So ... I got the set on Wednesday - 4 days ago. Eager to see it in ALL it's magnificence, I got it unpacked and situated in the "media" room we have.
Plugged it all up, hdmi cable from my Samsung HD960 DVD player (modded to play all regions as over 70% of my DVD's are form the UK - yes I am a Brit!) to the hdmi 1 in on the tv and the coax digital audio out from the dvd into my Denon AVR 2802.
Put in "Star Wars The Phantom Menace" and sat down to be impressed.
First off - damn lip sync issues!! I had chosen the set based on the rave reviews on the image etc etc - nothing said about the lip sync. After reading a bit more on these forums, I came to realize that the lip sync seems to be an issue on a lot of high end sets... "bugger", I thought, "have to invest in a box to fix that as my Denon cannot.." It is only apparent on some movies and then not all the time...
Secondly - I noticed during the playing of the same movie, that some scenes seemed to "jerk" a bit ... and then some scenes almost seemed "out of focus" (?? ) - or rather "trying to focus" ... ?
But watched the movie .. was impressed with the pic...
So, the kids then wanted to watch "Lord of The Rings". Put in the first disc, from the 1st film, and then I got shouts of "Dad, there are sparklies all over the screen and funny lines!"
Sure enough - I was watching with them when they first enter "Rivendell" and sparklies are apparent over the screen .. but worse were these strange "broken up lines" that appeared in the bottom of the image. It was awful!
Thirdly - put in an animation "Madagascar". On the "Menu screen" before you even play the movie, there are the lines ... some sparklies and the picture "jerks" a little.
So - I thought maybe this was because I was playing Region 2 movies? So I out in 1st disc from the "Ghost Whisperer" Tv show - region 1 dvd. Same thing started to happen ... in the menu screen and during the episodes.
NOW - this does not happen all the time - BUT enough to spoil the enjoyment as it is very disruptive!
I tried all 3 hdmi inputs ... no difference.
Today, my daughter was watching 101 dalmations (NOT the animated version) and she said it was all "dark". Sure enough, I went in to see that the menu screen for the dvd was all in a very dark red. It seemed as if there was no brightness in the whole set. I switched off the set, and switched it back on ... was still the same. Switched both the DVD and the Set off and switched them back on - all better --- nice and bright and normal.
Also - this time, when my daughter was playing Madagascar (she watches it a lot!) - the problems said before did not seem as bad - they were still there (lines on the menu screen and jerkiness of image) but not as bad as the previous night.
So -I am very worried...concerned and a little annoyed that I forked out nearly $1,900 for a brand new TV and it looks worse than the old 26" CRT we had borrowed from friends until we could get our new TV.
The DVD player was happily playing everything with NO problems on the CRT set - AND it was going via S-video into a converter to get the digital signal into the arial co-oax input in that old CRT tv! So I know the DVD works... and has been for the last year.
Can ANYONE out there please help me out? Could this be the fault of the hdmi cable that came with the dvd player? Is it to do with the fact that this dvd player is NOT hdmi 1.3? Is it the actual DVD player's fault too cheap, so on high end sets just causes crap playback??...I was thinking of getting one of the OPPO ones if this was the case... thoughts?
What should I do next? Or what can I try to fix it? I love the TV when it is all working fine - but the sparklies and lines are driving me crazy!
From the Samsung DVD I have the setup as;
hmdi = auto (you can switch this to manual and choose from 480 to 1080p)
Digital noise reduction = 3 (out of 5)
(all other settings = 3)
Video output = TV (options are Monitor or TV sRGB)
Hope you can ease my pain ..

Cheers
Stefski