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201K views 2K replies 155 participants last post by  Nick Corona 
#1 ·
Picked up the Samsung PN43F4500 plasma today.


I don't usually give thorough reviews for products online, but having owned a PN42B450 ('09 model), its crazy how things have improved.


Unboxing this unit I found that instead of the typical bag full of accessories/remote/etc. you get a neat 'accessory kit' box with everything inside. The TV itself is freakishly light. Cosmetically It resembles the E550 plasma from last year.


The real surprise came when I turned on this beast; the menus are the blue/gray ones from last years high end models. There is even a full 10P white balance, 2p white balance, RGB only filters, expert calibration patterns, anti burn-in, and a CMS.. on a budget model.


Photos coming soon..
 
#2 ·
I bought the 43" a couple weeks ago to put in my basement. You can't beat it for the price. While it doesn't have enough inputs for me to use in a main home theater system, and watching it anything other than a dark room isn't optimal, it's perfect in my basement. I don't think you can do any better for $400. If your TV came with firmware 10.03, there is a newer v10.10 on the Samsung Website.
 
#3 ·
I bought my PN43F4500 10 days ago, and couldn't be happier. I think it is the perfect bedroom TV and still can't get over the price. Stylish, thinnest TV under $400 (including LED/LCD), great picture, incredibly light energy footprint for plasma.


The 42" S60 is still the best bet for a budget TV if it ever comes back down to its sub $400 price from a few weeks ago, but this is still a very nice choice for under $400--plus I can't stand the silver trim on the new Pannys. I have an 60" ST50 and prefer that styling.
 
#4 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by justlou  /t/1474305/samsung-pnxxf4500-owners-thread#post_23358817


I bought the 43" a couple weeks ago to put in my basement. You can't beat it for the price. While it doesn't have enough inputs for me to use in a main home theater system, and watching it anything other than a dark room isn't optimal, it's perfect in my basement. I don't think you can do any better for $400. If your TV came with firmware 10.03, there is a newer v10.10 on the Samsung Website.

Just updated to 1010.1 (from 1008), no noticeable change to picture or anything else. I did notice that there are still minor brightness pops (looks like dynamic contrast?). Its only noticeable when on startup (the Samsung logo), the logo appears, brightness dims, then goes back up a bit when the logo disappears...must be the nature of plasma tech.


I still have my old PN42B450 and made some comparisons for what its worth. Both have been calibrated with my Digital Video Essentials Bluray.


I'd call it a tie..by eye the black depth is very close..B450 is lighter but with better shadows.


The 4500's colors are less punchy but way more accurate (no pinkish whites, no red or green banding, etc.), and this is without touching the color management or greyscale controls.


Mode: Movie

Cell Light: 15

Contrast: 80

Brightness: 44

Sharpness: 20

Color: 50

Tint: G50/R50


Advanced Settings:

All Off/Default

Flesh Tone: 0

Color Space: Auto

Gamma: 0


Picture Options:

All Off

Color Tone: Warm 2

Black Optimizer: Off (seems to do nothing at all)
 
#5 ·
I'm still messing with my settings, and probably will be until the TV is well broken in. One thing that started to annoy me was that my "whites" were never really white, and people's skin tones all looked like they had a spray tan no matter which color tone I used. I solved this problem pretty easily though by putting up a white test pattern, adjusting the White Balance, and lowering the color to 48. I didn't touch the White Balance Gains, only the Offsets.
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by justlou  /t/1474305/samsung-pnxxf4500-owners-thread#post_23368751


I'm still messing with my settings, and probably will be until the TV is well broken in. One thing that started to annoy me was that my "whites" were never really white, and people's skin tones all looked like they had a spray tan, no matter which color tone I used. I solved this problem pretty easily though by putting up a white test pattern, adjusting the White Balance, and lowering the color to 48. I didn't touch the White Balance Gains, only the Offsets. Using these Offsets, my whites are now white, and colors are more accurate.

Red offset: (15)

Green offset:(25)

Blue offset:(24)

Good eye.


I now have some HD pics and some input pics:







 
#8 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by typhoo12  /t/1474305/samsung-pnxxf4500-owners-thread#post_23371942


Hi


Just a follow on, how do you get the AV/Source button / feature on this tv?


Also does it matter what wifi device/usb you get for it to enable internet access on it?


Thanks



Not sure on the wifi, but are you talking about the on set controls? The remote has a source button, there is also a jog stick-style button for accessing the menu/power/source (its on the back of the tv below the hdmi/usb inputs).
 
#9 ·
Just bought this tv at Best Buy (They had the best price I could find. $380.) I popped in the Disney WOW Bluray and after calibrating, after about 90 mins of adjusting, I have come up with the following settings:

FYI, the room stays pretty dark even on a sunny day.


Cell Light: 13 (It didn't matter what it was on for brightness or contrast as long as it was above 5.)

Contrast: 100

Brightness: 59

Sharpness: 27

Color: 52

Tint (G/R): G52/R48

Everything else: Off
 
#10 ·
I picked up one of the 51" versions a little over a week ago, my first HDTV, believe it or not! I had an old but nice 27" Samsung CRT, and to be blunt none of the less expensive LCDs looked as good as my CRT, resolution aside, and the recent price dropping of plasmas is what finally kicked me into getting one. I was planning on getting the 43" version, but the 51" was on sale, so it was only $70 more. Glad I did!


I've spent most of the last week tweaking the settings among my various devices. I read everything I could find about calibration and fine tuning, took some advice that goes against what I wanted to do (and the advice was correct) and fiddled, fiddled, fiddled. I still don't have the settings for my cable box quite where I want it, but the game systems and bluray/DVD movies look excellent. Some friends told me to shell out the extra cash for the 1080p model, but I'm on a tight budget and I've always cared more about accurate color reproduction than resolution anyway.


One thing I like about this thing is that it saves the different settings for the various inputs, it lets me tinker to my heart's delight. Here's what I'm using currently, but I'm always tweaking:


Cable box or PS3 playing movies through HDMI:


PIcture Mode: Movie

Cell Light 20

Contrast 87 (I keep tinkering with this)

Brightness 50

Sharpness 20

Color 50

Color Space Auto

Gamma 0

Color Tone Warm 2

All options set to off


Video Games through HDMI (PS3, Xbox 360, etc)

Game Mode: On

Picture Mode; Standard (can't change in Game Mode)

Cell Light 20

Contrast 100

Brightness 50

Sharpness 20

Color 50

Color Space Auto (Note, Native seems to look better in certain games, but it's really oversaturated, not accurate)

Gamma 0

Color Tone: Standard (Warm1/2 just doesn't look right in games in my opinion)

HDMI Black Level: Low

All options set to Off


A note on HDMI Black level: The TV supports RGB levels, and the PS3 have options to support it, but I find that the expanded values on the game systems (expecially the 360) to be wrong, causing both systems to crush blacks. Also, the 360 may automatically detect the native resolution of the TV as 1024x768 and switch the TV to PC mode, but I can't get it to look as good as 720p mode with the above settings.


It was also hooked up a SNES through the component input, and was pleasantly surprised that the scaler in the TV made it look pretty good. Not as good as a SDTV, but still pretty good. The NES didn't fare as well, but it still did better than expected. I ordered a composite/s-video to HDMI scaler/converter to see how it does.
 
#11 ·
I know 90% of people use Warm 2, but I just can't get used to it. I don't know whether it's the TV or my eyes, but I just can't get the white balance right using it no matter how much adjusting I do. Using "standard' I can get my whites truly white, and not beige, like it looks using the warm settings.


Edit: I've managed to get used to Warm 1.
 
#15 ·
I noticed the color on this tv to be a bit finicky, particularly the color space setting. If you choose Native, colors look lively,

but some colors look too red and green becomes too bluish.. or ''minty''. I keep my color setting at 50 and tint at 50/50.


The Auto setting makes everything look balanced and correct, but colors become very pale.


I was able to remedy this a bit by going into Custom and bumping up the RGB values from 50 to 55 (for all colors).


I don't have a way to measure color accuracy, but the color is much improved. You gain some punchiness without losing too much accuracy.
 
#16 ·
Applied the firmware update a couple of hours after unboxing, and without having touched the settings, and the picture is noticeably better from the HDMI connected cable box.


The 'burn in' sticky thread has a lot of stuff to weigh and wade through; so far my takeaway is to not mess with the settings for 100 - 200 hours, to wait until the it's broken in to calibrate it. Does that jive with what y'all do?


Beau in Austin
 
#17 ·
Nick- if your tv is calibrated anything like mine was (samsung e450).For colors on warm2 you could try a gray bar pattern (when tv station off air late night)with color at zero and see if there is too much red in darker bars compared to lighter bars.If there is then lower red bias a click or 2..Not a lot you can do unless your a calibrator with meter.


Edit - it may be too much red gain and not the bias or it may be both.If you lower the reds too much you'll have a dull colorless picture.Auto is better than native color space.
 
#18 ·
I'm planning to buy a Samsung PN43F4500 because of high ratings, good reviews. Trouble is the plasma sets at Wally's are dim and grainy like they have black window screen embedded in the picture.

720p & 1080p sets all look the same compared to to all the LED sets there which are really bright and clear.

The picture settings are just configured wrong, right?
 
#19 ·
Can't really speak to how they're setup and displayed at the store. Mine is less than a week old, and the picture looks fantastic at night, but the reflection on the glass in the daytime makes viewing then less than optimal, at least until I put up some curtains. The sets on display may not have had their firmware updated - doing that firmware update improved the picture noticeably. After 30 or so hours of use, and possibly in violation of the prime plasma directive, I changed the brightness setting from 45 to 50, but other than that, and avoiding leaving it on a channel with a constant logo for long periods, I think I'm done messing with it until it reaches 100 hours of use.


Edit: It might be worth mentioning here that there is no analog audio out, and to connect this set to my stereo required that I purchase an optical audio to analog converter .. It's in the specs, but in case you read this first, there you go ..
 
#20 ·
Thanks, Guru. My "old" box TV reflects light from the window pretty bad unless I close the blinds so won't be anything new there. The store plasma sets look awful. I'd never buy one judging by the way they look. Huge pixels and dim. Most of the reviews are really good, though, and my mom's happy with hers although I haven't seen it yet. Another state.
 
#22 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sceloporus  /t/1474305/samsung-pnxxf4500-owners-thread#post_23509078


Thanks, Guru. My "old" box TV reflects light from the window pretty bad unless I close the blinds so won't be anything new there. The store plasma sets look awful. I'd never buy one judging by the way they look. Huge pixels and dim. Most of the reviews are really good, though, and my mom's happy with hers although I haven't seen it yet. Another state.

Check out: http://reviews.cnet.com/tv-buying-guide/]


This article is definitely worth reading.


Also, if you have several feet of unsupported cable dangling below the tv, try to come up with someway to support it and minimize the torque on the plug. My last TV went bad from the weight bending both the male end of the plug and the female receptacle/board inside the TV producing annoying red specks on the TV. (It was a Westinghouse so that may be part of the issue....)
 
#23 ·
After about ten days of watching a PN43F4500 and doing a bare minimum of twiddling with the settings I'm very happy.


This TV is able to resolve and display the differences in the production equipment and methods of making the content being shown on a single HD cable channel, from live cable news anchors looking overly made up to the people in the expensive well produced commercials looking pretty near perfect color-wise. Any complaint I might have about color *seems* to come from the content. Some things are better produced, shot with better cameras ..? I don't know, but it's something I didn't think about with the five or so year old LCD Bravia this replaced. This TV seems truer to the source material for sure.


I haven't felt the need to do anything but turn up the brightness from 45 to 50, and I briefly turned the cell from 12 to 13, but got scared, since it's kind of new, and went back to 12... From reading a little in this forum I thought I would be anxious to mess with the energy settings, and other things, but so far it seems really good as is out of the box. No noise, no IR (knock wood) turns on fast .. Only complaints are the reflective screen and the lack of analog audio out; had to buy an optical to analog audio converter to work with my audio setup.


Edit: Just tried 'Movie' mode. Even better. Over 150 hours of use now and I'm less afraid of a brighter setting.


And adding another caveat - the picture through the HDMI connected TW cable DVR is great. The analog cable picture is not great, which was true of my old TV too. This TV is also displaying the analog cable picture on most channels in a distorted wide view with black bars on top and bottom, and none of the picture size settings available in the Samsung menu fix it; none make it like the HDMI picture, where the aspect is correct on every channel.
 
#24 ·
Via wirecutter


"If I was looking to buy the best $500 TV, I’d get the Samsung PN51F4500. It’s surprised me by not being just a “good” cheap TV, but a great-looking TV that just happens to be cheap. I base this on side-by-side testing, objective measurements with $20,000 worth of test gear and nearly 13 years' experience of HDTV reviewing."


Read the full piece here
 
#25 ·
I bought this set a few months ago, and couldn't be happier with the picture. However, one thing that concerns me is a slight but audible "click" noise every so often. It seems to happen randomly, usually after the tv has warmed up for 5 or 10 minutes. Then the click noise occurs every 10 or 20 minutes or so. It even happens for a brief period after the tv is turned off.


Does anyone think I have a defective tv? I've never owned a plasma set before, so could it be something inherent to plasmas?


Thanks in advance.
 
#26 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ashteven  /t/1474305/samsung-pnxxf4500-owners-thread#post_23747721


I bought this set a few months ago, and couldn't be happier with the picture. However, one thing that concerns me is a slight but audible "click" noise every so often. It seems to happen randomly, usually after the tv has warmed up for 5 or 10 minutes. Then the click noise occurs every 10 or 20 minutes or so. It even happens for a brief period after the tv is turned off.


Does anyone think I have a defective tv? I've never owned a plasma set before, so could it be something inherent to plasmas?


Thanks in advance.

I've never experienced it on my set, but if you're hearing it briefly when the set is off, it could just be the plastic reacting to the heat.
 
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