Samsung PN50A450 Offical Owners Thread. - Page 11

hey guys, i talked to the samsung rep yesterday and he said as far as a break in period its actually through out the life the plasma. it is suseptible to burn in through out the tvs life. you just have to take precautions when viewing and be ready for ir at any time. i have mine set to cell 8 and high contrast level and med bright great picture and couldn't be happier with another t.v. the rep said that reguarding the settings, anything higher than the set modes like movie dynamic etc it would take more hrs off the life expectancy. i've been gaming about 2 hrs a day and watching a movie here and there, and i have not noticed any burn in at all. it may help to that i have been running my music visualizer on my xbox 360 after each gaming session too.

so does anyone know how i can make my tv automaticly change the source when i switch from watching standard def tv to high def tv? im getting sick of having to manualy switch it everytime. any help would be great. my buddy has a sharp aquos, and it automaticly changes the source.

If you talk to this rep again ask him why the sammys have more IR than the pannys. I would love to know.

My brother-in-law wanted a new HDTV so I picked this one out for him since he was on a budget. I set it up today and it is really sweet. He's got an HD cable box and a PS3 hooked to the set. Both look really good. I'm almost sad to come home to my 4 year old 56" 720p Samsung DLP. I used the after ISF calibration settings from LondonViking. I realize the ISF calibrator probably changed settings in the service menu but with just the settings he listed the set actually looked really great. The only thing I might have changed was it was a hair on the green side and maybe a click up on brightness but that's it.

This is a really great TV, the only downside I noticed was a slight vibration in the speakers when we pushed the volume. He doesn't have surround sound yet, that's next. The only test blu ray he had was 300. I've never seen it look so good. I'm really happy for him - it's his first HDTV. I've now got my eye on the PN58A550. I've got a while before I upgrade though. I really don't see why so many people go with LCD sets when Plasma for the money is awesome.

Got the TV last night (guy helping carry it out to the car immediately went to lie it down and flip it over ... bizarre ... told him to just leave it upright and he said "oh there is styrofoam in there" ... not really the issue but thanks).

Anyway, I notice a small blurry vertical line on the screen. Not IR. About an inch or so ... faint and only visible when the screen is a white or bright color. (Tried cleaning it but it's defnitely under the glass). Anyone else seen something like this? Don't think I'd return it for this but just wanted to check if it was perhaps systematic of some bigger problem? Thanks in advance for any help.

Refer to this post: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=273

It may not be the same problem, but on a white screen it did look like a 1 inch wide lines (many of them).

Refer to this post for Samsungs reply: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=293

If this is not similar to your problem then sorry

FYI, I returned the set.

Got that set now for about two weeks, and we watched countless stuff already, SD *and* HD.

But yesterday we watched Star Wars Attack of the Clones in 720P...and i was freaking blown away by the quality of this specific movie, it even surpassed LOTR 720p and other HD movies we watched before. Just speechless.

Clear Image, Colors, Size...just lets you sit in awe. Best i have seen so far on this set.

A set like this has another, funny side-effect:

My wife constantly swears, by watching content we already saw dozens and dozens of times before that she encounters/sees scenes in movies where she swears that they havent been in there before (she IS a big movie buff btw.)

She says that this TV "somehow" plays different.....i call BS...but then on the other hand she really knows many movies by heart. It must be that a TV like this just introduces a different way of watching movies...and making you keep more attention where otherwise a scene would just be forgotten or you just dont keep attention to it on a small screen.

Anyway...my settings for HD movies:


MOVIE mode
Contrast 83
Brightness 40ish
Black Level Correction LOW
Colors 45 ish
No edge enhancement (720P becomes almost "TOO clear" with this)
Sharpness 25
Most other settings default,
no over-processing settings, no dynamic contrast
except the black level low, maybe DNR at low too.

TV is so amazing we got distracted for a while because Obi Wan has this giant zit on his forehead...so we were making fun out of it....just a detail you probably wouldnt even recognize watching SD on a smaller TV.

+1 just bought the tv and cannot seem to get it to auto change when i switch channels. My other 2 plasmas before this one would change on its own, i only had black bars when an hd channel went to non hd commercials. Total deal breaker if i have to manually switch all the time.

Isnt that just scan mode you are talking about?

Thanks for your reply. I do remember seeing your post actually ... sorry you had to return.

My issue is somewhat different: the line doesn't repeat (there is only one) and it doesn't go from the top to the bottom, it's just an inch or two long "floating" in the middle of the screen.

Anyone have any ideas what this could be? I've contacted Samsung to see what they say. I'm mainly curious if it's a symptom of a deeper problem (like maybe in six months there will be five of these lines; then in a year twenty) or if it's just an imperfection that won't "grow" or have any other effect.

I had mine set to output 16x9 and it stretched the SD channels, and then went back to normal on HD channels.

Is there anyway to see the signal strength of the TV signal?

Man the more I read about this set the more problems seem to crop up. dithering? Severe IR? Wierd Lines? Not as black? Worse anti - reflection? oh and now reading it doesn't auto resize.. wow my parent have an old panny and even it does that. I personally am stuck with this set, but it appears that either samsungs quality control is just piss poor or they are simply too focused on LCDs to produce a quality plasma.

Is there a way to tell how many hours this tv has been on for? I'm trying to break mine in and want to know when I reach/get close to 100 hours.

mute +1 + 8+2 when you turn the tv will take you to the service menu

it wll have your time in there

You should know that this will reset any settings that you have set on the tv.

The thing is, if you read enough about anything you'll find a lot of negative. I was recently trying to figure out which wireless router to buy and I literally couldn't find a single modem about which more than 20% of the comments were positive. Fact is people are more likely to post with problems than without -- if I hadn't noticed a line yesterday I likely wouldn't have posted here ... I'd have been too busy watching my TV.

So even though I have a very, very small problem with mine right now I can say some positives:

I haven't noticed any issues with dithering.

I've been playing PS3 and watching sports (tickers and scoreboxes) in the first 100 hours (albeit with contrast and brightness down) and haven't noticed even a split second of IR -- literally none. Believe me I've been watching closely for it after reading this thread ... even after PS3 or the cable guide menu or sports ... not even the slightest, faintest hint of IR.

Blacks seem top-notch to me -- really don't think you'll find much better in this range.

Anti-reflection I can't comment on as I put it in a dark room.

So there you go ... my "weird line" issue aside I think it's a fantastic set.

Yep, for digital channels, it's in the manual

Yeah, I personally cite negatives so anyone considering or reading the forums won't have any gotchas when buying. Positives FAR outweigh any negatives. I feel like Homer Simpson, I miss my TV when I'm not watching it. It is that awesome. Here are all the great things I can attest to first hand:

Great Color
Great Noise Reduction
VGA input looks fantastic.
NO, repeat I have had NO IR either. There are tons of tools to ameliorate any of these problems if yo do have them.
SD with the DNIe looks great IMO.
SD DVDs with upscaling DVD player look phenomenal.
Digital Tuner kicks butt.
Very clean looking.
Swivel base is REALLY nice.
Multitude of inputs (S-Video, 2 composite, 2 component, 3 HDMI, VGA, etc.)
No overscan compared to some HD sets (Just Scan feature makes for 0% overscan).
PS2 looks great over component.
Dreamcast with VGA output looks great.
XBox1 looks great over component.
Cleans up beautifully with included chamois.
Child fingerprints are easy to deal with compared to LCD.
Anti-glare is not perfect but much better than my CRT.
TONS of picture adjustment features.
Settings for each input are saved.

I really could go on....

Oh yeah,
Runs fairly cool.
Virtually no buzz.
Black hold their own quite well against other sets.

I told you I could go on.

as said above, having some "dithering" issues watching SD content - but this is rather the content since we watched HD Star Wars 720P, and didnt see any dithering this time.

Blacks..also oustanding. Contrast, Colors... top notch.

Watch real good HD content (Star Wars, Atack of the clones, even better: Revenge of the Sith.... if you complain i would certainly recommend going to an eye doctor. I think even in a theatre you wouldnt get such quality as on this TV at home.

Resizing not an issue...either i resize using the TV remote..or i resize using Xbox remote....there is always a way to display it. SD actually looks surprisingly good, even in full-screen. Well, ok, depending on material of course...if some material has MPEG artifacts then its certainly not the TV to blame.

I can vouch that so far I have not experienced any IR and I am barely over 50 hours.

I purchased the PN42A450 earlier this week and am loving it so far but had one question... it seems at times that the image settings suddently (and very subtly shift). I'm not sure how to describe it so I'm having problems searching to see if anyone else has experienced this... any thoughts?

Also, since so much of what's posted is negative I thought I'd chime in that I'm loving everything else about the set and that the problem could simply be in my head as my wife doesn't really see it.

You mean things like brightness? Yes, my PN42A450 also does this. The brightness seems to randomly shift every now and again, although it's very subtle. I'm wondering if this isn't some kind of screen burn protection. I notice it, yes, but it doesn't bother me too much.

Does your picture seem overly grainy at times?

But you see guys. On the px80 thread VERY little is negative. This should be a huge indicator that the panasonic set is superior.

Haven't noticed any issues with grain.

I noticed the brightness change a couple times when I had this set. I thought it was just a bad source.

Or, it could mean that the Samsung buyers are much more discerning about picture quality, features and price as well as being honest about its shortcomings. Just another interpretation..

but the panny set isn't superior

why don't you just return your samsung and go to it

I extensively looked at the 450 and px80 before purchasing.

the px80 has better blacks but the colors are so mediocre that it's not even worth considering

and as for superiority

all you need to do is look at cnet's reviews
px80 = 7/10
a550(same as a450 but with 1080p) = 8/10

I looked at them side by side at 2 different stores and I was pretty sure I preferred the Samsung the first time and I was completely sure the second time. It just looks better, period. Reliability, I read somewhere that there is a 2% rate of (?) with the Panasonics and 5% with the Samsungs. Maybe not up to par with the Panasonic but I was willing to risk an extra 3% "failure" rate for a better picture.