I cant decide between the Samsung 46" LA46M51B and the Pioneer 50'' PDP-507XDA.....
Instore the samsung has excellent blacks while the pioneer seems grey in comparison.How can this be?They wont demo them side by side-ones on a wall etc.Have been to many stores and all the same.
The only reason im considering the lcd is the 1080p res.Can somebody tell me what kinda difference i would see between the pio running a bd disc at (downconverted)to 720 and the sammy running the same but at 1080p?I got 3 days left to decide,and my friend keeps telling me ill regret the 720p set in 6 months time.....
Will use it to watch alot of HDTV,dvd,blu ray and heaps of PC+console games...

You really have to go with your personal impressions of the PQ. I personally have a 1080i only HDTV (2 years old) and the PQ from BluRay looks amazing. On screens that are 50" and below you won't notice a huge difference in PQ from a 1080p set. Although 1080p is new and is somewhat "future proof" for now at least. Also, if you are going to be playing PC games on it you might want to make sure the Pioneer has 1:1 pixel mapping so part of your screen isn't cut off on the screen. Most LCD's come with this feature. Hope this helps some, but it's really your personal preference.

I cant decide between the Samsung 46" LA46M51B and the Pioneer 50'' PDP-507XDA.....
Instore the samsung has excellent blacks while the pioneer seems grey in comparison.How can this be?They wont demo them side by side-ones on a wall etc.Have been to many stores and all the same.

I don't know the numbers on your model, I can find the numbers for a Samsung LCD LPT468W . When displaying white, this LCD runs about 63 (ft-L) light output while the pioneer is only running somewhere around 20 (ft-L). So that output will impact what your eyes see.**

In terms of black level, the LPT468W LCD runs about 0.16 (ft-L) light output and the pioneer runs about 0.03 with 0 being absolute black. So the pioneer is actually displaying a darker black.

There are many people who like to use black levels specs, as they feel it gives the best representation of what the set can do for dark levels/shadow detail.

Some other people state that, no ANSI contrast ratio is what matters since there will be light and dark areas on the screen (this is basically a measument of the contrast ratio with the screen displaying blocks of black and blocks of white). That LCD model has a ANSI contrast ratio of about 550:1 while the pioneer has a ANSI contrast ratio of about 1135:1.

I suspect that the LCD you are viewing may be a bit better than the one I found data for. If the store has a repeating loop, see if you can find some darker content (such as CSI) and watch it once with the pioneer, looking specifically for shadow details and black crush (how much detail can I see in that black hair - can I see individual strands, or is it just a black blob) and then watch the same scene with the LCD and see what looks better for you.

**If a set has a very high light output, then the eyes adjust by dialing down their senstivity to light. What happens then is that you lose shadow detail. Imagine standing in a dim room with someone shining a flashlight into your eyes & asking you to identify the objects next to them.


The only reason im considering the lcd is the 1080p res.Can somebody tell me what kinda difference i would see between the pio running a bd disc at (downconverted)to 720 and the sammy running the same but at 1080p?I got 3 days left to decide,and my friend keeps telling me ill regret the 720p set in 6 months time.....
Will use it to watch alot of HDTV,dvd,blu ray and heaps of PC+console games...
Again it gets back to your eyes. They can only resolve a certian amout of detail. The size of the detail they can see depends on the distance from it. For example while you could read a book at 2 feet, if you put that book across the room, you could no longer make out the individual letters.

From the top of my head (without consulting the various tables/charts you can find with a bit of digging in these forums) a person with 20/20 vision can start to see the difference between 1080 and 720 on a 50" set at about 10 feet and fully resolve the difference at about 6.5 feet. If you sit further away than feet, you won't see the difference. If you sit between 6.5 and 10 feet away, you can notice some difference. If you sit closer than 6.5 feet, you will notice a difference.

Also keep in mind that stores have an extremely high level of light in them, which will make the pioneers blacks look a little more gray. The LCD is meant to run in extreme lighting conditions, so it will "shine" there. The pioneer probably just needs a little tweaking with the settings to help bring out blacks in that brighter atmosphere. The question is whether or not your house is going to have the massive flooding of light that the stores do, (chances are it will not). None the less, I would see if you could play with the settings a little, and tweak brightness to see if you can make the blacks look better at the store.

Thanks for your feedback guys.These specifications you have provided have leaned me towards the pioneer again,as i know how important black levels are for film especially (having a CRT projector does this!)

''Also, if you are going to be playing PC games on it you might want to make sure the Pioneer has 1:1 pixel mapping so part of your screen isn't cut off on the screen. Most LCD's come with this feature.''

This is probably going to be extreamly annoying, so would like to know if 1:1 pixel mapping IS possible on the 5070? (same model as mine-australia just use PDP-507XDA to be different)

No. It has ~2% overscan. So that means somplace around 0.13" will be cut off of both the top and bottom of your screen. I don't have it hooked up to my computer, so I can't comment on the effect.

Is there anyway to get around this,with software or calibration?

Has the pioneer 4th,5th,6th gen all been the same or has it been consistantly improved on?

Quite possibly it can be defeated via your pc software (ie shrink the output by 2%), but I'm not really a computer person, so I don't know.