Samsung PN50A450 Offical Owners Thread.

Good call on the thread. I'll repost this here as my impressions since it fits better here anyway.

Walked out of the local HH Gregg with the PN50A450 set this weekend. I was strongly considering the Samsung 46" A650 1080p panel but even standing 5 feet away the differences -- on everything but BluRay it was pretty difficult to see any difference -- weren't enough for the wife and I to justify an additional $1000. We were upgrading from a Sampo SME-34WHD 34" tube HDTV that we'd had for years.

First impressions are extremely favorable. With TWC through a SA 8000/8300HD (forget which) over component it's a definite improvement. Obviously any compression artifacts are much more easily distinguishable -- Noggin SD shows for my daughter are hideous and cause me almost physical pain -- which takes some getting used to but good quality programs and signals are quite incredible. Black levels are good and the brightness of the panel -- with the "Cell Light" at about 6 if I recall -- is considerable. There are a whole slew of settings to diddle with and I've been swapping back and forth through various ones.

I tried my 360 over component and VGA and VGA wins simply through the expedient of supporting the native 1360x768 resolution. I'm so familiar with the menus in NHL08 on my previous set and through my computer monitor that the first time I saw the 360 over component in 720p on the Sammy I could tell that it wasn't quite as smooth and rounded as it should be, almost certainly due to the upscaling to the native resolution the set was doing. So hooking up with VGA and displaying native resolution returned it to its glory.

Someday I'll get a BluRay player (*cough*PS3*cough*) so I can see some real, high bitrate content. We happened upon King Kong on TNT-HD the other night which is usually a proposition for incorrect aspect ratios and just madness, but the wife and I both stopped and said "wow". It was, of course, the sunset scene and it solidified our decision. Even knowing it was TNT and therefore likely not the highest bitrate, it was the "wow effect" we hadn't had for years since we got used to HD on the Sampo. Truly a stunning picture in all ways from our viewing position ~12 feet away in a darkened room.

I can't compare to anything but the Sampo, sorry. But I'm pleased with our purchase given our experiences.

Dunno, I'm no plasma expert. Did you enable the pixel shifting feature which is supposed to help mitigate this somewhat? I believe for these sets it's recommended to go 2/4/4 for horizontal/vertical/time but I can't recall where I saw that .

If I read one more burn-in post I am going to strangle someone!!!!! IT IS A NON-ISSUE WITH TODAY'S PLASMA'S!!!!

If you abuse any TV that will happen. It is not exclusive to plasma tv's.

Hey guys,

I just saw this TV in Fry's this weekend and was REALLY impressed. I too compared it to the 5 Series plasma, as well as the new 5 & 6 series LCD, and this one DEFINITELY seems like the best bang for your buck. Up until now, I was thinking I'd be going LCD, but viewing even the newest Sammies A550 and A650 series LCDs I just can't do it. LCD's still look too grainy to me, even though they've improved tremendously. Like bjdupuis said, I don't think 1080 is worth the extra $1000, or even $500 for that matter. Just my opinion of course. I've been looking at flat panels for like a year now, and I think this one is for me. I'll report back as soon as I get it.

One question bjdupuis, have you tried hooking it up to a pc yet? I've read some plasmas in the past have had issues with pc hookups. Thanks for the info guys.

Do yourself a favor and do a search for plasma burn-in threads. When you are done, come back and tell me how many actual cases of burn-in there are. You'll be surprised at the %.

I have had this tv for nearly two weeks, I am very happy with it except for one problem. I'm not sure if it's burn in or retention, but the bottom left HUD from COD4 is burned in. It has been there for 3 or 4 days, it looks like it is getting lighter though. I have the pixel shifting and that crap on in the settings also. The picture is decent compared to the pioneer 5080, coming from someone who had a kuro 5080 before this. I have noticed some retention on the screen, but usually goes away within a few minutes. I do have dynamic contrast set to low, it seemed like the HUD burn in came after i enabled that... I'm going to try and use one of those burn in dvd's to see if it aleviates the problem... if not I dont know what im going to do

also when using the htpc on the tv there is no overscanning at all

We purchased the PN50A450 last weekend to replace our 3yr old 42" Sony Grand Wega LCD Projection HDTV. We were actually looking at the new LG 50" but this one caught my wife eye and we went for it. PQ on this is very very good compared to our LCD projection HDTV. I have yet to fully calibrate it but I was able to get it mounted on the wall. Overall were very happy and impressed by the HD contwent weve watched on Cable.

Really after 5min of play? Some stations leave tickers or logos for longer then that and ive noticed no IR on mine. Even the bars on the side of ESPN HD

Questions for owners, on my Sony it had a FULL mode that would strech 4:3 content to fit 16:9 perfectly. Cant seems to find a setting on this one that doesnt cut off parts of the image to fill the entire screen.

I downloaded the burn in dvd-r, and it's working great. It's been going for about 10 hours and the burnin/ir from COD4 is almost gone, maybe after another day of this it will be completely gone.

I also purchased the Samsung 50" and would like to know if it's better than LG 50" Widescreen Plasma HDTV (50PC5D) ?

Yeah were very happy with it, I ran the burn in dvd for the first few days straight, an hour or so of Guitar Hero III on this TV and no IR at all. Still with is had a better mode to full screen 4:3 though.

How is the buzz with these sets? Last years Sammy Plasma's the buzz was pretty loud especially when the image was bright. What's the feedback now?

No buzz with mine.

Is it dead silent? What about when you put your ears to the back of the tv? any buzz at all?

lol, ok, you got me. why? why do you care if it buzzes so quietly that you have to put your ear TO the TV to hear it? unless maybe you have the hearing of a dog or something?

Wrong tv. I have the A550.

Yeah no buzz here either.

i do.