Date: April 1st, 2003
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Samsung Canada
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PRODUCT INSTALLATION, SETUP & HOOKUP (cont'd)

continuing...

Now, if you are home entertainment guru with all the ear and eye candy equipment integrated into you living room, this panel situated on the right side of the back panel will be for you. Looking at the photo, moving left to right, you will first see a switch. If you slide the switch to the upper position, your video will be activated through the red, green and blue component video outputs. The 3 video output are used for HDTV and top of the line TV's, LCD and plasma screen displays to get the best video clarity possible. Now, if on the other hand, you do not have this capability with your TV, slide the switch to the lower position and you will have your video connected through S-Video output on the right hand side of this specific panel. Clean, simple and practical. From the switch moving right, you again will have another composite audio out set and beside that is the before mentioned 3 composite video outputs. Now, the interested people with pro-logic surround sound systems will like the digital outputs and the selection. Samsung chose not to give you one option, but two. Whether you have a optical digital cable hookup on your home theatre receiver or a coaxial, you are covered. Additions like that are always a plus seeing that not all surround sound amplifiers are the same and/or use the same digital audio method.

And if you have a kid with a console gaming system, you can easily connect his system up to the front audio/video input block. Saves you from having a unresponsible kid pulling your new player out of the entertainment centre to hook himself up for gaming. Yipes! Now that's a scary thought.

Once the wiring is set, slip the unit into your entertainment centre. I honestly thought that this unit was going to be too big to fit. But, luckily, it JUST snuck in.

On Screen Programming

It has to be done, you have do go through the menus and set the system up when you first turn it on, but with Samsung's concise on-screen menu system, it's pretty simple.

The top menu consists of the language settings. Set everything to your international flavour and move down to the second menu item, DVD Setup.

Simple and practical. Enabling the digital output or changing the aspect ratio, everything is covered.

The VCR setup is where you will auto program your channels, change your tape length, program that feared clock (if you are older, get your grandchildren to do it), and setup your automatic features.

Under the Option Menu selection, you can set the machine to shutoff at a certain time, to autodim the front display when the unit is shut off, and setup your modulator output channel.

If you are concerned about someone messing with your settings, you can set a password, or in the menu above, you can program the VCR to record your favourite sitcom you missed while at work.

When everything is setup via the on-screen menus, you will have to rely on the front display for most of your navigation. Although, a little old-fashioned, the display works really well and can easily seen from across a normal livingroom.