Samsungs HL-S5679W won the CNET Best of 2006 Award’s TV category at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The 56 inch, HL-S5679W 1080p HDTV rear projection television (RPTV) is Samsungs first LED backlighting technology offering on the market.

Light emitting diode (LED) backlighting technology is set to revolutionize RPTV and LCD products over the next few years. Firing rapidly in sequence, the red, green and blue LEDs produce a smooth, stable color output.

The headline benefits of the new technology are:

• Elimination of the DLP rainbow effect (brief color trails visible to some viewers)
• A much wider color gamut – greater than 100% NTSC vs 72% -92% for traditional CCFLs
• Quicker turn on time – 7 seconds
• Longer backlight life – 20,000 hours or more compared with typical 3,000 -5,000 for CCFL backlights
• No brightness degradation over bulb life as with conventional CCFL backlights
• Quieter operation
• Mercury free – environmentally friendly
• Lower electricity consumption than conventional backlighting

The LED backlighting behind the Samsung HL-S5679W is the commercially available, solid state, PhlatLight chipset from Luminus Devices. The Phlatlight, based on Luminis’s photonic lattice technology, was designed specifically for microdisplay (such the Texas Instruments DarkChip3 DMD powering the HL-S5679W) illumination. The photonic lattices are microstructures arranged in complex arrays to push reluctant photons out of the diode’s semiconductor medium – boosting light output of the LEDs. As well as boosting the light output, the microstructures produce a more unidirectional (directed) and useful light stream. PhlatLight chipsets are the first with sufficiently high power levels to produce the brightness required for RPTVs.

The much wider color gamut possible with the LED backlighting provides displays with very noticeable improvements in color saturation. Combined with the clarity of 1080p high definition, images displayed provide a superior viewing experience.

As mentioned, the Samsung HL-S5679Ws has a single Texas Instruments .95 1080p DarkChip3 DMD microdisplay chip . This chip has the highest fill ratio (smallest gap between micro-mirrors on the DMD chip) of its family yet. The DarkChip3 is the latest DLP technology offering higher brightness and contrast then previous versions. The DarkChip3 DMD chip has the full two million and some micro-mirrors for the 2 megapixels required for 1080p high definition display (1920 x 1080). The HL-S5679Ws is therefore a native 1080p projector and does not use Wobulation, or Smooth Picture (Texas Instruments terminology) as do units using the .79″ version of DarkChip3 which have 720p (1,280 x 720) native resolution. For more information on these read Presentation Technologies review of Hewlet Packard’s HP MD6580 and MD5880 1080p Rear Projection HDTVs

Samsung picture technologies featured in the HL-S5679Ws include:

• Cinema Smooth 1080p Light Engine which “brings together the right optics, electronic circuitry and replaceable light source to create a brilliant picture that’s more lifelike and much closer to film (contrast and brightness, defined edges and sharp detail”.
• Samsung’s DNIe™ – Digital Natural Image Engine which “guarantees the truest colors and highest contrast, while virtually eliminating digital artifacts”.
• Cinema Mode which lets you see colors the way the director intended, by matching them more closely to production standards – more accurate colors and natural skin tones”.
• My Color Control which allows one to “get the pink tones, the green of the grass and the blue of the sky just the way you like, without affecting the other colors on the screen.”

In regard to other features, the HL-S5679W shares a similar feature set with the company’s 2006, seventh-generation 1080p DLPs – the 50 inch HL-S5087W, 56 inch HL-S5678W and 61 inch HL-S687W.

Samsung has also provided a “Games” mode, which increases color saturation and brightness and adds edge enhancement.

There is a fairly good range of connections including dual HDMI ports which can accept high definition, 1080p video sources. The included Cable Card feature allows the TV to be used without a cable box. Twin tuners allow PIP (Picture in picture) functionality. The remote supplied is universal across the Samsung range.

Samsung back their product with a limited warranty on parts and labor for 1 year.

Further Reading

Read our Microdisplay chips for rear projection televisions post to learn more about the technologies powering the new generation of microdisplay televisions.

NIST have developed a new technology to improve the output of LEDs by seven times.