Samsung F8000 -- 2013 Flagship Models - Page 61

No credible review, in fact, has said anything has been done to improve the generally mediocre black levels. If something has, great. But I haven't read word one about it. And .014 black level on ANSI isn't it.

And since you can't fix contrast with higher whites (all displays in cinema mode have already been finding sufficient brightness and, no, this isn't an ABL issue), this will remain an issue. That's why I'm not "buying it" in the metaphorical sense.

In a bright room Samsungs were already great at contrast by 2011 by the way. Yes, great. Most of us do little viewing in a bright room and little critical viewing. That's really not the test we're trying to prove here. And, yes, to clarify: A Samsung LCD in a bright room > any plasma. It's contrastier (really, it is by effective measurements and probably metered ones too thanks to how much light the color filters and polarizers eat up) and brighter. If I was watching my TV mostly in the day, well, it's not close.

Oh and if it weren't Samsung's best ever... well, wow, that would be pretty sad.

Look, we are beating a dead horse on this image retention nonsense. Saying you see it at Magnolia -- where images might be on the display for 50, 60, 70% of the time for all we know -- proves even less than these buffoons at AVS who keep insisting that it's likely people will suffer from it. Is there some potential for an issue? Sure there is. Is there an overwhelming likelihood that a given owner will have no issue (i.e. no retention at all or sufficiently little that they basically don't see it)? Yes, that's definitely the case. And I can't be more certain in making that statement.

I presume you'd use dimming. Period.
That argument is so facile, I'm not sure I can let it just go. It's essentially equivalent to saying, "red wine can stain your carpet in a way white wine can't, so you should really consider avoiding red wine." Never mind that most of us don't have carpet in the places where we drink wine.

I mean, seriously, the "this can't happen with an LCD so therefore we should damn the plasma where it's possible that maybe something could happen that maybe seems permanent to some tiny number of people who have to go looking for it on test patterns in most cases because even when they are certain they have this problem, they don't actually see it unless they run a test pattern" line of argument is not a real argument. It's just not.

The millions upon millions of Panasonic plasma owners who don't have any permanent panel damage are more than enough reason to presume that no special skill is required to achieve this result.

They "I play a lot of Xbox games with HUDs on them and I'm not going to want to ever worry about it" argument? That's an argument to avoid plasma. Why? Because it represents a scenario where one can reasonably expect to experience some amount of image retention (I'm certain most people would still experience none by the way; the NCAA Tournament score bars are failing to "retain" on my plasma...) -- and regularly, to boot.

This is essentially now a 15-year-old argument and the idea that this problem is serious is a lot like the idea people shouldn't drive cars because there are idiots out there who drive drunk and might hit you. I mean, yes, people drive drunk. And yes, there are some people who have some image retention. But if we acknowledge the problem exists (as rare as it may be), then we have to conclude that it's caused by some amount of bad luck or really stupid behavior... I'll just grant that bad luck is some version of "panel Lotto"... And if that's a reason to not buy plasmas well, my God, it's a reason to absolutely, positively never, ever, ever buy a Samsung LCD if ever there was one (unless of course somehow the 2013s are all perfect out of the box because they've stopped manufacturing them like 1980s American cars).

Oh, and by all means take the last word. I just wasn't really interested in letting it be one which relied on some argument that I found so facile because, well, there have been mostly a serious of intelligent, well-reasoned posts by you (and others, it should be noted).