Samsung LE40A656 LCD TV
This short post describes my experiences of the Samsung LE40A656 LCD TV.
We bought a Samsung LE40A656 40″ LCD TVs about 7 months ago and I have to say that it’s stunning. It’s a full HD, 1080P set with 4 HDMI inputs as well as component and a couple of scart sockets. We run it from a Virgin media V+ box set and the picture quality in HD is exceptional.
The only problem we had was to do with the sound. Whilst I was playing around with the various settings when we initially got the set, I turned on the setting which tries to equalize the sound level on all the channels, thinking this would be quite useful. Unfortunately, it sounded just like my old tape recorder used to sound like when I made recordings on automatic recording level (which is exactly what it is when I think about it). Basically during a quite period, the background level rises and then when there is a louder sound you can hear the whole sound level drop and limit.
Once I discovered what was causing the problem and turned that setting off the set has been excellent.
At Christmas we got a Pioneer DCS-575 Home Cinema system and that has added a whole new dimension to the experience, although I found that there is no way to alter the lip-sync delay and had to set the V+ box to 720P rather than 1080i to get the sound correct. Presumable in interlaced mode there is a delay whilst the TV assembles the picture and that is the error which you can’t correct for.
I have recently bought the TV mentioned and noticed the lip sync problem when connecting to external audio. It's not a problem using the in-built TV speakersA possible workaround is to take the sound-out from the TV from the headphone socket (3.5mm jack) on the side edge of the TV at the bottom and then into your ampifier (in my case a standard two phono connector). You will need an inexpensive "3.5mm jack to two phono" lead.The lip sync problem does not emerge, or is not as pronounced, using the TV built-in speakers, only using external speakers through the phono out socket on the back of the TV.When you plug in headphones the TV speakers are immediately muted, which suggests they are on the same circuitry as the headphones out socket. It would appear that Samsung have a built-in delay on the TV speakers so that the sound syncs with the video (I'm not an engineer and this is pure speculation on my part!). So you can hi-jack this delay (if there is such a thing) by sourcing sound out through the headphone socket.I hope this helps. (Workaround courtesy of my friend Bren)
You can do that of course and it does work. Unfortunately that means that you also get any noise etc which the analogue circuits of the television have added which rather defeats the point of having an external amplifier. I originally tried connecting the amplifier to the digital output on the back of the TV and that also gives the lip-sync problem. It's a shame that the delay (which as you say the TV obviously has) is not prior to the digital output on the back of the TV.