Cons on this unit...

- BUZZING freaking annoys me. If you have a small apartment like mine, the buzzing is really bad.

- Not as bright as LCDs. Somehow brightness during daylight looks faded. Especially fullscreen whites looks like grey.

- Screen flicker on bright spots/areas. Worst when PC mode.

- Hot.

- Astro PQ looks blurred. No problems with DVD or HD but Astro on 50' 1080p is too much. Better to stick to 720p plasmas where the upscaling do not need to stretch so much.

All the above problems I believe are inherit in Plasma technologies in general.

Now the good:
- Black levels
- Color accuracy

Both I can never tune it to match the Plasma compared to LCD. Typical LCD color accuracy and black levels are off.

I actually turn off all artificial processing to get the best results. No Dark enhancements, dynamic contrast, no sharpness, etc.

Avoid this if you watch Astro most of the time. This plasma only make justice on higher resolution feeds (DVD and above)...

Yes it is. It's fine during low lighting situations (after 6pm). Daylight watching seems dimmer.

Fullscreen whites should never look grey. I believe it is some setting that you have not optimized. Fullscreen white will not be as bright as a LCD due to the nature of plasmas APL but it shd never look grey.

I would say dim. Somehow i suspect it's dynamic contrast. Here's how i test. I use PC HDMI as source so i can control.
> 1st test picture, 100% white. Screen dims, whites becomes greyish.
> 2nd test picture, 50% white, 50%. The whites becomes whiter.
> 3rd test picture, 10% white, 90% mix color. perfect whites.

No changes in TV settings. Just different type of picture. Even easier to see the effect of dimming when i drag a white window around the screen. When it fills up 100% of the screen, the white becomes grey. Can see the dynamic contrast ratio (or dimming) adjusting itself.

I have turn off all enhancements. May try to put on Game mode and let you guys know the result.



Hope it does!



No complains on fast moving pictures at all. No ghosting whatsoever. Again, easiest to test by dragging window. However, horizontal bleeding seems to be a major problem. Eg, scrolling text / credits will exhibit image bleeding. That annoying as well.



The disappointments i have with this set is below:
- Scrolling bleed
- Buzzing
- Astro PQ
- 100Hz only works for 50Hz input. It will not optimize HTPC movies channeled via HDMI. The signal must be in 50Hz or 1080p/24Hz to take advantage of the cinema smooth function.

The likes i have:
- DLNA (even plays MKVs)
- Price / size ratio
- Color accuracy and black levels
- Thin (surprising for a plasma)

However, i don't think i can get a 50' LCD within the same price range with the blacks and color accuracy

Image retention is bad especially on white materials. Leave anything bright for 2 minutes and it's there.

However, it goes off quite quickly, within 20mins or so.

But the equation seems wrong. 2 minutes enjoyment, 20 minutes suffering.

Also quite annoyed with the buzzing. I'm sitting 6 feet away and i can hear it very loud. Any low volume / cut scene (when watching horror flicks before they scare the shit out of you) etc, definitely can hear it. Potong steam.

Quite a disappointment, if you ask me....

Update on my set:

1) IR is not as bad as it seems. Only visible if i search for it. Watched a movie for 2 hours with the black bar. Yes, IR will appear when i switch back to astro but disappears about 1/2 hour later. Does not concern me when I do normal viewing for normal shows on Astro. If i want to quickly remove the IR, samsung has a "window washer" setting that can be run. If i set that on, even the most stubborn IR stains will go away within 5minutes or so.

2) No S-Video Manage to tweak the colors to be more accurate. The upscaling for SD content for this Samsung is better than Sony's BE2 engine (as comparison).

3) Buzzing sound getting less (or I got used to it).

4) Manage to use my Nokia N82 phone with the DLNA feature. Now i can stream my home video / photos recorded on my phone directly to the TV. This is actually quite cool but useless feature.

5) Reflection on this set is really under control. In fact, i went to compare the LED LCD Samsung vs this set and the LEDs are even more reflective! Hate looking at my half naked body when i watch movie for dark scenes.

The new firmware still doesn't fix the cinema smooth (CS) feature.

Turn on CS on 24p source and i noticed these:

Cons
1) screen flickers during dark scenes
2) slight lip sync issue
3) 2% increase in brightness

Pro
1) Smooth panning

Dammit why can't they fix this CS issue? It's 1 year already.