Official Samsung LNxxA650 Owner's Thread - Page 179

I just purchased mine from Amazon today. I too don't understand paying the $600+ tax to have the ability to return it for "free" within 30 days. Amazon has a great return policy and everyone I have heard from has had zero problems getting replacements if there happens to be a problem with the TV. They will even do a cross-ship replacement. Plus you don't have to lug the set from the store and into your house. They will even take the box away. The only benefit I see of BB/CC is the "instant gratification". To me, that is not worth the hundreds of dollars.

The main reason for me is for prompt service in case something is wrong with your TV. I have bad clouding / flashlighting in mine and my local retailer will take care of it tomorrow morning. THe come to my house and bring me a new one.

I would hate having to re-pack the TV and deal with the delivery stuff...

I agree that Amazon would be the way to go but in my particular case I had saved up $1100 in BB gift cards (engagment/wedding gifts) as well as the 10% off coupon I located thanks to the AVS memebers, and my BB Reward dollars. All together I knocked off close to $1500 off the price of my 52A650.

Others might not have the money up front to purchase the tv and BB had a no interest for 3 years deal going on when I was in there to purchase my set. I'm not sure if Amazon or any other site has that type of deal.

It was a $200 difference for me and I have no problem with that. Perfectly happy to pay a bit more when you take into account I can do an easy return if I'm not satisfied and also I don't have to worry about the mishaps of shipping. I also got 24 months interest free which is sort of cool. I just never buy expensive electronic equipment online. Way back when I bought a Denon amplifier online and by the time I received it, it was beat to hell. Have stuck with brick 'n mortar since.

I get my sets locally (B&M), because i live in tax free NH.
I feel so bad for all you people that have to pay taxes on everything you buy.

So I went to Sears yesterday to check the TV and see how much they were charging. I walk around for a little bit and finally found the 40". One of the associates came up and started talking to me. We talked about the TV for a couple minutes then I asked him where the 46" is.

"I've got 1 in the back. We haven't been able to set it up yet."

"Oh thats too bad. How much is it? $2899?"

"Yeah"

"Oh, thats the same as everywhere else."

"Well yeah its a new TV. You're not going to see it on sale or go down for some time"

He then just walked away. He didn't say oh excuse me or anything else, just walked away. I was pretty mad, so Sears has just lost my business for all electronics. So needless to say it has come down to Frys or BB. I'm hoping I can get BB to match Fry's sale price.

To each his own, but all these items are shipped in one way or another. Whether its to a brick-and-mortar store or your front door, they all are shipped from the manufacturer to a distribution center, and possibly another distro center in between. This point is moot to me. FWIW, I trust professional truck drivers and distro center employees more than BB/CC warehouse employees any day. Anything I can do to keep my TV out of the hands of a BB/CC employee is a plus in my book.

BTW, Amazon does have a 12 or 24 mo. no interest deal going on right now.

I think that's whats going on (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) is the local feeds are cleaner because they don't have to travel as far to your cable/satellite service provider, so not as much compression is needed. And HBO type signals are more or less centrally distributed to the cable/satellite providers, so they have to be compressed even further to spare bandwidth.

And of course your cable/satellite provider wants you to spring for the HD channels $$$ .

Even tho i dont purchase things like this online (not saying i wouldnt), i do have to agree with you on that one. BB/CC warehouse employess are idiots (most of them), who handle the tv's with no care. Which is probably why a lot of us end up having to return them for silly things like scratches.

This was my first major purchase of this size from Amazon, and so far I am pleased.

The set arrived about eight days after I ordered it. Delivery guys seemed in a bit of a hurry but they didn't break anything and they helped move my mammoth 32" Sony CRT off the bedroom bureau, so that's good, lol.

The picture is just... Wow. Obviously, HD content looks worlds apart from SD, but I just finished watching Transformers and bar none, this has to be the most awe-inspiring two-plus hours I've ever spent in front of a television. I've seen the movie before, but I've never seen it look like this.

Blacks are black and colors are brilliant. My girlfriend just got an A550 last weekend and really, both of these sets are beautiful, just joys to behold.

One thing that bothers me, however, is that there IS occasional judder. I updated to the latest firmware (M) tonight and though AMP is set to high, the frame rate seems to skip or stutter ever so slightly every several seconds. It's a small thing, but annoying as the whole point of 120Hz is to eliminate that judder. I trust this is something in software that will be remedied by a future firmware--rather than a hardware issue--because I didn't drop this kind of money to get anything less than baby-smooth motion.

The set itself is gorgeous. I like the Touch of Color bezel though it and the screen are likely to be dust- and fingerprint magnets. I'll be keeping that microfiber cloth handy.

Initially, I did not like the wheel on the remote, but I'm acclimating to it now and can see myself using it happily in a few days.

That's about all I've got for you at this point. I'm excited about the set and pleased with my decision to purchase from Amazon. I'm also glad I opted for the 46" set over the 40" as, even though this is going into the bedroom, I still had plenty of room for it.

I'll pop back in with new impressions if need be, and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for word on what's causing that stutter problem.

Here's a photo I snapped. Not the best, but it's the best I got.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r237/Kolgar/A650.jpg

Had my 52" for a week now. I guess I'm one of the lucky one with no flashlighting/dead pixel/clouding. The PQ is very good, during the day the blacks were same as if it's turned off, at night with lights off, you will see the faint glow however.
Having watched several blurays with AMP on high, I didn't notice anything unusual about the processing, except the fact that it makes it look like a TV movie special.
I can't seem to watch movies without AMP now, I tried turning it off for a while but I can't help but notice the slow frame rates during fast moving scenes.

Amazon has dropped the price again on the LN46A650.

This is my 2nd adjustment. You got'a love Amazon

Sure everything is shipped but what is destroyed in shipping does not make it into retail stock. Also I deal with Magnolia, not a BB attached storefront but a true Magnolia. They are very professional and dealing with them means no worries, easily worth it as money isn't an issue.

Live free or die dude! I hate the tax in NYC bigtime. Another huge reason to buy online.

What happens if you guys have a bad one? Don't you now have to pay shipping to send it back to amazon? Then if they send you a second bad one? Pay shipping back again? So you could end up paying the difference anyway right?

Exactly

SOMEONE has not been reading the xx71 thread. If you want completely stutter-free AMP on high settings, forget it. They've been trying to fix that ever since the xx71 first came out and have not succeeded. The set should work perfectly on lower levels of AMP.

You are conflating 120 Hz and AMP, which are two different things. You are also conflating telecine judder and frame rate judder, which are also two different things.

120 Hz, which is always "on" on these TVs regardless of AMP setting, eliminates telecine judder present when converting 24 fps films to 60 HZ video, as 120 Hz is an integer multiple of 24 Hz.

AMP tries to reduce low-frame-rate judder (movement "jumps" between frames filmed at 24 fps) by interpolating frames (creating fake frames that were never filmed) and intercalating them among real frames. Since these frames are not "real" they can suffer from artifacts such as TBE. However, it seems that the VP at least on the xx71 couldn't handle the AMP information processing well and then you got stutter. Most here believe that problem is substantially reduced on the A650, but not completely eliminated on the highest AMP settings.

None of this will stop me from buying the set as I'm interested in faster pixel transition for sports, faithful film reproduction, superior black levels, and bezel compactness/attractiveness much more than artificial smoothing.

Amazon picks up the shipping tab if you receive a defective unit. One member here mentioned that Amazon even cross-shipped a new one to him. Can't beat that.

Thanks for the heads up! I just sent an email to Amazon. Is that the correct process? I followed a link some other kind soul posted here but Amazon's directions are a tad spotty.

HDMI is going from the Xbox360 to TV. For audio I am using Digital Optical (using the included dongle thing that comes with the X360 Elite).


The price on Amazon changes very quickly sometimes so email is not the best way to pricematch. It is better if you call, that way it's done instantly.

Go to their Help page and then click Contact Us, then Phone. You just enter your phone number and they call you instantly and the customer service is really nice and helpful.

No, here is a little portion of their return policy:


Therefore, if the product is defective, you have 30 days to return it and get a full refund and no return shipping fees. Sounds like a winner to me .

Amazon doesnt charge return ship or anything if its a bad tv

That's it. Cite in the email your order number, lower price, and request the price adjustment. Amazon will usually respond within a few hours and advise that a credit has been processed to your account.

Well, this is the last fly in the ointment and I'm hoping it's just something with the X360, which seems to have all sorts of other known problems. I also often prefer to pipe the sound through my 2-channel stereo (by sending it out of my current TV on standard analog RCA jacks to my preamp), but I usually leave the TV speakers on low volume when I do--did you ever hear the speakers blurting LOUD sound when they were *not* turned to internal mute?

Whatever, I'm gonna trigger this anyway cuz I've been waiting out the problems since 8/2007 and am tired, and the biggest problems have been fixed.

Ordered, shipped, and waiting...Now I need to decide what to garnish this TV with. What are most of you using as your hd video playback? For those of you using the ps3 for that, any real issues to look for? That $600 from the gov't is coming in a few weeks and I might as well blow that money as well.

THanks guys for the quick feedback. I sent the email and already got a response saying they'll credit me. Cool beans huh?

Btw, I rescinded my order for the 40" and then paid the xtra $ for the 46". OUch. So smaller sound system for now. CEVA saying early next week.

Was concerned about fan and future maintenance issues. Then you folks said the fan was off by default? I don't get it. Why have the fan if it's off? Oh well. Now I got a bigger (hopefully not too big) tv.

Thanks again to all enthusiastic guinea pigs and knowledgeable ones. Now I've gotta figure out how to calibrate this puppy. Anyone have a fave DVD? Or should I just shut up and post this in the calibration thread.

Yeah I don't get that either. But I figure now that if it's OFF by default, and nobody is reporting heat problems, then I'm willing to risk it because I prefer the more compact size (yeah I know everyone is into bigger = better, but I inherently don't like heavy clunky things). I'm thinking I'll get the 40", then my next TV, by the time I buy my own apartment, will be 46" or 52"--by then the OLEDs may be out with way thin panels and way less weight.

YES! SOMEONE ELSE SEES IT! ITS GETTING reallly old... It looks like a pc game thats out of ram.

It was fine before the FW upgrade, now its doing this... SO ANNOYING.

AMP High: quite noticeable and does it at steady intervals. Doesn't matter whats happening on screen but seems to be maybe in beginning of shots.
AMP Med: Does it, slightly less noticeable than high but apparent none the less. Shaun in Shaun of the dead looked like he was out of CPU cycles while walking.
AMP low: Very faint but there.

Is Digital Optical better than HDMI for audio since I know that audio through HDMI isn't optimal?

Just to add my sear buy was Out the door price,with HH Gregg match price of $300 off plus sears price match,and $2000 I got back on my old set ,sear couldn’t fix, the( ^&*$#%^ didn’t put in right bulb). My out door was $618, going to try do a in store pickup tomorrow see if can get $65 more knocked off .