Samsung HL-R7178W 71 in. HDTV DLP TV

First i want to excuse myself about my english but i decide to leave a review on this TV because none have done one before so i will do my best. :)

OK, i chose this TV because i want to have a very big screen in my home theater room, not only a big screen but a huge screen...The choice was not easy, first PLASMA TV was eliminate for now they don't offer 70+ inch, second was the ACL...The only ACL that can beat the quality of the DLP is the sony wega but the price for a 70 inch is around $15000, because of that i did not take that choice...The regular ACL show me that the white is more gray and the black is not so black...This is the reason why i choose the DLP....The only bad thing is the rainbow effect on the DLP but with this tv i never see the rainbow effect...I know samsung have changed the color wheel for help minimised this problem....i never saw the rainbow effect for my part.

One thing to consider is the life of the light-bulb, for my parts i have used the TV for around a 1000 hours now and this TV was the demo in the store before for another 1000 hours, so the life time of the bulb is supposed to be around 4000 hours, but if you used a UPS battery backup you can boost the life of your light-bulb for the double(because the UPS battery backup cancel every fluctuation in the electricity and protect the bulb in case of blackout)


THE GOOD: about the TV is the quality of the picture, all the option include in the overall and also one other good thing is the internal picture convertion for non HDTV channel, even if you use a regular air antenna, the internal converter bring you a very good picture, not clear like a DVD but almost perfect. The other good thing is the HDTV decoder for the regular antenna. Some channel offer a free HDTV signal over the air and the TV have everything ready inside.
Another good feature is the lamp intensity adjustment, they have 4 preset setting dynamic, cinema, standard and custom, in bright area it's better on standard but in dark room cinema option give a good picture and save your eye.
Configuration of the screen, the screen is a wide screen 16/9 but not a very wide screen like some other model, this configuration give you the best of the 3 movie size, i explain:
First size is the regular square screen, because the screen of the tv is not too wide you can stretch the image for fill the screen and not have the 2 black bar on each side and doing that on a very wide screen tv make the actor look FAT but with this tv screen the aspect of the actor is not too stretch.

Second size is the small widescreen with black bar on top and bottom of the image, image fit perfect to the screen.

Third size is the large widescreen with one large black bar on top and bottom of image. With this tv you still see the half of the black bar on top and bottom of screen but with the option ZOOM you car hide the bar and have a full screen image with no stretch effect, you just lost about one inch each of the picture.
I will not continue to explain all the good feature of this TV but in general everything is over my expectation, by the way i sit at 12 feet from the tv with no problem, i check the screen and it's possible to be sit around 8 feet with good quality picture but using the option ZOOM on the TV make a small blur effect, i used the zoom on my DVD and like this i have no blur effect (dvd is an SAMSUNG HD 960, very good choice)

THE BAD or what they could have done better:
The screen reflect the sunlight, in a bright area you can adjust the setting of the light-bulb to standard to have a better view but if a windows is in the back of the TV you will only see the window reflect. So if you plan to put this TV in a bright room think about that.
The PIP or the option to view small preview of another channel, the pip give you only the chance to view only one principal channel and one second channel no option to have more than 2 channels in same time.

Noise of the tv is unperceivable.

Also DLP tv is a better choice if you use the TV in a humid area (like your basement)

If you don't use a HD-DVDplayer and want the best quality of picture use the TV with Samsung DVD player HD-960 (the only one, for now, to up convert picture to 1080P) Also use the HDMI cable, the reason is if you use the regular 3 colors RCA cable you going to loose picture quality (DVD movie are digital picture and RCA cable cary analog data, the dvd player have to convert the data to analog to used the RCA cable, a convertion is like a copy and you lose quality...After when the data reach the TV it's reconvert in digital because the TV display is digital this make a second convertion and a second lost of quality...When you use HDMI cable your data goes to the TV without convertion and no lost of quality) Like this de details a so sharp that you have to put your nose on the screen for see the pixels.
----------UPDATE ON THE PRODUCT NOVEMBER 2009----------It's now over 3 years I have this TV, i watch it for about 4 to 6 hours everyday, even more when i play video games on it during week-end. The important thing i can say now is the quality is perfect on that product. The screen did not show any dead pixels, the colors are still clear and i did not change de light bulb for now (this thing suprise me because when i buy the TV they told me the bulb life is about 6000 - 8000 hours..) and the remote work fine. Any way, Samsung look to be a good choice.
The bad news is not about the TV i have but on the NEW model. I have look the new demo in store, the movie on screen (spiderman) was running on a blu-ray player and the disk was a blu-ray version, but the quality on screen was like my tv when i play a regulard DVD with a good up-convertion player. When i play a blu-ray i have a lot better quality, enven if the tv is 3 years older...Strage, i think Samsung have lower the quality of the DLP screen for drop the price (around 2500$ lower than before) and be competive for fight toshiba price. OR the lost of quality could be made by the no reflection screen?