HL-T5087S - Menus and Remote
Usually I like
to start from the first menu and work my way through. This time, however, I
really want to mention a particular menu fist. The very last menu item is the Menu Map. This has every one of the menu
items on 2 pages. Each of the options is listed with the active and available
ones in white and the unavailable ones in gray. This is an immensely helpful
menu, not just for the reviewer that is looking for a quick list of all the
menu items, but also for the user that doesn't want to search for a particular
setting that they can't quite remember the location of. Once you select an item
and hit Enter, you are immediately
taken not only to the correct menu screen, but your cursor is placed directly
on the item of interest. This is probably the best thing to happen to menus in
a long time. Of course it isn't graphically pretty or nearly as intuitive as
the other menus but it has the advantage of putting nearly every item on a
single page. Once you've used the display enough, I imagine this might become
your preferred method of navigation. I'd love to have to option of having this
menu as the default menu rather than the Picture
menu.
Picture
The Picture menu has all the adjustments to calibrate the look of the
set. You'll notice some old standards like Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness,
Color, and Tint. You can choose the Mode (Movie, Standard, or Dynamic) and make
adjustments to each. Those adjustments are retained for each of the settings so
if you are routing your video to your display through a single HDMI cable, you
can flip the settings easily if you wish. Color Tone gives you the choices
between Normal,
Warm1, Warm2, Cool1, and Cool2 (Warm1 and 2 are only available under the Movie
mode). You can also choose the size of the screen (16:9. Zoom1, Zoom2, Wide
Fit, 4:3, or Just Scan). Depending on the incoming signal, some of these
options will be grayed out (you can't zoom on a 1080p signal for example).
Digital Noise Reduction can be set from Off to High (with Low and Medium in-between)
or Auto. Under Color Gamut, you can choose Wide (full color spectrum of the
display), Normal
(described as a "flat and natural" color tone), or sRGB.
The DNIe (Digital Natural Image engine) is an interesting little setting that you can only adjust on Dynamic or Standard modes. It is designed to give you a more detailed image with detail, contrast and white enhancement. What I really liked about it was that it had a "Demo" mode where it would show you the difference between the on and off settings on each side of the screen. Letting the Demo run while some casual viewing, it was obvious that the DNIe "on" side definitely had blacker blacks, more saturated colors, and greater contrast. It'd be nice to see other menu items with a Demo mode to make it easier for the user to more decisively select their preferences.
Sound menu
Like many sets, the HL-T5087S has a version of DSP-enhanced
audio to simulate surround. TruSurround XT (which is most likely neither "tru"
nor "surround") can be activated from this menu as can Automatic volume
control (correcting for overly loud commercials) and Internal Mute (for those
of you who prefer to use real speakers). If you are running your antenna, cableTV
or satellite directly to your display you can also choose which language and
track type (SAP, Stereo, Mono) when available. There is a "Mode"
selector with a 5-band equalizer with 10 up and 10 down settings at 100, 200,
1000, 3000, and 10000 Hz and a balance control. You have the choice of Standard
(flat), Music (100, 3000, and 10,000 bumped up a bit with the rest down), Movie
(100, 300, 1000 bumped up ad the rest down), Speech (100 bottomed out, 300 bumped
down, and the rest a bit higher than flat), and Custom (you can set yourself).
Of course, you can adjust each one of the predetermined modes and there is a Reset
button on the bottom if you don't like your adjustments (the Reset only applies
to the mode you're on and not any of the others).
Setup menu
From the Setup
menu you can select the menu language (English, Spanish or French), set the
clock time, sleep timer, set timers for the set to go on and off at specific
times (so the dog has something to watch I suppose), set the menu transparency,
and look for a software update on a USB key (don't mess with this unless you
are serious - it resets your display to factory defaults even if you don't do
an update). Know that funky light that shines just below the big power button
on the front? You can adjust that from this menu as well - standby only,
watching only, on, and off. There are other interesting settings like Color
Weakness which allows you to calibrate for a personal color deficiency in your
eyesight. You can basically boost Red, Green, or Blue (and any combination thereof)
up to nine times. Game Mode is available from this menu as is enabling the 3D
mode.
Input and Application
menus
The Input mode is
pretty limited to selecting which input you'd like to view and renaming each
input. Unfortunately, they don't give you a keypad to use but make you choose
from a list. The list is fairly comprehensive but is generally limited to a
single source per input. Honestly, I wanted to label HDMI 1 (my main connection
for both my cable box and DVD player) something like "This is the one,
honey" to make things easy on the wife. That wasn't on the list. What I
was on the list were things like VCR, DVD, Satellite STB, TV, and less common
selections like Internet TV Recv., PC, Game, and Camcorder. The Application menu lets you access
information on a USB drive like JPEGs, movies and other content through an
application called WISELINK. WISELINK lets you view rotate or zoom pictures,
view a folder's contents as a slideshow, and even select an MP3 on the drive as
background music during the slideshow. And since toasters these days are playing
MP3s, so is the HL-T5087S.
One of the things that I really liked about the HL-T5087S is how they optimized it for use with a HTPC (home theater PC). There is a VGA port on the back and a whole list of menu items specifically geared toward maximizing your PC experience. Obviously, the 3D gaming functionality is marketed toward people that are using this DLP with a computer, but being able to select your specific resolution, horizontal and vertical frequency, and horizontal and vertical polarity can be a huge plus.
Remote Control
The remote provided with the HL-T5087S is long, thin and
black. The Backlight button (inconveniently placed near the top but in the
middle of a bunch of buttons) only illuminates the control button (lets you
know what component you are controlling), the Channel up and down buttons, the Mute
button, and the Volume up and down buttons. Not a one of these buttons ever
interested me in the dark. Buttons like source and aspect ratio would have been
much more useful. Also useful would have been a button for each source instead
of just a source scrolling button. To be fair, there was a button that brought
you straight back to the HDMI input (thanks for that) but it was nearly
impossible to find in the dark so I almost never used it. The aspect ratio
button (labeled P.Size) was also nearly impossible to locate (even with the
lights on). The remote was unresponsive with at best only 2/3rds of my commands
going through with often less than 1/2 registering. You can program this remote
to control other devices though I don't know why you would.
