Panasonic 50U20 (1200hrs) - 0.024ft/L

Samsung 50C650 ~500hrs - 0.06ft/L (0.12ft/L with Cinema Smooth on)

Edit: Corrected typo on older C650 Plasma

Yes but this was comparing the 2010 Panny with the 2009 Samsung.

he already said that it's comparing between 2010 pana and 2009 samsung.
do read around about the 2010 samsungs before making your assumption.

because quite frankly, a lot of your posts before this sounded like a plasma and pana fanboy. just because you bought a medium range pana don't make every other tech/maker/model inferior to your pana.

the 2010 samsung plasma are just not that bad. you made them sound like they're not even worth checking out. all i've said (even when you're choosing your set) is to check them out. do a side by side comparison. that's all i did. i reckon even you did check them out. noticed any significant difference in black level performance?

anyway,
at the end of last year, got a lot of buzz that leds with local dimming could possibly take the throne from plasmas. 2011 saw a lot of led models released with local dimming capability and yet nobody bothers to talk about them. IINM even medium range LG have local dimming this year.
either they're still bad or they're not yet widely available on the shelves.

well i'm aware of the issue and know what to look for. even then i couldn't detect any significant difference between them. even tried to look for the floating black and couldn't find any scene that had the issue. maybe you can't do a proper comparison in a showroom, or my eyes are really just not sensitive enough to tell between $hit and gold