The onscreen menu system is colourful and comprehensive, if occasionally cumbersome to click through, though this was more because of the remote's lack of responsiveness than anything else. Let's break it down by category:

Input: The input menu allows you to scroll through the various input options and also customize their names. So you could call composite 1, 2 and 3 'HDTV,' 'spare' and 'DVD' if you'd like. When selecting inputs, only ones that are actually connected are highlighted and available, which is handy.
Sound: The sound menu contains sound presets (standard, music, movie and speech) and custom sound options for bass treble and balance. Also included are toggles for the BBE sound processing, MTS and virtual Dolby surround sound effects as well as an auto-volume adjustment feature which compensates for louder or fainter audio signals between channels. Menu's are navigated with the help of a little joystick on the remote control, or via the controls on the bezel of the screen.
Picture: The picture menu, as its name suggests, controls the properties of the display. From here you can choose one of the three preset picture modes: standard, dynamic (for daylight viewing) and movie, or custom to edit the display properties yourself. Also available in this menu are colour tone options, screen size and PIP controls (which are also on the remote) and the toggles for Film Mode (auto-adjustment of picture for 480i inputs only), DNLe and Digital Noise Reduction settings. More on these in the tech specs section below.
Setup: The setup menu is a grab bag of options including closed caption controls, V-chip controls, time, menu language and PC setup controls. The latter allow you to adjust the display to cope with any video noise introduced by a PC connection. The menus are available in English, Spanish or French.
Channels: Contains options for tuner and cable channel handling, including detection, fine-tuning, favorites, labeling channels, etc. The display has two coaxial cable inputs on the rear and includes a built-in tuner. The options here allow the user to make adjustments to the cable settings.

The Manual

The included manual is large and comprehensive, with generally well written instructions and easy to follow diagrams on each page. We do think that Samsung might want to reconsider the order that they have arranged the contents in though. The first thing you see (after the safety warnings) upon opening the manual is a guide to changing the projector lamp and why it might be necessary. Now don't get us wrong, this is crucial information; it's just that as a consumer, I'd be a little peeved if the first thing I saw in the manual of my new multi-thousand dollar HDTV were instructions on buying and installing replacement parts. It left us wondering exactly how long Samsung expected each lamp to last... Next up, we put this little 61" screen through some tests with DVDs, and Doom3!

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