Samsung: SIRT165 with 1394

[HDTV Forum]

By Pete Putman of Roam Consulting http://www.hdtvexpert.com

The T165 is as different from the T151 as the T151 from the T150. The T165 has an even sleeker and higher-tech appearance with no visible controls and a pop-down front cover that disguises a few operational buttons. A built-in LED alphanumeric display shows you the channel you've tuned in and also indicates whether the received audio format is digital or analog. There's even an indicator that lights up when the FireWire link is activated.

In fact, the T165 is much more than a set-top receiver. It's also a hub device; one which allows you to connect and switch several components in your system and feed all of them at one resolution to your monitor. This could be a big help if you have an older TV with one component ad one AV input, but several video sources to connect and select.

The supplied remote is identical to that of the T151 with the addition of one button marked "FireWire". Pressing this button takes you directly to the FireWire control panel and saves some unnecessary navigation through the menu system. As on the T151, you'll have direct button access to aspect ratio selections and program guide info, and you can use the remote to control other Samsung components.



The rear panel of the T165 is far more complex than the T151, and as the nerve center of an AV system it ought to be. There are two RF inputs. The first is marked Air and is where your outside or inside antenna is connected. This input tunes only channels 2-69 and looks for analog NTSC and digital ATSC signals at the same time.

The second input is marked Cable and is where your analog cable connection is made. The tuner connected to this input tunes channels 2-125, but also looks for digital 8VSB and analog NTSC signals. Unfortunately, the T165 does not recognize digital cable TV signals which are modulated using the Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) format. (Perhaps a future model will have this capability.)

There are two rows of AV inputs, each equipped with a composite jack, an S-video input, and stereo audio jacks. The third AV input has YPbPr jacks and stereo audio. The design concept was that you could take other components in your system - like a VHS deck, DVD player, PVR, etc. - and switch all of them through the T165 in addition to watching digital and analog TV. The component input is clearly labeled Component Video Input (480i/480p) and is not intended to switch 720p or 1080i component sources.

You can connect the T165 to your TV or monitor in several ways. The most common would e through the YPbPr analog output jacks, using stereo analog audio. You can also watch a down-converted version of any digital or analog TV programs by connecting to the S-video or composite output jacks and hooking up audio in a conventional manner.

The third option is to use the DVI-I connector and drive the DVI input on your RPTV, plasma/LCD monitor, or front projector directly, keeping intact an all-digital path from broadcaster to screen. Finally, there is a 15-pin RGBHV jack for non-standard monitor or PC monitor hookups. This output is enabled at the same time as the DVI output.

As usual, both coaxial and optical Dolby Digital AC-3 outputs are also available to feed your home theater system. An RS-232C connector is available for remote control of the tuner via a separate system. And the four-position output format selector switch from the T151 is also present here.

Of particular interest are a pair of tiny IEEE1394 jacks marked "in" and "out". These are used to operate D-VHS VCRs, but can also be part of a home networking solution if you so desire. Samsung does not have such a product now, but may elect to add it in the future a la Mitsubishi's HAVi system. This is where you'd connect the JVC, Mitsubishi, and Panasonic D-VHS decks.

Since the T165 is a dual-mode tuner, you'll need to execute two channel scans once your antenna and CATV connections are made. This is easily done in the Channel menu, where you'll see virtual buttons for Air or Standard CATV channel spacing. The process takes about 1.5 seconds per channel, and as you watch the front panel you'll see the tuner search initially in digital mode on each channel, then default to analog if no channel is found.

The T165 is very fast at scanning channels and adds 8VSB stations as fast as it adds OTA or cable NTSC broadcasts. As it loads digital stations, the T165 saves the station's virtual channel assignment in memory against the actual physical channel, along with date, time, callsign, and video and audio format data. This means that a digital station must be transmitting at least basic (or static) PSIP data for the T165 to recognize it.

During my initial scans, local DTV station UHF-67 (WCAU-DT) was not transmitting any PSIP data. Consequently, the T165 did not load the digital station into memory, even though WCAU-DT was broadcasting video and audio. Because the T165 is a dual-mode tuner, it needs PSIP to quickly distinguish digital TV signals from analog. This means that if you are watching a channel with no PSIP data, the tuner may skip right by it. Older DTV tuners had the ability to defeat the channel mapping feature and would just save the physical channel data with no station ID available.

Once WCAU-DT reset their digital TV encoder, the T165 instantly found and saved the signal as "10-1", which is WCAU's virtual channel ID. I do not have any 8VSB signals available on my cable system (which is operated by Comcast) so I cannot say how well the T165 will work with this mode. Assuming the station's PSIP data is maintained, there should be no problem in capturing and viewing 8VSB stations on cable.

The AV switcher on the T165 works well, but the composite video input needs better comb filtering. I connected my Sony DVP-S7000 DVD player through the composite, S-video, and component jacks on the T165 and checked the up-converted image quality at 720p and 1080i. With composite video, there was a loss of detail at 300 lines and 400 lines using the Video Essentials Zone Plate test and too much color moire.

Switching to S-Video and component YPbPr inputs made a big difference. Images were much cleaner and crisper now. The T165's de-interlacing circuit isn't as good as my Panasonic DVD-RP56 with Faroudja FLI2200 chipset, but the upconverted images on the T165 looked better than half of a batch of professional AV projectors I recently tested.

The flag-waving sequence from the montage of images on Video Essentials was close to the 480p output of the DVD-RP56 in this regard. As a result, upconverted analog NTSC signals have pretty good image quality but you may see some interlaced artifacts particularly with 1080i output. Colors were clean and little noise was seen in deep blues and saturated reds.

The DVI output is a tricky beast. The only DVI-equipped display I had on hand for this test was Epson's new TW100 front 16x9 LCD projector. Although the owner's manual for the TW100 claims it will display 480p as DVI, the only format I could get to work was the 720p output on the T165. (Epson identifies this as 1280x960 in their table of compatible formats.) This combo worked exceptionally well when watching D-VHS tapes of movies and programs recorded in 720p and 1080i material that was format-converted wasn't too shabby, either.

None of the AV inputs would work in DVI mode, no matter what I tried. My choices were limited to OTA and cable NTSC, OTA DTV, and D-VHS tapes. When I tried to convert a 480i component source to 720p DVI, I saw the image for a brief second and then nothing but colored static.

Another problem arose when I couldn't pass a 480p signal from the Panasonic DVD player through the T165 in any output mode. The manual claims such a signal can be passed through the T165, and the rear-panel connector is labeled as such. But I could not get this function to work at all.

I also found switching between analog cable and OTA signals tricky. To do so, you must go into the Channel menu and select Memorize Channels. Then scroll to either Air or Standard CATV and press the ENTER button on the remote. Do NOT scroll to the Start button and select it; otherwise, you'll initiate a new channel scan. This function needs to be brought out to a separate button on the remote, such as the TV/Video selector.

The FireWire interface works quite well. Samsung has loaded in control protocols for the JVC HM-DH30000U, but the T165 will also interface to the Mitsubishi and Panasonic D-VHS decks mentioned earlier. Under Guide, you'll be able to set up as many as six scheduled recordings for any specific minor channels. That means if you have a broadcaster sending out HDTV programs on a second or third minor channel, that's the only program data that will be recorded.(Yes, I have seen at least one broadcaster using three minor channels with one reserved for HDTV.)

To use the T165 with a PV-HD1000 D-VHS deck, simply plug in the FireWire connector and turn on the Panasonic from the T165's menu. As I mentioned, there is a button on the remote that will take you instantly to that menu - a nice time-saver. The Panasonic deck will be echoed back as "DHVS2 Panasonic" and you have full control over all PV-HD1000 functions including scheduled recordings.

All in all, the T165 is a great STB to have in your system, despite a few shortcomings. It looks really snazzy and has a very user-friendly menu interface, plus just about every input and output connector you could wish for. It needs an easier way to toggle between OTA and cable signals (many of us use both sources for TV), and the 480i video decoder and de-interlacer could be better.

On the other hand, the FireWire interface is great for time-shifting DTV programs and a snap to use. The DVI interface works well with OTA, cable, and D-VHS program sources with a noticeable improvement in signal quality. Support for 64-QAM and 256-QAM modes would be the icing on the cake, but that's probably coming next year as more manufacturers jump on the digital cable bandwagon.

[Grumpy_Bob]

I have the SIR-T165 and have a few comments:

1) I agree that switching between cable and OTA should be a button on the remote, instead of digging through menus.

2) As a side, the T165 seems to a VERY good job of taking the cable tv analog audio signal, converting it to digital, sending it out the optical output to my Denon receiver, which then provides great prologic surround sound. I don't know why and it doesn't make sense, but it is MUCH better than say, using the TV tuner to tune analog cable and sending the analog audio output to the Denon. It still picks up the Prologic info on Prologic programming, but when the T165 sends the Denon a digital conversion of the same programming, the Denon really comes alive. Background and ambience noises in things like Spike TVs Star Trek TNG sound completely different.

3) Pete mentioned trouble with a 480p signal, but I have no problem sending a 480p DVD signal through the T165, and out either the component or RGBHV outputs upsampled to 1080i. (I normally run DVD through my Lumagen, but I tried it through the T165 just for kicks. It's not as good as the external scaler, but it's better than many others I've seen...)