Maybe someone can help me with this...

I have digital cable with comcast. It has an HDMI port, composite and s-video outputs. I also have the cable box integrated with a DVR and I get HD channels as well. I researched and looked at a lot of LCD tvs, and picked the Samsung LN46a650. When I got it home and hooked it up to the HDMI port first, then the S-Video and also composite for comparison, and the picture was nothing like I was expecting. I will try and describe what it looked like.(in my own layman terms) Soap operas are shot using video while movies are shot with film. Soap operas either have a cheesecloth look or have a glossy, automotive clear coat quality to them. Movies have a textured, almost grainy appearance to them.

Everything I watched, either a series (Like Stargate Atlantis, or the like) or an older movie (which was Jet Li's THE ONE, or TREMORS) on digital cable, had a glossy, clearcoat look to it. I tried all settings possible in video setup of the tv but nothing changed it. Also, everything in the background, such as sets or props for various series scenes looked glossy and cheap. Weird.....
Also I noticed that on one scene of a series, there was a laser pointer on a pistol and as it traced on a wall slowly, it was not smooth, jerked around and was like a bad acid trip.
It's a 120Hz tv with 4ms response time, so I thought when I went and set Auto Motion plus to the highest setting, it should improve the motion but it didn't improve motion problems.

My old tv was a Sony XBR picture tube and didn't have any complaints, but I wanted a bigger tv. I am returning the Samsung and don't know exactly what to do.

Would Plasma do any better or is it just the technology of today?

All I can say, is watching tv with this tv, is disturbing to my eyes and after a short time, it makes my eyes and brain strained.....

I know I can't explain this properly, but with what I said above, any suggestions???

Thanks in advance!!

Maybe someone can help me with this...

I have digital cable with comcast. It has an HDMI port, composite and s-video outputs. I also have the cable box integrated with a DVR and I get HD channels as well. I researched and looked at a lot of LCD tvs, and picked the Samsung LN46a650. When I got it home and hooked it up to the HDMI port first, then the S-Video and also composite for comparison, and the picture was nothing like I was expecting. I will try and describe what it looked like.(in my own layman terms) Soap operas are shot using video while movies are shot with film. Soap operas either have a cheesecloth look or have a glossy, automotive clear coat quality to them. Movies have a textured, almost grainy appearance to them.

Everything I watched, either a series (Like Stargate Atlantis, or the like) or an older movie (which was Jet Li's THE ONE, or TREMORS) on digital cable, had a glossy, clearcoat look to it. I tried all settings possible in video setup of the tv but nothing changed it. Also, everything in the background, such as sets or props for various series scenes looked glossy and cheap. Weird.....
Also I noticed that on one scene of a series, there was a laser pointer on a pistol and as it traced on a wall slowly, it was not smooth, jerked around and was like a bad acid trip.
It's a 120Hz tv with 4ms response time, so I thought when I went and set Auto Motion plus to the highest setting, it should improve the motion but it didn't improve motion problems.

My old tv was a Sony XBR picture tube and didn't have any complaints, but I wanted a bigger tv. I am returning the Samsung and don't know exactly what to do.

Would Plasma do any better or is it just the technology of today?

All I can say, is watching tv with this tv, is disturbing to my eyes and after a short time, it makes my eyes and brain strained.....

I know I can't explain this properly, but with what I said above, any suggestions???

Thanks in advance!!
Why don't you try turning AMP off?
Also, turn off digital NR.
I also recommend turning edge enhancement off and turning sharpness to zero to avoid any unnecessary filtering.
SDTV will never look as good on a flat panel as it does on an SDTV. Nature of the techonology: SD content is interlaced, and CRTs can display interlaced content natively. LCDs and plasmas scan progressively, so they have to deinterlace, which can cause various picture quality issues (not to mention the quality you lose from scaling the 480p to 1080p)

Why don't you try turning AMP off?yes, turn that off
Also, turn off digital NR. yes, turn that off
I also recommend turning edge enhancement off and turning sharpness to zero to avoid any unnecessary filtering.yes, turn that off too
Also, SDTV will never look as good on a flat panel as it does on an SDTV. Nature of the techonology: SD content is interlaced, and CRTs can display interlaced content natively. LCDs and plasmas scan progressively, so they have to deinterlace, which can cause various picture quality issues (not to mention the quality you lose from scaling the 480p to 1080p)it's about 99% the second part (scaling), and maybe 1% the deinterlacing. if that much. de-interlacing artefacts are the least of your worries when feeding sd cable signals to a large flat panel

see answers in color....

I will try all of these. Thanks. The only one I am unsure of is AMP. What is AMP exactly? I have searched for the acronym on as many sites as possible and cannot to either find a definition or even a setting in the menu for this.
Also, if I am to try something else as I have 30 days to return and try out anything I want in the store (or so the salesman said) should I try plasma? Would it solve the motion blur or motion staggering problem I see on the lcd?

Thanks again!

I notice you said that you tried HDMI, then went to S-Video and composite? Did you try component at all? I also use a Comcast HD DVR and it looked less than optimal using HDMI. Component however looked great and that's what I used for a long time until I got my new receiver to do the scaling. My tv is a 60" Sony SXRD 60A200, which is a rear projection that runs at 1080p.

I will try and describe what it looked like.(in my own layman terms) Soap operas are shot using video while movies are shot with film. Soap operas either have a cheesecloth look or have a glossy, automotive clear coat quality to them. Movies have a textured, almost grainy appearance to them.

Try going into your cable box settings, look at DISPLAY, or OUTPUT. (it could be called something else). It should give you options such as 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i. Set it to only output 480p and see how that looks.

Unfortunately, all LCD's are going to blur. They have come a long ways, but still have not resolved it. If you prefer an LCD, I would look at the LED backlit A950 from Samsung. They still blur, but there is a slight improvement (Although this tech introduces other types of problems).

The fact that when you went with an A650, I have to assume that light is not a problem. If you did in fact wanted to look into a plasma, I would look into Samsungs A760, or Panasonics 800/850u, which come in 42", 46", and larger sizes. You could also look at the Pioneer 5020 which is on sale for a 1k under MSRP.

With a plasma, you will not have to worry about motion blur, but again, with every tech, there are shortcomings. While my experience has been that niether of my sets have ever suffered from IR (a retained image from a static logo), some claim that it still does exist. It seems that the Samsung plasmas are a bit behind in this regard, so if that is something that concerns you, I would remove them from the list of available options to you.