The number of features on the HD-D56 is quite intimidating, but they're sensibly presented in the on-screen menus. For example, the sound system has been given a substantial boost on this new model and there are numerous things you can do to tweak the way the two stereo speakers and subwoofer perform. We preferred the vanilla stereo playback to the chocolate-chip Dolby Virtual Surround, because the latter sounded false. But with Dynamic Bass, Loudness and a number of presets for Music, Cinema and Studio conditions to play around with, you'll have to experiment to find your favourite setting. Perhaps the most useful feature is the Smart Volume setting, which means you don't have different volume levels across AV sources such as DVD players. It might be a small point, but it's annoying when the volume settings differ between, say, a Freeview box and a DVD player.
The same presets and variables also apply to the image section of the menu system. Again, there are individual settings for Cinema, Studio and Sport material, and the User setting allows you to tweak the brightness and contrast and save your choices. As it's a projection device, we recommend using a setup disc such as Digital Video Essentials to optimise your viewing experience.
You might also want to extend the life of the projection lamp by using the Eco mode. The projector loses some brightness as a result, but it's not much of a problem. Another fantastic touch is being able to name each of the individual sources, so AV1 becomes 'Freeview' and AV2 becomes 'DVD', for example. This makes it far easier to find what you want on the TV, and we're amazed more mainstream manufacturers such as Sony aren't doing this. Like many other TVs, you can also set the TV to turn itself off if you're falling asleep.
The only other feature you could hope for is integrated Freeview -- but you don't get it. Separate boxes aren't too expensive these days, and Sagem has provided enough RGB Scarts for you to hook up all of your equipment. But with so many companies pushing Freeview as standard, we can't help but think that Sagem has held off so it can issue it on a future upgrade.
Performance
The engine sitting inside the HD-D56's projector is Texas Instruments' new HD2+ DLP chipset. Combined with Faroudja's DCDi deinterlacer, the picture quality is extremely solid but most importantly it's bright and will survive use in bright light. The contrast ratio of 3000:1 is also excellent, meaning that there's plenty of shadow detail and the colour range is spectacular. Stay head on to the screen though, and the detail, colour and contrast are all excellent -- but because it's a rear-projection TV, the HD-D56's viewing angle is very limited. If you pay particularly close attention to detail you might notice the rainbow effect, where the light splits into its component colours when you run your eyes across the screen. It's a general problem with the DLP chipset, but still annoying if you begin to notice it.
The HD-D56's sound deserves praise because the internal speakers are very powerful, and more than up to the demands of movie viewing. As the picture is driven by a projector and therefore much more cinematic than a plasma or LCD, this is particularly important. For Freeview use, the TV is also very good, coping with low-resolution pictures admirably. Because of the sheer size of the screen, blockiness can be quite noticeable, but the picture remains solid, presumably because of the DCDi interlacing.
Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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