Information On the Samsung 215TW and Pics

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FullSpankzilla

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Joined
Apr 25, 2006
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First, this is my first post on the forum. I have been reading some things posts about the Samsung 215TW and people were having alot of questions about it. I have some pictures that ill post on here. I have had the monitor for a few weeks, and let me say that I have never been more happy with a monitor in my life. See for yourself:

This is a wide shot of the monitor, so you can get a feel for the size
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Here is a shot of the Desktop
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This is the bottom of the monitor and the connections. It has your Component, VGA and DVI
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This is the Left side of the monitor which has your standard AV and S-Video connections
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these next photos are 360 games running on the monitor, again the quality is amazing:
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If anyone is thinking about whether or not to buy this monitor, I would say to get it. I've had many monitors in the past, and this one ranks in the top. let me know what you guys think, or if you have any questions. Thanks!
 
I saw this monitor on display at Best Buy the other day and I've been sold ever since. I'm going to be picking one up soon, hopefully within the next few weeks.

One question: Is the Xbox 360 connected to the Samung 215TW via component cables or vga? If vga, what resolution are you running the 360 at? And would it be possible to get shots using component cables? From what I've read the Gateway that uses this same panel had dark component output, so I'm wondering if the Samsung suffers from the same problem.
 
On those pics i was using the VGA from the xbox 360. Ive tried the component and the major diff was the brightness and the HD cleared things up. I will posts some picks of Component.
 
thank you so much for these! I am heading to best buy tommorrow to pick one up, been trying to find people who have this monitor on all the forums I visit, and nobody is talking about it. The few posts I found of people who have it LOVE it.
 
*jealous*

I wanted so much to get this monitor unfortunately it's not available in Canada just yet and no one seemed to be able to tell me when it would be available. As a last resort I went with the Gateway FPD2185W which supposedly has the same panel as the 215TW. Unfortunately not all monitors are made equal and I was quite disappointed with the color reproduction on the Gateway so it's going back, as soon as my new Samsung 242MP gets here...

By the way nice pics, appreciate them.
 
Amazing monitor. I really wanted to get this one but I couldn't afford one. I had to settle for Dell 2005FPW and 2007WFP, but I would trade them for Samsung 215TW in a heartbeat.
 
My 19" CRT went dead a week or two ago so I went ahead and bought the Samsung 215TW, my first LCD. I thought it'd be perfect while I await Windows Vista, a new computer and a 24" with LED backlight (hopefully).

I ordered it the 18th of April and I expect to get it very soon. It's brand new for the Swedish market. An interesting side-note is that it seems Samsung are targeting different markets with different cabinet colors. In the US you only have the black version. And in Sweden, for example, we only have the silver version. To me that's not a problem because silver is a better choice for graphic design (that's why the Apple Cinema Displays are only available in silver), since it's neutral and doesn't disturb the on-screen colors in any way.

Anyway, few reviews are available as of this time, but there is one at www.flatpanels.dk, a Danish website. The address is:
http://www.flatpanels.dk/test.php?subaction=showfull&id=1145524300&archive=&start_from=&

And here is a direct-link to a computer translated version (quite bad actually):
http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTr...0&archive=&start_from=&&text=&from=dan&to=eng

To sum up the review, this is what it says:

Positive
Color reproduction
Black level
Ergonomics and design
Many input options
Good PIB and PBP possibilities

Negative
Response time not perfect
The sound of the speakers

Target group
The all-round user
The movie enthusiast
The amateur graphic designer

Regarding the negative aspects Rasmus Larsen clearly states that only if you're a hardcore gamer you will end up a bit disappointed by the response time, since it can't match the fastest screens available. But for casual gaming he says it's perfectly adequate.

And I wouldn't be too worried about the sound since I have a Z-5500 hooked up to my computer. I don't expect the built-in speakers to be anywhere near them! I would have liked the 215TW without the speakers actually, but I don't think they're disturbing the design very much anyway.

I can't wait for the 215TW to arrive!
 
Thnx for that the 215tw is the number one display I have been looking at buying when it becomes available hopefully next week and this post is very encouraging. Could you test the backlight on it though that's my biggest concern at the moment.

This is my first post too!
 
Sarge. said:
Thnx for that the 215tw is the number one display I have been looking at buying when it becomes available hopefully next week and this post is very encouraging. Could you test the backlight on it though that's my biggest concern at the moment.

This is my first post too!
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The backlight on the one I returned was just like the gateway backlight. Like little spotlights in all four corners (on the gateway ppl describe it as a X pattern).
 
However, unless your a Hard Core Gamer, the Backlight X which Comet was refering to is actually very faint. Much better than most dell's i've seen.
 
FullSpankzilla said:
On those pics i was using the VGA from the xbox 360. Ive tried the component and the major diff was the brightness and the HD cleared things up. I will posts some picks of Component.
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How much darker was the display when using component on the Xbox 360? Was it playable or unplayable?
 
Apparently the 215tw can't do HD through component only 480p can you confirm this?
 
Sarge. said:
Apparently the 215tw can't do HD through component only 480p can you confirm this?
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Where did you hear that? If it can't do HD through component, what did they put the component inputs on there for?
 
zero002021 said:
Where did you hear that? If it can't do HD through component, what did they put the component inputs on there for?
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Juts do a search for component 215tw and there are a few results that say this. I guess the component is only for progressive scanning DVD players that do non HD 480p
 
Bah, I don't know if I want to buy the Samung 215TW anymore. Not being able to do true HD via the component inputs could break the deal. Only way I can see myself getting the display now is if I can find a good deal on it.
 
It is incorrect to say the 215TW does not support 720p through the component inputs.

I purchased one 12 days ago from Best Buy and since I was concerned about this report and wanted to know if I should hustle to return it within my 14 day period, I hooked my 360 up to the monitor just now.

Initially it was 480i stretched to fit the screen, since I still had my selector on SDTV, but when I moved it to HDTV the Xbox rebooted and came up in 480p. At that point I went into my dashboard and selected 720p as the resolution I wanted to use, since we all know the 215TW cannot support 1080i natively. Indeed my Xbox set the resolution to 720p and i checked the menu of the Samsung to verify this and it reported that the resolution it was receiving was 1280x720 @ 75Hz.

However bear in mind that since this monitor has no support for hardware centering of the display, it does indeed stretch it out a bit to fill the screen to it's native size.

Hope this clears that up. I am very satisfied with mine.
 
Could somebody post pictures of the 360 in 720p with component. I would also like to see a pic of the monitor display saying it is in 720p like the above poster said.
 
Very nice. I am allmost 100% sure this will be my next monitor. It has every feature I was looking for in a widescreen LCD monitor.
 
Lord Rahl said:
Could somebody post pictures of the 360 in 720p with component. I would also like to see a pic of the monitor display saying it is in 720p like the above poster said.
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In other words you think I'm lying.

Why would I lie? What do I care if you buy one or not. I'm happy with mine and only brought it into the living room to check and make sure it COULD do 720p with my 360 should I decide to ever do that.

So basically, no I won't be taking a picture of it. I don't feel like dragging it back out into my living room just to rebuke someone implying I lied.
 
No, I'm not implying that you lied. I just think that maybe you made a mistake or something or you read it wrong, idk. I would just like to see if for myself before putting down 550 dollars on it. No offense man.
 
Lord Rahl said:
No, I'm not implying that you lied. I just think that maybe you made a mistake or something or you read it wrong, idk. I would just like to see if for myself before putting down 550 dollars on it. No offense man.
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I trust Trekari, but I can understand why you would still want to see pics of the Xbox 360 running in 720p. My advice would be to buy it from a store with a good return policy, and that way you can return it if for some reason you can't get 720p over component.

If you can wait, I'm going to do a full evaluation of the monitor when I get it. I have an Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube as well as older systems. The problem is, I don't quit know exactly when I'm going to get it. It could be next week, it could be a few months. My birthday is in August, so I'm debating whether to buy it now or ask for it as a birthday present.
 
zero002021 said:
My birthday is in August, so I'm debating whether to buy it now or ask for it as a birthday present.
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Haha, same plan here. Mine is coming up mid next month. I can wait until then!
 
What connection did you use on your 215tw for XBox 360??
I connected my ps2 with component and the image quality is really bad.
Is it because of ps2 doesn't support enough resolutions for the 215tw??
 
What game did you try to play? With the PS2 it's probably going to be a hit or miss deal, depending on the games, their age, and whether or not they support 480p.
 
Charlie, would you perhaps mean to say that you used a composite cable, and not component cables?
 
zero002021 said:
What game did you try to play? With the PS2 it's probably going to be a hit or miss deal, depending on the games, their age, and whether or not they support 480p.
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Well I played Devil May Cry 3 which is not more than 2 years. I'm not sure what resolution I played but it just looked so crappy.
 
DaRkF0g said:
Charlie, would you perhaps mean to say that you used a composite cable, and not component cables?
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No, I meant to say component cable, those 5 lines of cable (3 for video and 2 for audio I think). ps2 only comes with composite cable so I had to bought it separately.
 
Hmm, I am not sure what to say then. I dont have any true experience with LCD's and the 360. Maybe someone else can shine some light on this.

Oh, and I also noticed that in retail shops they have the 360 hooked up to a ~30" Samsung LCD display. Looks GREAT. Either it is some other cable (again I am not sure what the 360 offers in terms of connections), or it is something which is not setup properly with the 360.

Sorry I cannot be of more help!
 
DaRkF0g said:
Hmm, I am not sure what to say then. I dont have any true experience with LCD's and the 360. Maybe someone else can shine some light on this.

Oh, and I also noticed that in retail shops they have the 360 hooked up to a ~30" Samsung LCD display. Looks GREAT. Either it is some other cable (again I am not sure what the 360 offers in terms of connections), or it is something which is not setup properly with the 360.

Sorry I cannot be of more help!
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I'm not so sure but I think my ps2 game may looked distorted because this samsung 215tw is not a lcd tv. Some lcd monitor is also a tv like that NEC 20WMGX2.
 
If your a hardcore pc gamer DO NOT BUY THIS LCD! The ghosting is considerable in games like UT2004 and Call of Duty 2. I switched from 19" crt to it and even thought the picture looked excellent the ghosting was driving me nuts. I returned it and bought a vx2025 and now Im pretty happy. If there is ghosting its not enough to bother me.
 
Meh, I'm not too worried about ghosting. I'll buy the monitor from a store with a good return policy, and test it for myself. If I find the ghosting to be too bad, the 215TW goes back to the store. Otherwise, it stays on my desk. :D
 
zero002021 said:
Meh, I'm not too worried about ghosting. I'll buy the monitor from a store with a good return policy, and test it for myself. If I find the ghosting to be too bad, the 215TW goes back to the store. Otherwise, it stays on my desk. :D
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My thoughts exactly!

As far as the 215 goes it perfectly fits my needs.
 
Im so sad. I have this exact same monitor and not 2 months after buying it the inverter died in it. Im 10 to 14 business days without my monitor now. How lame ~_~

Other than that I love my monitor. Thank goodness I got the Bestbuy 3 year extended I guess......
 
Can you make it letterbox so that when playing on the xbox 360 in 720p, it will keep its 16:9 aspect ratio instead of stretching to 16:10. And if not, does it look really distorted or is it barely noticeable at all?
 
Other than that I love my monitor. Thank goodness I got the Bestbuy 3 year extended I guess......
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Doesn't the Samsung 3 year warranty take care of any hardware issues? I'd also assume that with the Best Buy warranty they aren't going to actually fix the monitor, but instead replace it with a new one? Why are you without it for 2 weeks?
 
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