Great set at an excellent price.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent picture on both NTSC and HDTV.

Cons: Confusing selecting video inputs. Unused ones cannot be disabled.

Sound:
Ease of Use:
Picture Quality:
Durability:

The Bottom Line: 
I recommend this set. It is an HDTV ready set at a great price.

Author's Review
It was time to buy a new TV, but the new one had to be HDTV compatible. So, after looking around stores at LCD and plasma models and asking for demos in both HDTV and NTSC, I decided that a CRT set would give the best picture when operating in both modes.

The Samsung TX-R3079 was on sale at a store for $1,000 Canadian (US $870) and this included the stand!! After seeing a demo of the set, I bought one. The stand assembly is similar to something from IKEA. Finally, two of us lifted the set onto the stand and fastened the clamp at the back of the set which secures it to the stand. The overall depth of the set is small considering this is a 30" model.

Set-up is not difficult. The on board clock had to be manually set as it doesn't use a PBS NTSC station but takes it from an HDTV channel. Similarly, the programme guide only on works on HDTV channels. As at present, only two Canadian HDTV channels are on air in the Vancouver area, the programme guide is not working.

I was pleasantly surprised by the NTSC picture quality on the cable channels and the HDTV picture is superb. All 525 line pictures are upconverted. The DVD player was connected up to a component video input and once again the picture was superb. I don't know if an upconverted DVD player would give a better picture. As mentioned by other reviewers, there is a horizontal picture wave in the central lower area which is really only noticeable on the cable programme guide.

This set has every type of video input including one HDMI. However, video input selection is confusing. There are two input selection buttons; one steps through the component and HDMI inputs and the other through the composite and S-video inputs. The alternative method is to enter the menu mode and then source when the required input can be more easily selected. It would be much better if the inputs not given a label were disabled. Any Samsung engineers reading this please note for a possible software upgrade.

The zoom button would also be better if none preferred zoom modes could be disabled. There are 5 step through zoom selections. One good point is that the zoom mode selected is remembered for each input.

Audio can be adjusted as desired with the 5 band graphic equaliser. There are 5 preset equaliser settings which can be adjusted or reset to factory values. The auto volume level is a nice feature to balance the sound level between different channels. One annoyance is that when mute is selected, the mute label stays on the screen. There are 4 picture mode settings which can be individually adjusted as well as 5 colour temperature settings.

Overall, I am highly satisfied with this TV.