PN58C500 - 58" Samsung, new model? - Page 2

I stopped by yesterday, and while they didn't have a 58C550 or 500 on display, they did have a 50C550 setup, and I have to say I'm hesitant to get one now because the picture was so much more dark then the sets around it. I had one of the employees turn the brightness up, but even when set at max it still was noticeably darker then the others. Maybe this one was brand new like yours and not properly broken in yet, but I'm definitely going to wait until I can see a 58C500 in action before I purchase.

I believe that is incorrect. The holes are 23.5 inches apart horizontally, and 15.75 inches apart vertically (according to my ruler) - which I believe is 600-400 VESA.

It fits my old Sonus bracket.

17" (W) x 42" (H) x 59" (L) - your biggest challenge is height.

I think that's the effect of the HDMI Dark setting. I played with it a little last night and its decent now.

Agree - it's a budget TV, it's all about finding the best bang for the buck. If you want more awesomesauce then spend more $$$.

On the scaler thing, I played around with a lot of different channels and content last night and it seems the pixelization is the same as my old Panny 8UK set (after tuning). I set them up near each other and put on the same content then compared. AT&T uVerse is decent depending on the channel - some are more compressed than others - but a solid DVD or HDDVD signal gives you a really sharp picture. Comes down to "garbage in, garbage out" probably.

It does not. It'll jump from 16:9 then 4:3 for commercials then back to 16:9.

Do you mean that when a 4:3 commercial comes on the picture remains the same, it just shows the 4:3 commercial in the 16:9 frame? It's not doing any kind of switching, right? If it switched to zoom a 4:3 picture every time a commercial came on that would definitely be a deal-breaker. This sounds very unlike any TV I've owned.

No, other way around - 16:9 TV show, then a 4:3 commercial comes on and you get the black bars on the sides like you'd expect, then show resumes back to 16:9. No auto switching to zoom it in or stretch it to 16:9 for the commercial. Sorry for being unclear.

Looking hard at this tv, for the price it's hard not to. For those of you that bought it and have been using it... would you recommend it or would you say to keep looking at something more proven?

Went to the store yesterday, after hitting up some stores we decided to go back to the tvs when the whole murderfest was over. My friend was trying to convince me to go led, I was not sold on the color saturation of leds at angles, people's coloration looked like they were paled, he contested that real live people aren't orange, I told him average people don't look alvino either. We noticed some noise one a lot of screens. some plasmas had an weird yellow and pale whites but that could be due to run time and settings. I liked a lot of the leds, and the 50 inch samsung 1080p model and ironically I like the image the best of the 720p 3d model running on 2d mode.
Unfortunately they didn't have the 58 inch model for sale or display, I really would have loved to seen it in person. I did notice the 50 1080p samsung was a little blurry compared to the 720p 3d one.
Is the 58inch a little blurry?
How does the 58 inch compare to an led?

Thanks, I thought that was the case. I'm about to "Submit Your Order" at BB after going to HH Gregg last night and viewing the 550. I couldn't see the 550 or 500 at my local BB, just weren't on display. The picture looked good despite being on the store feed. I think I can live with 3 HDMIs since my current TV only has one.

Frizzel, The picture of the IO shows a lan jack, is this really there? Is this part of there intranet connect feature, or does this set have internet access.

I'm happy with mine. It's taken a couple days of tuning to get the PQ figured out, but so far I'm pretty pleased. Side by side with my old Panny 8UK there is a noticeable improvement in PQ from similar sources. Add in another 8" over what I had and it's a win/win.

It's there - but Intranet / LAN only, no internet connections for the Samsung services (I've got a xbox360 and PC I use for all my streaming so was unimportant to me). There is a way to do firmware updates too which I imagine goes out to the internet, but haven't played with it.

I bought this Wednesday before the black friday bonanza. I can confirm the picture posted on the side of the box is an accurate description of the connections.

As far as picture, I can say that for a $1200 dollar 58" plasma, the picture looks pretty great. Playing COD on Ps3 looked awesome. Planet Earth on BlueRay looked sweet. Also, even the local channels on bunny ears looks great.

The BB salesman basically said it was a scaled down 550, same screen and processors but less ports. I used the USB media interface and it worked great. As far as comparing black colors and so on, I have not a clue what to look for and have not had my tv calibrated. Anyone know what settings I should use? Really though if you don't want to spend $2700-3500 on a plasma, which will get you to the next level, this tv is pretty nice. I considered the high end panasonic but just couldn't pull the trigger.

So after the TV just sittting on the floor in my basement i decided to turn the puppy on. I couldnt wait any longer so i opened up the packaging for the new comcast digital converter(they will go in guest rooms) and hooked it up to the TV. I did notice on SD that the commercial switched from 16:9 to 4:3 when a commercial came on. It will be interesting to see if it does the same on HD channels. I'm not going to grade the PQ since i was watching in SD and did absolutely no tuning. There was some minor pixelization going on but again i didn't mess with the settings.

Some people were bummed out by the fact that you lost 1 HDMI connection. When i hooked up my mini HT in the livingroom all the HDMI's went to the receiver then 1 HDMI to the TV. Correct me if i'm wrong because i'm still a rookie when it comes to HT issues. Another thing i did notice was that after only 1 hour of use, there was no buzzing sound and the TV was cold as a cucumber. I probably just jinxed myself.

All in all this appears to be a damn good tv for the price. I've seen the C550 hooked up at BB using RGB cables and the PQ was amazing. I cant wait to see how this TV looks with a bluray running.

Can anyone tell me if one of the HDMI connections is on the side of the TV, or are all three on the back?

No, he is correct; and so are you; because you, effectively, just stated the same thing that he said.

When watching a 16:9 source, the 4:3 commercials, indeed, show within the 16:9 frame; rather than switching modes or zooming.

I'm noticing on mine that when screens are intended to be white, the tv has difficulty producing a consistently white screen . I have not calibrated the tv yet. Can anyone recommend a good disc?

Frizille, thanks for the help. My tv was delievered on the 26th, and I just finished setting it up. Overall I'm happy, but I will say I noticed a lag between switching to a HD vs non-hd channels. Is there a way to correct this in the settings?

Thanks

Hmm, what's running into the TV? A receiver or cable box? Mine takes a second or two, but that's because of the Onkyo 607 receiver doing its thing.

One on side, two on back.

I just picked up this tv tonight but there seems to be more changes from the 550 than even the samsung sight is listing.

First the Screen doesn't seem to have the same filtering/anti glare as the 550, also I can not find a Game mode for this tv. I will be taking this tv back because I specifically bought it because I though it had a gaming mode. So this set so far seems to lose ports, screen coating, and gaming mode.

Nice set but I specifically wanted a set with a good gaming mode.

*UPDATE* I called Samsung and they showed me there is a game mode. So now that there is a gaming mode on this TV I am going to give it more time to see how I like it. The reason I didn't find it is because it's under Plug and Play in settings not under picture like I thought. I still believe the screens between the 550 and 500 might be a bit different though.

I picked up one of these Friday and I have to say i'm very impressed! They had the 50" version setup and it was darker than say the LCD's and the LED/LCD's but switch it on dynamic mode and it is as bright or brighter. Of course I just put it there for a second to see what it looked like because of break in etc. I agree that it takes some tweaking on the picture side, but its a $1200 tv not a $3000 tv and you have to remember what is a good picture to one person is not to a other. I've watched two blurays via a cheap 50ft HDMI cable from my PC and HD feed from my cable provider via component and the picture is fantastic! There were a few scenes in Valkarie that were real grainey that had me kinda concerned, but I cloned the screens on my pc and the picture on the Samsung looked the same on both my LG LCD's on my computer. (My tv is set as a third monitor) As said before there is a slight buzz that comes from the tv. I traced it down to what looks to be the power supply looking at the back side of the tv on the left side. I'd say that if you had one of those power strips that clean the A/C up that it would help. So far i'm very impressed with it. I am going to follow a break in procedure for good measure even though Samsung said that it doesn't need one.

Any signs of image retention in these bad boys? I am looking for my first hdtv and I am wondering how IR is on this model.

Was probably the first to own this TV as I ordered it when Amazon had it up to purchase ($1199 free ship, no tax) at the beginning of November. Originally listed as a 3DHDTV but alas it's not. (been meaning to call up Amazon and see if they'll offer a partial refund or gift card due to the listing error...)... It came on 11/19. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with it. Out of the box I only adjusted the Cell light to 20, the Color up a few notches, and turned off all those Mpeg deblockers and Eco mode crapola...

Looks great!

I also own a LN40C530. I use it as a media player (plug in USB hard drive) and it's played everything I've thrown at it -- bluray m2ts (not re-encoded), h264 TS caps, 720p/1080p mkv's etc.

However, this PN58C500 seemed to have trouble playing back the same stuff via the media player the LN40C530 does without a hiccup! The Bluray playback almost has a 'jerky'ness to it on pans and fast action. Is there some setting I'm overlooking? I didn't change a thing on my LN40C530 to get these files to playback. It also downright refused to playback 25fps h264 stuff (Top Gear UK caps). My LN40C530 plays those back without a hitch! And on some re-encode MKVs (720p/1080p) the audio/video would lose sync if paused, rewound, or fast forwarded. Only way to get it back in sync would be to start from the beginning of the file.

Contacted Samsung via the Live chat, but of course they were unhelpful. "Is the TV plugged in?", "What cables are you using", "Can you see Russia from your house?" ...LOL...

Anywho, reading back a few posts -- what's this about changing it to C590 cinema mode? What's the advantage to that?

Thanks!

@ellover009: I haven't noticed any but I am very careful with it as this is my first plasma tv. I upgraded from a JVC HD-ILA (JVC's version of DLP) I believe though it you use some common sense I don't have the cell light, contrast, and brightness jacked up 100% all the time it will be fine. Believe me if you turn the lights out and but the picture on dynamic you will either get a really good tan or catch cancer from this thing. IT IS BRIGHT!!!!

@alanisrox69 I also tried playing a h264 encoded copy of The Dark Knight via the built in media center via the network with no luck. I wasn't expecting much from the built in media center though. I'm running XBMC from my pc so I didn't spend much time trying to tweak it. If you need a media center solution look into the Zotac ZBOX's and XBMC.

Just got this set going from a Sharp lcd, now I am noticing a lot of reflections from either a far window and at night if I have a lamp on low. Now I know some sets show reflections show reflections more than others so might their be a better model or different brand.

I guess it's not a good idea to transport it lying flat, right? It really needs to be upright. Lying flat it should fit in my Edge but I think that stresses the panel, especially one as large as this.

Most likely taking my set back for a different model/brand.

Reasons are
1) Turn on at times and the picture is displaying what appears to be snow with the image and then keeps flickering on and off. Not sure what this is but it never happened on my old Sharp LCD. A power off and back on fixes usually.
2) Tons of glare/reflections with sun light and lamps even if they are on dim. Maybe this is all plasmas.
3) This set seems to have difference between it and the 550 set in the screen. Do a compare on the Samsung site and both the anti glare tech is different and the response time is missing. A call to Samsung tech said this is what they know (take that for what it's worth).