't use the set as an external monitor for your computer, then you have no PIP. If you do use it as a monitor, your other picture must be analog cable or from an antenna - nothing digital.

It's a shame that a set with so many input possibilities (cable, antenna, component, HDMI, PC, s-video) can't have a true PIP that can swap between any two of them.

As to the issues with the blue light: it can be set to turn off when powered on, turn off when powered off, turn off all the time, or remain on all the time.

As to the issues with the startup melody: it can be set to play at different volumes (or not at all) when turned on.

I've had no problems with extra white bars around the screen.

The buttons on the side are very cool, just touch your finger to them and they activate, nothing to actually press down.

The quality of the picture is very good.

The user interface / menu is pretty bad. There are a lot of simple features that require lots of paging through menus rather than pushing a button on the remote. If you want to listen to the sound from the Picture-in-Picture, you must walk through several menu screens to change it.

Finally, the picture in picture only displays the antenna input when the main screen is in a different mode (PC / component in). You cannot watch TV on the main screen with your PC input shown in the PIP window.

I've only had this unit about three weeks now but it's working just fine so far and I haven't noticed any of the issues other reviewers here have complained about.

First off, I bought this TV strictly for watching DVDs with my Toshiba all-region player, as I'd gotten tired of having to view DVDs on my home PC. I don't subscribe to cable and I don't watch broadcast television and so I will never be using the tuner that is built-in for this model. Additionally, I route the audio from the DVD player into my home stereo which has a good Harman Kardon amplifier and Cambridge Soundworks powered subwoofer and satellite speakers. I am more of an audiophile than video enthusiast. Therefore, I don't know if the built-in speakers in this TV are any good since I'm not using them and do not plan to do so.

I bought this model because it's small enough (flat-panel 19") to fit into my tight living quarters where most of the space is taken up by musical instruments and audio gear, and because it is a widescreen model (I watch mostly movies), and because it is a Samsung which is a brand that has a good reputation for LCD TVs (I'm led to believe). The picture looks good on all the DVDs I've looked at, and there are plenty of parameters in the menu options to adjust picture and sound quality to suit your viewing preferences. Picture size is easily changed with a single button on the remote for switching between discs or content with different viewing formats. I like that you can choose either widescreen or 16/9 settings since DVDs are sometimes formatted in one or the other mode and it's nice to get the fullest possible screen image with no cropping of the side borders. In short, I've got no complaints (so far), and I give it 4 out of 5 stars (I assume there are better models out there, but I'm on a limited budget so I don't feel compelled to seek them out).

One word of warning: When I took the TV out of the box and set it up, the first thing I did was adjust all the picture settings to suit my preferences. But then in the middle of watching something the settings would automatically revert to factory default settings, which are a garishly bright, color-saturated, high-contrast image quality that is hideous to look at. Searching the owner's manual for a solution to the problem was fruitless, so I went to the Samsung customer support website to search for answers. There, I quickly found (with great relief, since I was ready to return the TV to the store where I bought it) that the unit was in "shop mode" which is the setting used for display in brightly lit retail store environments. It was a simple matter to take the set out of shop mode and return it to normal "dynamic mode" for home use:

If the unit is accidentally set to Shop mode and you want to return to Dynamic (Home) mode, press the Volume button and then hold down the MENU button for five seconds on the side panel of the TV.

I don't know why they failed to include that important info in the manual, but there you are.

Let's hope this TV keeps working as well as it has been so far (of course, I paid extra for the extended service plan in case it craps out in the next four years).

No issues here....the TV arrived from AMAZON in 4 days with free shipping and no TAX. It was simple to follow the directions and the TV set up was painless. I very impressed with the quality of the HD image!!! Yah our first flat panel LCD HD TV. Attached a UHF antenna and COX digital cable..Boom in the money. We now enjoy the free local HD shows along with the standard 70 digital cable shows. The 19" TV a perfect size for the bedroom or kitchen and the 2 hidden speakers produce decent noise for that environment.