Samsung Series 9 Owners - Observations, Comments and Advice - Page 8

+1

Also, djap2, you've really changed your view on this set since you got it (you joked about selling it or trading it) , why has it grown on you vs your previous plasma preference? Is it just the great blacks or something else? Just Curious.

Well, I was gonna finally sit down and watch TV...but OK. I broke out the camera, tripod, etc...

Coming up shortly

Hi,

Does this mean that the Pioneer Kuro's can no longer have a claim as having vastly better blacks than anything else on the planet? Don't get me wrong, I am a plasma kind of guy, but I hope this & other LED BL TV's finally once and for all close the arguments that nothing other than a Kuro is worth having (Plasma or LCD) as everything fails miserably against the Kuros when it comes to black levels.

I don't know about anyone else, but I was getting real fed-up reading silly arguments between various parties (all over the net) regarding this issue and would be so happy if it was finally put to rest! Also, I think it is a great thing for consumers in the LCD camp and hopefully bring the prices of the Kuros down for those that prefer plasma - hopefully it will be a win-win for everyone!

Bazzy!

Actually, I'm thinking 58" still if the price didn't go up (just because of size)

I can't believe the set is going for over MSRP at BB...!

But, the reason: The Blacks!!! They are insane on this set

If everything was Blu Ray...I would quit my job and just watch TV all day. But of course, then my electricity would get shut off, etc...

So, I'm still having the following to cure:

Menu Lag
Comcast DVR not reseting
Image Retention on LCD question?
Sports, Sports and Sports (Baseball and Football...Football above all the single most important thing for me...)

Everyone's help with settings is making it a bit easier to tweak, but not much I can about football, I think it is just a LCD thing (not particular to this set). Again, owning many Plasmas (I turnaround my TVs fast sometimes) I might just have that picture in my head for the games...

Long answer to the short question

OK, if I'm posting too much, I'll stop...

Here are some pics of PS3 Burnout Paradise on LN55A950

Most came out badly....blacks to dark and whites to washed out. But this is on the pictures, not on the TV...not sure why camera is doing that. Hard to see detail.

Agreed-- I love my 950!

I think it's ridiculous that everyone focuses so much on black levels as the only measure of a good tv. What ever happened to crisp whites and bright colors? I had a Kuro 5020 (9g) and was thouroughly dissapointed with the dim whites, no pop in the color dept, and just kind of boring overall. It defintly crushed out a lot of the blacks which I didn't think helped the overall performance either. Anyway that's my 2 cents. There's 2 types of ppl in the world: LCD ppl or PDP! My conclusion is that OLED will make us ALL happy in a few years time.

Bummer, uploads of rest of files are failing. Error on upload page.

oh man, i can't wait to hear more about this new samsung A950 set (reviews, etc.) and how it stacks up against the 6020 kuro's...!

i've been lazily following the prices on amazon for the 6020 and it's been hanging around the 4K mark for quite awhile now - not sure if it's expected to drop lower or not over the next few months.

now if only samsung would/could release a 60" version for around the 3K MSRP mark... maybe one day. *sigh*

wow, so having owned the 5020 kuro, you'd take the A950 over it?

just curious in the "sitting on the sidelines looking at some great tv's i'd love to own" kinda way...

Trying uploads again for Burnout Paradise on PS3 with LN55A950:

Pics with comparison of E.Modes and a side shot for extra.

I have to say, i have been reading reviews on the samsung tvs since the 71f waiting for the green light on a 52" samsung model. I currently have 2 32" samsung lcds and love them. This is by far the best thread i have ever read and have me convinced this is THE tv. Props to everybody's awesome reviews and pictures. Now its time to convince the wifey.

More Burnout Paradise:

Last of them.

Most were with E.mode Game.
I don't game, but my son does and I cut his username out (I'm sure you can understand why) so that explains white boxes in some images.

OK, I have to be up at 4AM...

Hope they are good enough to satisfy.

I have tucked in my TV (Um, I mean kids) and now I'm off to rest...

wow! those are some awesome pic's... hot damn

thanks so much for taking the time to setup the camera, take the photos, and posting them for everybody to enjoy... i know i appreciate it.

the more photos i see, the more i keep saying to myself "damn that tv looks awesome" ...and here i've been eyeballing the PN58A650... but i think i'd happily give up the extra 3" for better PQ and deeper blacks, etc.

so i noticed something while watching an a950 and was wondering if anyone else was seeing this. ESPN2 was on with the Mizzou game and when it went to commercial, the espn side bars came on. if you're familiar with the bars, they are a gradient from gray to black. I saw that these kept changing based on the content in the main screen. the sidebars would brighten with dark content and darken with light content in the main screen. this looks like a cause of the back lighting. has anyone else seen this?

As a former owner of a Sony super fine pitch crt tv- the KD 34XS955- who loves nothing more than a pure looking picture with superdeep black levels, lemme say this:
To Speedrace, Djap, other owners and contributors to this thread-
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

You have restored my faith that there exists a tv that, not only rivals but exceeds what I once thought could not be compared to. Yes, off-angle is weaker than the crt but WHO CARES- those pics, even looking through my lcd monitor, appears to have the superdeep blacks, gradations in grays, and natural colors that I've missed for quite a while. THE COLORS!!! WOW, the blacks there look incredible, but the colors seem to have the kind of depth that I've not seen from any other lcd pics in this forum. Is this some kind of breakthrough, sorry if I'm blabbing. Honestly, I've never been that impressed by that so-called "reference" set in the pdp forums, which has always seemed to me a kind of crt pretender, with a heavily "filtered" looking screen, that comes up a little bit short. But this set, just judging by those pics, has me astonished.

Ahh, yes, time to head out tomorrow or Monday for some faith restoration.

I'm with you 100%......now if we could only figure out what BBY is doing jacking the price up by $800......I didn't fully know how we were going to swing it before without using some savings.....now....as long as it's 5k....it's easy to say it's not meant to be for us for the time being.

I defintly prefer my 950 over my "old" 5020, hehe. PDP is just too dull and boring for me. No pop. No excitement. The 5020 in particular used Colorspace 2, which is highly inaccurate color. That really bugged since there's no real way to adjust color temperature on the non elite set. So ya, the 950 I prefer hands down. The picture is just fabulous. So many options; basically unlimited picture settings. Internet, DLNA, blah blah, it goes on forever.

I'm a newbie here & have been lurking and reading these 950 (and 650) threads for several weeks (or is it months) now, trying to decide what I wanted to do with my first leap into HD. (I'm still muddling through life with a 10 year old 27" Sony CRT.) I've been "about to" jump into the HD arena about once every year or 2 for the last 7 years, since $4K would buy you a grainy grayish 50" LCD RP Sony. I was all ready to pull the trigger on a 650 when I read the press release on the 950. I've been patiently waiting to see one in-person since. I finally got to see one last week. For the first time in 6 or 7 years, I was stunned.

The reason I have finally posted, is because of nullefect's post about the 650 plasma. The 950 I saw was set up next to a 50a650 plasma, and it blew it out of the water like pro-ball vs. pee-wees. The two sets were split off of the same BD feed of Happy Feet (not my choice, but still a seemingly good test of display mettle) and the plasma looked like it had a dusty screen compared to the 950. Lower PQ, dimmer whites, grayer blacks, you name it. Only thing the plasma did better was avoid some slight blooming around the white letters during the credits. Having said that, I'll make these points - A: the blooming was never noticeable during live action (with a lot of white-on-black action (and no porno jokes here)) B: The less-than-black areas caused by blooming were just as black as the entire screen on the plasma C: I've never cared once in my life about black levels surrounding white letters during credits.

I'm sure the performance leap over the Samsung plasma is not a huge shocker to most, but on the other side of the 950 was a Pioneer Elite plasma. The difference was not quite as staggering vs the 650 plasma, but the 950 still blew it away, imho. Maybe not like pro-ball vs pee-wees, but I'll say major leagues vs. AA minors. I can see where some would try to chalk up the differences to general preference of plasma vs lcd, but I've come into this pretty open minded, and the 950 blew away the 2 plasmas. The Elite had some slightly better definition in some very black details (black horse hair, black suit jackets w/ wrinkles) but the deepest blacks on the Pio were gray compared to the 950. I don't believe either set was ISF calibrated, and I'm guessing if the brightness was increased on the 950, the detail might have been there too. Conversely, if the Pio brightness was dropped to the point that it's blacks were as black as the 950, some of the details may have been crushed. I'm speculating with these last statements, so take it fwiw.

I got to test drive the 950 for an hour or 2 with a friend-of-a-friend sales rep, and my only regret is that I didn't get to do the side-by-side test with an lcd 650 or 750. I'm still finding it hard to justify the nearly 2X price leap from one tech to the next, and I wish I had seen them side-by-side to ease my mind. Or ease my wallet. I'm going to be ordering a 650 or 950 tomorrow, and I don't know which one.

So my question is, who has seen the 650/750 run at full speed alongside the 950? I'm guessing the improvement is just as noticeable? Or is it?

And BTW, thanks to Pmpdesigns, and Djap, and anyone else who's been posting pics and opinions. Definitely helps soothe the shaky nerves of us AV addicts who can't get a fix of the new tech in person....

How does someone qualify for the discount coupons?

How far do you have to walk to the side, before the blacks wash out, in a dark room on the 950?

I had this same thing happen the first time I used the remote "iPod" wheel to navigate up and dn the menus. I think I was cranking on that wheel so fast that I was filling up the command buffer. It is like it couldn't catch up with me. I haven't had that happen since. I mostly use the up/dn presses on the wheel.

I set up my Harmony One tonight. They do not have commands for the 950 but I set it up as a 750 and it downloaded those commands and it works just fine. Happily there are discrete On and Off commands but no short cuts to things like AMP settings.

I agree, I think there is room for both LCD and Plasma technologies at the moment. At least until the next great thing replaces both of them. I've seen the new 6020 and it has a great picture. Excellent black levels, but the brightness and whites are not the best. The 950 has excellent black levels but off-axis they drop off. I don't think you get the same drop off on the Kuro. The colors and white levels on the 950 are excellent to my uncalibrated eye. Whites are pretty white and there are detailed settings to adjust the white level to your own liking. I had to turn down the backlight to 7. On 10 it practically burns my retinas. I guess they provided some headroom to provide some adjustment for LED output reduction over time. If the screen is on full white (one of the screens in the Cal disc) it literally lights up the living room.

4 large for a 60" Kuro is a nice deal to me if you are a plasma fan. It is a very nice set.

Not far actually. If you look for it you can see it, if you just enjoy the set you don't notice it as much. You notice it most in the black bars (if you have them) at the top and bottom of the screen. Off-axis they don't blend seamlessly into the bezel. If this set has one shortcoming this is probably it. For me it is not an issue since we sit pretty much 'down the barrel' of the TV. I plan to take some pics of the contrast pattern on and off axis when I get a chance.

Wow that price on the 950 is ridiculous! Must be a mistake. Tonight I bought some more cables from Monoprice. I moved my old set into the bedroom and didn't have another HDMI cable. Every time I go on there I end up buying twice as many cables as I need since the shipping is often more than the cost of a few more cables. I bought a total of 10 cables shipped for $35. Just for fun I filled up a shopping cart on BB of equivalent cables and the prices was $393. No $hi!... 10 times more! So if they can get someone to buy a 6' HDMI cable for $70 then someone will buy this set for $800 over MSRP. Maybe they are marking it up so they can mark it down for Labor Day??? Check out Abt on Labor Day, they may be dropping the price. With Abt it is always best to call to see what their best price is.

Has anyone been able to establish if these panels are either white or rgb led backlit ,because looking at the attached photo link of the panel that we are hopefully to get in the uk, the top left label shows an rgb led sticker.

http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0063pq8.jpg

Well I hooked up my laptop and put up an all-black powerpoint page and used the pointer to figure out how many LED zones are on the 55" version. It was not easy actually. In order to even see the zone boundaries I had to set the settings to Dynamic, 100 contrast, crank up the backlight and of course turn on Smart LED (on by default as far as I'm concerned). Without Smart LED the backlight does not dim its zones so there is just constant "100% on." I put a mark of blue painters tape at each boundary between zones. Moving the cursor across these zones it was apparent where they were. So the final count is 12 zones across, 8 zones up/dn for a total of 96 zones. I took some pics. One picture shows the black powerpoint screen in Smart LED Demo mode so you can see Smart LED ON on the left and OFF on the right. Since I had to turn the flash off to see anything, the camera then overexposed so it is not 100% as your eye sees it, but it is a dramatic difference.

The more I look at the picture the more I realize that this metric is way overblown in my opinion. I can't see individual zones during normal viewing and it is not like each zone has an infinite drop off next to the other zone. There is overlap in other words. So I think there is a practical limit to the number of zones before it becomes of no benefit. It is not like there is a baffle that aligns each zone to X number of pixels, they just illuminate a portion of the screen. If you doubled the number of zones you would just have more crosstalk between zones so the benefit diminishes. In other words if you had 2,000 zones the LED clusters would be so packed together each LED cluster would send more light to its neighbors so even if the neighbor were off or at 50% its apparent value would be higher due to crosstalk. Anyway, not being an expert in this area but I think the idea that more is better is not correct. Is 96 the right number??? I don't know, but it seems to work just fine.

Ditto on Monoprice and ABT. Worth calling ABT, the order went smoothly and delivery was even faster than estimated.

I also landed a great deal on a Denon 3808ci from 6th Ave. because of AVS forum (called Roberto and said I was a member...BAM...great deal). So, the forums have either saved me a bundle or convinced me to buy something I really wasn't going to if it wasn't on sale. Hmmmm