Seperate Sound Control Bass, Treble, and Balance Features, Surround Sound, and a Component Input.

Cosmetically not as attractive as the Sony 20"

First, I've gotta say that this TV is amazing for only $199.00. I was first looking at the Sony WEGA and Panasonic TAU. Just so happened that all three were lined up next to each other and I could not notice and difference in picture clarity. What I did notice is that Sony's 20" model did not have the features that Samsung's did and was ober $100 more. The Panasonic TAU was $100 more also... I just couldn't justify spending that extra $100 with no noticeable difference favoring either the TAU or WEGA. I luckily do not have that low level volume buzz that was noted in the previous review. It may be that I'm using Satelite that is connected with Monster Cables... who the hell listens to their TV at only 10 anyways?

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Panasonic

Great picture and feature set like the auto clock set to a PBS channel.

Fixed level buzz in audio

I bought a Samsung TV because our company uses Samsung SyncMaster 955 DF 19" monitors. They were the first monitors we have had which our staff judged out performed their Sony counterparts. I have had two of these Samsung Model TXM2091F's. The first had two problems. The picture had rolling alternately red/green color bars of low saturation, but noticeable when peoples faces suddenly turned greenish. The audio had a noticeable buzzing sound. This one was exchanged for another which has very good color but the buzz in the audio remains. The store must be aware of this since the salesman suggested turning the audio up past the 10 position to hide it. The buzz is of constant intensity while the audio can be turned up past it. When he realized the first unit also had a color problem he said the store would exchange it which they promptly did. I was a bit tempted to return the unit for a Sony or Toshiba flatscreen except the price is very good and the picture and feature set remarkable at this price. I thought Samsung was a Korean company but I noticed this set was manufactured May, 2002 in Mexico

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Sony

There was a misprint on the best buy website, Best Buy has this as model TSL2091F. There is no TSL2091F. I called Samsung and they told me that TSL is the high definition line and they only start at 27." TXM is their flat screen line. Best Buy says it''s 800 pixels horizontal resolution, but that may be another misprint. According to Samsung Customer Service and the Samsung website, this TV only has around 500 pixels horizontal resolution, not 800. Some other facts. TXL is the old model, now discontinued, TXM is the new model coming out in June 2002. There are no significant feature differences. The 2090 and 2091 are different primarily in audio, the 2090 has smaller speakers driven by 2 watts, the 2091 has larger speakers driven by 5 watts. Whether or not it really is 800 pixels I''m not sure, I want to see one in person before I make my decision. I''m voting the average rating so as not to skew the numbers. If anyone, an owner of this TV perhaps, has proof as to the horizontal resolution, please post it here.

Good, sharp picture. Neat letterbox thing, zoom.

The BUZZ people are talking about is for REAL. The internal speaker/audio thing buzzes terribly. Its very annoying. I read about the buzz on here before I actually bought it, but I thought it wasn''''t as bad as people made it out to be. Big mistake. If you want to use this as a normal, standalone TV, unless you have hearing problems, you will hear a buzz and be annoyed. You can''''t hook some external speakers to the headphone jack and expect the buzz to go away. It seems that Samsung has wired the volume controls (at the very least, of course) into that headphone jack.. so if you hook up anything to that jack, you get a buzz. I tried to put up with it for a few hours, then took it back and got a Sony flat screen for about $50 more. No buzz there!

Dont buy this tv unless you: 1)plan to use it in a sports bar that has lots of background noise 2)are deaf 3)have some external audio setup

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Sony 20" flat screen Wega Vega Trinitron. This TV is worth the extra 50 dollars it costs. TVs should NOT buzz.

The picture is good, the 16:9 view thing is sort of neat, the price was good.

As a few other people here have mentioned, the speakers emit a buzz. This is a serious issue. In fact, when I read on this site about the buzz before I even bought it, i thought it would be very minimal, and so I bought it anyway. But there is a serious buzz, and it is seriously annoying. The ONLY 2 times I would suggest buying this model Samsung TV are: 1) you are deaf, and are going to use close captioning; or 2) you will put this TV in a bar or a club, and there is so much ambient noise that the buzz wont be noticed. Dont expect to be able to hear the buzz in a store unless the store is very quiet. But! If you are going to put this thing in your bedroom, or even a family room, forget about it. The buzz is way too annoying. If for some reason, you still want to buy this TV, buy it locally, so that you can easily return it (for the buzz), and so you arent stuck paying for shipping it back. I took this TV back, and spent the extra ~50 and got a Sony Vega Trinitron 20" flat screen. Very good picture quality, very good sound, and NO BUZZ! Its worth spending another $50+ on a GOOD TV, since over the life of the TV, that $50 wont be noticeable. And it probably only took yo

There is only one thing to really talk about. I bought the TV, brought it home, heard the BUZZ! and repackaged it and returned it within 3 hours of buying it.

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Sony Vega 20FS12 flat screen

Great picture, features, sound (relatively speaking) and price

two things..read below.

Since all the positive aspects of this tv have been well presented by previous reviewers, I'll just state the two negative ones. Before I do, however, I'd like to say that this is really a wonderful tv and I'm very happy with it. So, here are the two negative things about this tv: First, the humming sound; it's there and it can be annoying at low volumes. At higher volumes, however, it's not noticible at all. Secondly, it seems that there is only one audio input for both the component video and s-video. I can't figure out why this would be the case, but it seems, in fact, that this is the case. Designated audio input for component video and s-video are the same. Why? Well, regardless of these two flaws, this is still the best 20" tv. The picture is amazingly good with a dvd player.
Also, etronics.com is a great place to purchase electronics. They ship very fast. For me, everything I purchased there was shipped within 24 hours. No, I don't work there. The tv was $269 and shipping was $35.

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Sonys

EXCELLENT picture quality; component and s-video connections; 16:9 enhanced widescreen mode; approx. 800 lines of resolution; Black cabinet instead of the crappy silver.

Wish the front input jacks were hidden instead of seeing bright red, white, and yellow colors on a black set.

I've been looking for a new TV for quite awhile. I recently bought an XBOX and ws hoping to get a digital TV that supported 480p or 1080i, but after spending $500 on the XBOX, I realized I was pretty much broke!? I noticed that the flat screen TV's produced the absolute best picture quality amongst analog televisons. I bought the flat-screen Toshiba a couple of months ago and tried it out for a litte while, it's a nice TV and all but the silver color really clashes with my all black surround equipment. Whoever thought that the silver color would be "revolutionary" / "post-millenium" was seriously WRONG! Being that the Samsung's TV was black and me being a "fan" of Samsung all through-out the past was the reason the Toshiba got returned. One cool feature that the Samsung has that the other brands don't have is the "16:9 Enhanced Widescreen" mode. This mode allows you to set your DVD player to 16:9 format and watch it on this TV with awesome picture quality by compressing the resolution to nearly twice the normal!! I honestly didn't think that it would make a difference, but I was wrong...the difference is like night and day. Another thing that really stands out on this TV is that it has both component and s-video inputs, you normally don't see those untill atleast 27"'s. This TV comes highly recommended by me, especially for bedrooms / small living rooms and for people, like me, who just bought an XBOX and want the BEST POSSIBLE PICTURE but don't have the cash to buy one of those $1000.00 Digital TV's.

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Samsung 20", Toshiba Flat Screen

GREAT picture, 800 lines of res, a/v out, composite, component, s-video inputs, flat screen, preset PLUS custom audio/video settings, enhanced widescreen mode (perfect for DVD)

annoying 'buzz' from speakers at low volume

I agree with the last reviewer in that BestBuy.com stinks, however I don't think it's right to focus a major part of a rating of a product on the service of store you purchased it from.

Like the last reviewer, I went through a hassle to find this TV locally. Could not find a dealer. I really didn't want to purchase this from some e-store because I wanted to purchase an extended warranty (like those offered for $30-40 at BB, CC, etc), despite the fact that I could get it at a much cheaper price (final cost AFTER shipping at www.etronics.com = $305). I decided to pay more and get it through BestBuy.com (avoid going through here if you can). BB obviously doesn't carry much of these in stock, I've noticed they run out seemingly every week then place the item on order (repeat). None of the local BB stores (NE Ohio area) carry this unit, it is likely a BB.com only item, meaning you have to pay their shipping costs (also 99.9% of their stores do not have in store pickup, regardless of what the site says). As for the TV:

I priced around/looked around for around 3 months for this TV and others of it's kind. I wanted a flat screen but if not possible I was ok with that. I really wanted component video for the DVD player and a/v out for a home theater setup. I came across several models. There was the Sony WEGA. It was pricing around $400 but the speakers were weak and it didn't have component video inputs. The Toshiba (20AF41) was really nice but it did tend to push the reds a bit. I looked at various review sites and it appears that this cannot be fixed without taking away at other aspects of the picture. The other flat screen I looked at was the Panasonic TAU. This would have likely been my purchase had Panasonic not tried to cut costs and remove features from the previous year's model (they took out the component video inputs and lowered the price $60, otherwise I'd say go for this or the Samsung). As far as the 20" tvs I came across in stores locally, the only one that stayed of interest was the 20" JVC D-series. It wasn't a flat screen but the speakers were really powerful and it had all the features the flat screens I came across lacked. Unsure of what to do, I decided to 'take it' and order this Samsung TV online and pay the shipping. This TV was my first choice, and well, I got it.

As for the picture, this TV is fantastic. You can customize your picture settings (unlike my old TV where it did not save the settings after you changed from them) and the digital comb filter works great to clear up fuzzy cable channels and dot crawl on DVDs. The enhanced widescreen mode is perfect for DVDs, so you can set your DVD player to the widescreen TV option and get it's full potential. Yes, the picture improves drastically. The various types of inputs on here are great for hooking up DVD, VCR, etc. I wish the channel labels went above channel 63 or so, but that's not a worry since most of the models of this size don't have that feature anyways. If you are planning on hooking this TV up for home theater, I highly recommend it.

As for the audio, the sound is expectedly not as good as your usual stereo system but it is superior to most other TV's out there. The preset audio options plus the custom setting comes in handy. There's a simulated surround sound option that works very well. Out of the box, the TV has an on/off chime, you can turn it off (and I surely did). However there is one major drawback to the sound (on this TV at least, I'm not sure if it's this way on all units of this TV). On "mute" or volume 0, the unit is completely quiet. However once you go to volume 1 there is a constant buzz emitting from the speakers (this will be the reason for my rating being a "4", if not for this it would be a clear "5"). You can notice it up through probably volume 12 or so (which is at this point pretty loud). The TV goes very high in the volume, I'm guessing around 100 though I haven't tested it's max volume. This buzz made me think this unit had a problem, because when you are watching something like a talk show you can hear the buzz throughout everything and it's annoying. Also, using the headphone jack on the front didn't rid of this buzz. I am very picky when it comes to sound (I'm a HUGE music lover), so I will comment on any weakness in the sound regardless of how minor it is. I'd say have your volume at a decent level if you don't want to hear this noise. However, if you decide to use the audio outputs on the back of the TV and run the sound through a home theater system, I strongly advise so! This totally corrects the problem, there is no buzz whatsoever going through an external speaker setup. Since this is what I am doing, I feel no need to really look into the buzz issue with (this TV at least's) speakers, nor should you if you are planning to hook it up this way. If you are any bit at all serious about your audio quality, you wouldn't use the TV's speakers anyways (this covers other brands also, TV speakers are normally cheap).

As for the remote, it's not illuminated, no big deal. I am able to find the buttons on my own in the dark and once the TV is on the light from the TV will allow you to see the buttons so that's not a problem (I prefer non-lit remotes). The remote is very comfortable to hold, though I wish the recall last channel button was not in the center of the remote and that you could move through the channels a bit faster.


I think I have covered all I wanted to say. For the price, you are not going to get a better TV. For the specs, I have yet to find a unit that is as beefed up as this. Skip the WEGA and the (new model) TAU...get the Samsung. You won't be disappointed. Just use an external speaker setup, otherwise if you are picky about the sound and want to use the TV's speakers, you may want to try another TV (but then you will miss out on the features and picture quality, so it's your choice).

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other 20" flat screen tv's in it's class, 20" JVC d-series

Componenet Video, Black Color

Did not work

Loved the 800 lines specs, couldn't wait to try the 16x9 squeeze, couldn't get it locally, bestbuy.com they said, arrived at work, brought home, didn't work (no picture), got mad, put in car, back to local bestbuy, wait in line, local store wouldn't order another, wouldn't refund shipping only a bb credit, said I could order another from bb.com, back home to order, none in stock at bb.com, getting madder, back to store, gimme a Toshiba 20AF41, never speak of this again, vow to support my local brick and mortars more, love the Tosh though.....the blacks were better on the Samsung...but thats all it did...black !

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Bought a Toshiba 20AF41

Awesome Picture

Better to use an external audio setup. Speakers are like tin cans compared to any decent home audio setup

Could someone please email me the service code to get to the convergence menu ? Please !! My colors are not focus correctly. I know its because the CRT guns are not aligned. I need to get into the convergence menu. I *CAN* get into the regular service mode (menu-1-8-2) ... however I need to get into the convergence menu. Could someone please help email me the code ? Thanks.

email me at max@wired2net.com