I intend to buy a Samsung LER-46F86BD full hd 46" lcd, which is reported to have excellent black levels, partly due to its glossy screen layer.
Thus fair I had a Panny TH42-PZ70E plasma, but I am underwhelmed by its matte grey screen, which never allows deep black to appear other than dark grey...and this effect added to the grey lit base luminance leads to disappointing night scenes.

However, the reviews for the Sammy indicate the color representation as "not too good".
Like- skin tones.
Will my scaler VP50 Pro be able to overcome that by setting its own curves etc.?

Well the VP50pro can help, but it won't overcome all of the image problems of a display device.

If your display device has a CMS, that can help a lot. The Radiance can help a display device especially if primaries are oversaturated. If you have a display that is undersaturated, it can balance the colors out, but can't fix the problem.

Only so much can be done about black level too. Gamma can be adjusted to help things out though.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen someone move from a plasma to an LCD to get better blacks. Interesting development. Do you have much light shining on the screen? as I saw a PZ70 recently and it didn't look very grey to me.

Well, some days ago I visited Mediamarkt in Holland, who boast a huge display of ill set flatscreens, reset 10 of them to 80% contrast (they were all on the eye boggling dynamic mode!), until someone came up to ask if there was a problem :D and compared for black level, which was not easy because of the kW's of cool white tube lighting overhead until I hung my coat over each of them in turn (visitors were now staring at me) and started comparing.

Almost all had greyish blacks including all plasmas with matte coating.
There were, however, some LCD's that came out allright:
- Most Sony's
- The Samsung range, especially the ones with 1:25000 contrast ratio
- The more expensive Sharps

Did some investigating, but it appears there's 2 reasons:
- The more reflecting filter layer on some screens, allowing deeper blacks
- The higher contrast ratio on some. Dynamic rate varies wildly between 5000 and 25000...

Let me add that I used to own a Panny TH42-PWD6EX, an SD plasma for several years, with much pleasure, although it showed myself watching on the coach easily, which isn't always a sight for sore eyes :rolleyes:

However after exchanging for a full HD plasma last July I was unhappy with the blacks representation- there were no onboard controls aside from contrast and luminance, and none of the many controls on the VP50 Pro helped any either, because there's no way to get rid of the base "switching" luminance on a plasma.
Maybe I'm a bit to picky here, but in a well lit room (and I don't mean brightly lit) I just hate it not to see deep blacks!