Randy,
I've seen the Samsung on several signals - DVD, Cable, Sat. However, given your comments about what you are looking for I can't see how my impression of the Samsung will help you. I can't tell what your threshold is; My "dreadful" may be your "acceptable." So you've got to see one for yourself.
I felt the Samsung looked pretty good on cable/sat signals. In fact I was quite amazed how acceptable the picture was (even more than some other more expensive plasmas).
However, for HDTV and DVDs the Samsung was, to me, unacceptable in the set-up I saw. I watched Batman (among others) and the dark setting of that film brought out lots of blotchiness in the dark areas (i.e. the dark areas where not black, but were a swirling moss of dingy colors). And the image displayed lots of artifacting in motion - a blockiness and breaking up of the image outlines. It also displayed some pretty awful false contouring.
For instance, on a scene in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where the bright light of the spaceships were set against the black night sky, the glow of the spaceships wasn't smoothly graduated. Instead the glow ignited a monochrome rainbow effect around the ships - with the light trailing off in distinct bands. It totally ruined the look of that movie for me.
My thoughts were that the Samsung looked like a previous generation plasma, with all the faults, compared to the newer generation.
If I'm going to put out a bunch of cash for a plasma screen, I'd hope for a better viewing experience. With the price of the Panasonic/NEC jplasmas being so low, I can't see the logic in your considering this screen. But hey, it ain't my dough.
Best of luck,
Rich H.
I've seen the Samsung on several signals - DVD, Cable, Sat. However, given your comments about what you are looking for I can't see how my impression of the Samsung will help you. I can't tell what your threshold is; My "dreadful" may be your "acceptable." So you've got to see one for yourself.
I felt the Samsung looked pretty good on cable/sat signals. In fact I was quite amazed how acceptable the picture was (even more than some other more expensive plasmas).
However, for HDTV and DVDs the Samsung was, to me, unacceptable in the set-up I saw. I watched Batman (among others) and the dark setting of that film brought out lots of blotchiness in the dark areas (i.e. the dark areas where not black, but were a swirling moss of dingy colors). And the image displayed lots of artifacting in motion - a blockiness and breaking up of the image outlines. It also displayed some pretty awful false contouring.
For instance, on a scene in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where the bright light of the spaceships were set against the black night sky, the glow of the spaceships wasn't smoothly graduated. Instead the glow ignited a monochrome rainbow effect around the ships - with the light trailing off in distinct bands. It totally ruined the look of that movie for me.
My thoughts were that the Samsung looked like a previous generation plasma, with all the faults, compared to the newer generation.
If I'm going to put out a bunch of cash for a plasma screen, I'd hope for a better viewing experience. With the price of the Panasonic/NEC jplasmas being so low, I can't see the logic in your considering this screen. But hey, it ain't my dough.
Best of luck,
Rich H.
