If you're in Norman, OK, Sears appears to have one NIB left in stock at a killer price:

http://www.searsoutlet.com/64-1080p-600Hz-Plasma-HDTV-PN64H5000/d/product_details.jsp?pid=131080&mode=seeAll

So I bought a Samsung 7150 and I have to say the picture quality is great. The ONLY thing I don't like about the TV is that it just doesn't get black enough. 60% of the time I would ever be watching anything on the TV would be in a room with blackout curtains. There is still slight ambient light in the room. The other 40% would be when I am watching in a pitch black room minus the small amount LEDs in my computer. As for not being a "smart tv" I don't think that is an issue cause everything I could do on the TV I can do off my PC without having to deal with the laggy smart apps. However, in terms of what I watch is as follows. Anime being 70% of what will mainly be played on this TV followed by twitch streams @ 15% followed by movies at 10% and TV @ 5%. My main concern is twitch streams. A lot of streamers have overlays and logos that don't ever move from their place. Honestly I probably don't actually see myself watching a streamer for more than an hour but the question is will this cause burn-in issues. Also can this TV still be purchased anywhere and how does this TV fair in PQ compared to the 7150?

Well, those blacks you mention as being underwhelming on the 7150 are freeging awesome on the H5000. It's as simple as that. With good blacks come good color reproduction and image depth. Good things, IMO. The 7150 is NO slouch as far as LCDs are concerned though and it's a solid product. During the day or in a brightly lit room the 7150 would probably be a better overall performer but in any kind of evening or darker environment the H5000 will walk all over the 7150 or just about any other LCD out there.

Motion handling is great on the H5000 as well. Yeah, I own one and love it so maybe my opinions are jaded but I tried 3-4 different LCDs, even some 4K top end ones and returned them all for many of the same reasons. Viewing angles aren't that great on LCDs either which is an issue for us.

Burn in shouldn't be a concern for modern plasmas unless the circumstances of usage are heavy, heavy gaming or stock ticker deployment, lol. I've owned several and never had a problem myself.

That's my 3 cents.

Now the only problem is actually finding this TV. I swear I picked the wrong time to want to buy a TV. I missed the prime time to buy the last few Plasma TVs and other 7150's are being discontinued at every local best buy. Had to call 6 Best Buys in my area to find the 65" 7150 and they only had two left.

I bought a 7150 cause I could not find a h5000. Totally noticeable light leaks. Ugh.

Tell me about it. As soon as a dark scene comes up it is hard for me not to notice the not!blacks and just see dark gray or light leaking through.

My mother's 51" F5300 (almost the same TV) got IR after a couple months just from watching the same channel all the time. Mix up your content.

Yep - I got lucky as many others did that I was able to find an H5000 at all. Sears totally saved the day for me. Best purchase Ive made in a while. The 7150 is a decent set but they'll be hard to find too. Its all 4K - 4Shmay now.

Ahhh yes - my LEAST favorite LCD artifact and the one that rears its ugly head on ANY edge lit set which means almost all of them. So irritating and bothersome. Makes the set hard to watch in a dark environment which is for movies. Thats a big part of my viewing time so it just doesnt work for me. Even during standard evening viewing, if a show has any dark scenes they just look awful on these LCDs.

I blame edge lighting which is the most useless technology ever. What a terrible way to "light" a giant LCD panel. Its like - did they need illumination engineers to really figure out that this was a bad idea? C'mon guys....????

I hope you guys can find something you can be happy with.

Well lucky me I guess, my HHGreg about 30 minutes from me had some 5300's. Sadly he did not inform me that one was Open box and the other was a display. I really, really wanted to pick one up today but I decided it would be better off to just have them ship a new one directly from the warehouse. The Open Box was a B Model so hopefully the rest of the ones at the warehouse will be model B as well. Looking at the TV straight up, yes it was obviously not as bright as the surrounding TVs but it wasn't bad at all. The pentile display didn't really bother me at all. I can't see it past maybe 4 ~ 5 feet. I will be watching from about 7 ~ 8 feet away. Can't wait till Thursday to do a comparison between the 7150 and 5300. If everything goes right then I should be returning the 7150 and saving myself almost $700

Thats the beauty of the H5000 - its CHEAPER(by a lot) than many of the TVs that it severly outperforms. I returned TWO different $2500 4K LCDs which lost badly to this $1200 TV. More often than not in life, we have to pay more to get more. Not so with this TV. Just adds to the giddy feeling it gives me.

Hello all - new to the forum but have read most of this thread. I'm looking to get this h5000 but can't find any anywhere. Does anyone have a source that doesn't pull up on a google search by chance?

If not - what would be the next best option in this price range?

I currently have a ST60 50" that I love. I really had to go to a LCD...

***hate to buy a LCD...

All plasmas are pretty much non-existent at retailers now. Your best bet for a new H5000 is going to be Fry's or Sears. I posted a link several days ago to possibly the last one NIB at a Sears in Oklahoma but it has since been bought. Maybe your local Best Buy might have some F5300s remaining. If you are willing to buy used, there are more options for you.

Last month the local RC Willey had some PN60F5300s but they're gone now. I told my friends at the time but no one was interested. Then last week one friend asked if there were any more plasmas and all I could do was say get online, search and pray. I almost waited too long myself but pounced on an H5000 in January, good thing I did. And the rest of us here!

Thanks for the info. Best Buy doesn't seem to be able to get any either. There is a shady looking website that claims to have one, but I'm hesitant to try it. I guess I will and hope.

Is the 5300 comparable to the h5000?

If I do end up having to go LED, what do you think would be the best bet? Samsung 7150?

If the website is shady looking then leave it alone. They could very well keep your money and deliver nothing or defective merchandise and it may be difficult for you to get in touch with them for a replacement or a refund.

Sorry, but this being a Plasma enthusiast forum you're not going to get anyone (including myself) to give advice on the best LCD TV. There really isn't any. 4K, 8K, 12K, Super Duper HDR LCD's (sarcasm) will still be LCD's with the same issues that are inherent with LCD's. If LCD is your only choice then go for the Sammy 7150.

I understand that for sure - as I am a plasma enthusiast myself. Thanks again for the info.

I will just keep an eye out for a used/refurbished h5000 I think...

Amen, brother Dan. Believe me, I tried very hard to make a 4K LCD work along with a 1080p LCD. 3 different sets from top mfgers(Sammy, Sony, Sharp). All three had various strengthts and features. However, EVERY one of them had many of the usual LCD problems:

1) Edge light bleed & flash-lighting annoyances
2) Uniformity issues on darker screens
3) Motion handling concerns
4) Bad viewing angles(the Sony was actually great here but had lousy blacks due to the IPS panel)
5) Weak blacks(The 4K Sammy was the best though)
6) Obnoxious smart features that caused slow "boot ups" and just made the TV feel like a computer more than a TV sometimes. Bleh.

And - to make matters worse, they were ALL pricier by a large margin than my H5000. And the H5000 destroys them in basically every PQ category except for bright daytime viewing. Even so, the H5000 still "works" in bright rooms it just doesnt look as good as when viwed under "normal" or "dark" lighting.

And thats that!

Agreed! It's very unusual (especially when it comes to electronics) that something with significantly better quality (Plasma) would actually be far lower in overall cost. Comparing an LCD and Plasma, feature for feature, the cost can be almost twice the price on the LCD when it's far less than half the quality of the Plasma. An LCD matched against the $1299 H5000 would've easily been close $2000....and for what???

Just got my TV setup and 10 seconds into watching I am in love with this TV. NO MORE BACKLIGHT BLEED, NO MORE CLOUDING, BLACK ARE BLACK. Is there anything I need to test to see if my panel has any issues or not?

Also I know I posted this question in the slider burn in thread or whatever but I don't have a DVD player and my PC doesn't have it's Blu-Ray player connected at the moment. Is there just a plain video file I can run in media player classic?


edit-
As far as I can tell I do have a little bit of that magenta tint. Isn't bad really but still there. This is basically what it looks like. http://i.imgur.com/GHvSccS.jpg

Also I'm guessing it is auto brightening/contrasting white in some scenes and makes it look gray.

That's the first H5000 I've heard about with the pink tint issue. That's normally associated with the 60F5300.

If you want to do the slides to wear the phosphors evenly before a calibration, that's normally done with a USB flash drive and the slideshow function on the TV.

Oh sorry. Yes this is a 5300. I was initially posting in this thread cause I was interested in the h5000 but only can find the f5300. The other 5300 thread looks kind of dead...

Edit-
Apparently turning off black optimizer got rid of my pink tint. Thought I was seeing things so I put it back on dark room and now it is 90% gone.... But for some reason for example if I have a white screen in my my browser and fullscreen it, you can see the pink a little yet when I don't have it fullscreened and move the white picture to the corner where the pink it is at it isn't there. Not really sure what is happening.

Not possible. I have the 60F5300 as well.

Well it did seem to help a bit. But I have a new question that I just realized. 95% of the content I am and will be watching on my 5300 has subtitles. Not like what you see on normal TVs with the black bars with text in the middle but instead just white text. At most the same subtitle is on screen for maybe 3 seconds however the subtitle text generally in the same location towards the bottom middle of the screen. Is this going to cause any issues in the long run?

An example-

Possibly over time. I would wait until you get some decent amount of hours on the set and run pixel shift when using CC. I ran direct TV subtitles for years on our old plasma with transparent background and yellow text and you can see 2 darker areas on the set but they do not get in the way of normal viewing. CC on the other had seems to move the CC around. IE top of the screen to bottom of screen.

For what? Well for flicker of course. Isn't that a feature?
#sarcasm

So are you saying just go ahead and continue watching with subtitles and then after awhile start using pixel shift?

If the percentage is realistically 95% - you are basically saying all of your viewing has subtitles - and those subtitles are in the same general area on the screen, then I can say with a high degree of certainty that you will, at some point, get burn-in.

The newer plasmas are less susceptible to it and, depending on how much and often you watch TV, it may not show up next week or next month or next year. But at some point it will and if all your subtitles look like the image you posted, the burn-in will likely appear as a faint white blob.

iGrease, as aerodynamics mentioned you will eventually get burn in over time if that subtitle is always in the same area and your viewing is with it on 95% of the time. I would at least wait to run any static imagery until after the set has quite alot of hours on it and even then if you use subtitles or cc 95% of the time it will eventually cause problems. Just one of the downsides of plasma.

It would be helpful to try the 16:9 mode with the pixel shift feature enabled, and run a pixel flipper like the one on the Disney WOW disc every so often.