Customer Reviews

Samsung LN46C650 46-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV (Black)

5 star:		(117)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Purchased the LN46C650 model 3 weeks ago ($1167 thru Amazon) and absolutely love it. I was not sure how much added value the internet TV would provide, but after having it for a few weeks I am very glad I went with this model over the non-internet models. I haven't tested every feature yet, so this review is based on taking the usual features for a spin.

Delivery: White-glove service was fantastic (on-time, no damage), but then again it would be pretty hard to mess up walking the set 15 feet inside the doorway. Nonetheless, they did great.

PROS:
- Pandora rocks. This is by far my favorite internet feature to stream music through the TV. I don't have a big stereo system and FM reception is spotty, so this really was a welcome feature.
- The sound is just fine. I know some say the Samsung sound isn't up to Sony, and that may be true, but how often are you blasting the volume past, say, 20? The room we have it set up in is relatively small (15x20), so it suits us just fine.
- YouTube, Vudo, Yahoo, Associated Press, Weather, and Flickr feeds are pretty cool. You can download movies from Netflix and Blockbuster, but i'm not sure this is any better (cheaper) than most cable services. I guess if you don't have cable this would be great.
- I have AT&T U-Verse, and the SD picture is great when tuned to non-HD channels. The HD is amazing.
- The Automotion is great, but only for sports in my opinion. We turn it off for regular programming as with HD and Automotion on, the scenes look a little on the cheap side (maybe too real??). It is like you are in the room, which i don't like. This is probably just a personal preference thing.
- The TV itself looks amazing and the lack of the red-touch-of-color I think is a good thing.
- Controls to tweak the picture seem more than adequate to suit anyone's preferences, though I'm not a A/V guru.
- AllShare feature lets you access music, photos and videos contained on networked computers through your TV (after downloading/installing samsung software on your PC). This worked flawlessly and setup was intuitive.
- Plug-N-Play media contained on a thumb drive works great too.

CONS: I can't think of any major ones, but I'll list a few initial thoughts...
- AnyNet+ seems before its time (you have to have all Samsung devices to use as far as I can tell)

That's about all I have. If anyone has any questions, I will try to answer. All in all, I have to give this TV a 5. The potential uses for the internet connectivity seems huge.

UPDATE: 4 months in and we still love this TV. No problems whatsoever. There are some new Samsung Apps i thought I'd mention...
- Google Maps App, can get live traffic just like the web version. Hard to get any accident data though.
- Other new apps (but haven't tried): Napster, Hulu Plus, Facebook, CinemaNow?, DailyMotion?

I've only had the TV for a few hours, but I have only good things to say at this point. The image quality is awesome, the box was pristine, and setting it up was really easy. The delivery guy even helped me get it mounted to the stand, which I don't think he had to do. I like the menu system--it looks cool and is intuitive and well organized.

There are a few things I was concerned about after reading reviews of other Samsung LCD TV's, but I haven't found any of them to be an issue:

- The remote is not finicky. You can point it in any direction, even backwards, and it works perfectly.
- While you would not mistake the sound from the TV as coming from a good stereo, I'm very happy with it. I've only turned it up to about 15 out of 100, and even that seems loud in a quiet house. If it scales linearly, I can't imagine ever needing to turn it up all the way.
- Some people complained about a system Samsung uses to dynamically adjust the backlight to get deeper blacks, and that this system is really annoying. This TV either doesn't use it, or it's not annoying, or maybe I just don't know what I'm supposed to be ticked off about :)
- One guy got the wrong stand for his TV. I think he might just be incompetant. I admit when I looked at the TV and the stand, I wasn't sure how they went together at first. When I found the bracket for connecting the two (with good, albeit unnecessary instructions), it became obvious.
- I'm not a big fan of the touch of color business, but most of the time you can't even see it.

The picture quality is so beautiful I've even found myself watching (some) pre-recorded commercials, admiring nature shots and cars with sleek lines. The new interest in commercials will presumably wane with time. :)

If I discover any problems, I'll come back and update.

UPDATE (5 months): I still love the TV, and as predicted, I've gone back to skipping commercials. With regard to the remote sensitivity, I believe the sensor on the TV is in the lower right. At one point we had the Wii sitting there, partially blocking that corner, and it seemed that the remote connection became more finicky. (The solution, obviously, is to keep that area of the TV stand clear.)

If you have a laptop, the internet connectivity may not be worth it; check the price of the LN46C630 instead, which is basically the same minus the net connection. Occasionally it's useful, but trying to type with the remote is clumsy, not all YouTube videos work (this is a licensing issue, not the TV's fault), and I can't open my Picasa account, despite going through the procedure to register my account. Since connecting a computer is really easy, I very quickly lose patience with the built-in system. I should try Pandora; I noticed another reviewer liked that. I still love the TV, because it's good at being a TV, and I don't need it to double as a computer when there are four in the house.

Regarding Auto Motion Plus: At first, I just noticed that everything looked kind of weird and smooth--the best description I have is that everything looked like a soap opera. Ultimately, I decided I hated it and turned it off. As I understand it, it's a way of interpolating frames when the input is slower than 120Hz. It seems like a good idea, I just couldn't get used to it. If I could bring myself to watch a soap opera, I'd be curious to see how much soapier it can get with Auto Motion Plus.

Also, do yourself a favor: buy a ~$5 HDMI cable online, rather than getting suckered into the $50-100 cables that do the EXACT SAME THING. Keep your cables short and use as few connections as possible, and you'll be just fine.

I've been using the TV for only a few days now, but it really is a great set. The picture is amazing and the black reproduction is really good. Internet widgets are extremely easy to use and were truely plug & play; no additional set up required. This set does include netflix and pandora, even though it is not listed above. One thing to note if you are purchasing this set is that the DVI audio input and audio output connectors are stero headphone connectors, not RCA red/white ones that are usually present. This led to some scrambling to find an appropriate converter when I was setting the TV up! Also, the screen is of the glossy variety. I personally am not too bothered by it, but when the screen is dark and the room is light, you can see reflections of the wall behind you. Again, not that big of a deal for me!

I have been actively searching for an lcd tv for 6years. Every newspaper circular etc.
I have a crt tv that worked fine and I really enjoyed seeing the prices on lcds drop and drop and drop. I finally upgraded with this beauty
This type of tv would have cost like $5000 a few years back, only difference is the advanced specs like 120hz,150,000:1 and 1080p did not exist back then.
I have almost pulled the trigger on a few, like sharp or panasonic but then as I became more educated by reading specs over years on the hi-def LCD, I realized Samsung was the leader in the game.
I paid $989 for this amazing product here, PC rich and Best Buy still charge $1185.

Pc Rich guys are really losers when it comes to negotiating a deal. They act like you need them...WRONG. I've got Amazon!! On time delivery,set up (tip the guy $10 it's a decent thing to do)
Amazon gives 30days free pickup warranty other stores only 21days.
To me nothing feels better than a sweet deal. Thanks Amazon.

PS. TV picture is very real and all features are outstanding, I love my TV.
I considered the LN6300 led but saw picture edge light problem reviews and that model is $400 more with no internet features.

Very Happy with MY LN46C650

Ordered through Amazon, and had white-glove delivery w/no problems. These guys give you a call, and can even setup a Saturday appointment.

Out of the box picture quality was too vivid for me. But the controls are extremely easy as is typical with all samsung tvs. In complete darkness, if the tv hasn't been playing for a while, you can notice some glows around the edges, but its typical of most lcd tvs. You can tweak to get the picture quality to exactly what you would like.

The main difference between this and the LN46C630 is the internet option in this one. You need an ethernet cable, no wireless built in. But you can apparently get a wireless dongle. The main thing, I use it for is Netflix streaming. It has yahoo widgets, but being someone who spends a lot of time with computers in/outside of work, I wasn't too impressed with the other options. I paid the extra hundred or so bucks to mostly be future proof, but you can skip it. And instead get a blu-ray player with internet options, which should give you exactly the same experience. And if you already planning to get a PS3 or waiting for the rumored nintendo HD wii, then you might as well get that instead of spending the money for the internet option on the tv.

The main disappointment with it, is that the sound quality isn't great. Specially, with my attached blu-ray player. I can't really tell any of the difference of HDTHS among other things that the blu-ray player is suppose to support. But if you are any serious about sound, you will invest some amount of money on a receiver anyways, so you can't reasonably expect a TV to support it.

If you are a bargain hunter, then your local Fry's (at least here in California) could have a better deal, but I really liked the convenience of in-home delivery and setting up on the swivel and stuff. Getting it from a local store does give you the option of exchanging it for a different one, if you dont like it or something. But I had pretty much setup my mind on this anyways.

I got this tv from Amazon in mid-March. It's my first HDTV after been wanting one for a long time. I did research on this tv and liked what I saw. I honestly thought I would buy a Sony but I'm glad I bought this one. This internet HDTV is so cool with internet apps like AP news, Yahoo, Twitter, Ebay, etc.

I use this tv with my TIVOHD and cablecards so the quality of the tv is almost out of this world. I also use my PS3 and WII with this tv. My family saw Avatar last Friday on blu ray. The quality of this blu ray is just astonishing. My six year old boy actually sat through the whole movie with us and he usually only likes cartoons.
I can use my wii and have my AP News scrolling along at the bottom of the screen. How cool is that? I contacted Samsung to find out when will Facebook be available and they said it is coming soon.

Playing games like Little Big Planet, Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin Creed 2 is a gamer's dream come true. Prefect size and YES I can have AP News scrolling at the bottom too while playing games.

The remote takes some getting used to but its perfect for this kind of tv. All the options for the tv is controlled by the remote including internet apps.

The shipping people from PILOT were great. They set it up and turned it on for me. It was a piece of cake setting up my PS3 and Wii with it.

I did a lot of research, and this model was one that kept coming up as a consumer favorite.

First, Amazon: although it said "out of stock", when the deal popped up to get the LAN stick for free, I couldn't resist. I just figured I'd have to wait forever. I even went ahead and priced the model locally in case I had to cancel the whole thing and start over. (I found it at Best Buy for $1097.)

Amazon's price for me was $891 with free shipping and a free LAN stick. It took about 2 weeks before I got the message that they had one in and it had shipped, despite the fact that the product page always showed "Temporarily out of stock", and I know . . . I checked every day.

The delivery service called me on Monday to arrange for delivery. Then they gave me a courtesy call 30 minutes before they arrived to let me know they were coming. Everything went smoothly, and he made a point of showing me the Customer service number in case I needed to arrange for a replacement, etc.

First impression: so . . . it took a little while for the thing to power up that first time. It hasn't been a problem since, but I kept wondering if I was missing something.

I've only owned the product for a few days, so I'll wait a few months and add a note, but so far, I love this TV!

The remote is a little clunky around the "cursor" keys (i.e. directional keys). A couple of times I went for the side key and ended up hitting something else, but that's very minor. I did turn off the auto-motion while watching movies, because it does give it that surreal "soap opera" effect, rather than the film effect, but everything works smoothly. The response time for the remote is quick.

Once or twice the widgets might stall (I was having connection problems, which I'll go into later), but pressing "exit" got me out of trouble. Even while I was playing with the Internet TV features, the regular TV program played in the PiP and I could still change channels.

I mounted this on the wall with a Cheetah Mount APTMM2B, which was pretty easy, and my only complaint there is that the TV is so slim and so close to the wall that I had to take it down again in order to attach the coaxial cable. The other plugs are a tight squeeze (RCA plugs from DVD player, etc.), but I can get them in and out without having to take the TV off the wall.

I'm really enjoying the Internet features. I've spent the last 2 days struggling with the LAN stick. There are problems there, and not tons of answers, mostly depending on your router, etc. It works great for some people; and doesn't work for others. I did not use Samsung support, but went through the CNET forums, where I tried everything, and have come to the conclusion that my router may just have been too far away from the TV.

Now with the connection issue fixed, I'm streamed a movie off of Netflix with only a few stops for it to "catch up" (it also has Blockbuster, Hulu, etc.) and I've got Pandora streaming now.

The widgets are nice, though a little limited. It's interesting that the button to access the widgets is literally labeled "Yahoo". I wonder how much Yahoo paid for that. There are informational widgets for weather, sports, news, and a few limited ones like Showtime, etc., but nothing jaw-dropping.

Back to the connection: I have spent a lot of time trying to make that work, playing with routing settings, TV settings, reading the forum, so that has been an issue. There are either some compatibility issues OR the LAN stick isn't quite powerful enough. I'm guessing if your router is strong enough or close enough, you won't have an issue. If not, get your glasses on and start hitting the forums.

So to recap: it's light, thin, beautiful color, good sound (I haven't plugged into external speakers yet), but for PC and internet connection there are some issues (even those people running cables to the TV were on the forum asking about the dreaded "Gateway Ping Failure"), but once you've got it working, it works well.

All it has to do is keep working and not suddenly conk out or go haywire and I'll keep this at 4 stars.

***UPDATE***
So, now I've owned this TV for about a month, and I really do love it.

Networking (LAN Stick): I finally bought a different router to see if it would make a difference and the answer is yes and no. I changed from a LinkSys to a D-Link. The connection speed is slightly faster with the D-link (not by much), but the setup is much much easier. Where I spent hours finagling with the Samsung settings to get it to recognize the Linksys router, the D-link set up so quick I almost wasn't sure what had happened. The Linksys would either not work or it would stop at the Gateway Ping. The D-link router had no problems.

Widgets: I've come to consider these a novelty and nothing more. I play with them every now and then, just because they are there, but I wouldn't base my purchase solely on these, and unless a lot more interesting widgets get added, I doubt the true value of them. Maybe if you're deep into sports, you can get scores. Facebook is there, as well as Flickr, but MySpace isn't, nor is Twitter. In the month since I've owned the TV, I don't think I've spotted any new widgets.

Internet TV: The three applications I've most enjoyed so far have been YouTube, Netflix and Pandora streaming radio. Netflix and Pandora both require a setup, meaning you have to go register on the internet and put a code into the TV at the prompt. Not much difficulty here, and once you've got it setup you don't have to worry about it anymore. I would like to see the ability to register a YouTube account though, since I have an account but haven't figured out a way to get "my" YouTube preferences setup on the TV.

Speakers / DVD: I set up my older DVD player through the components (RCA plugs, etc.) since my player doesn't have HDMI or anything fancy. I've had no problems and movies look and sound great. I plugged the TV into my receiver and there are times when the TV is louder and better sounding than my speakers.

TV Reception: Since I live in the country, I don't have cable or Satellite. Yes, I actually use an antenna. I'm using a Phillips HDTV antenna and since the DTV conversion I've had a lot of difficulties with reception. This is not a fault of the TV in anyway, but I thought I'd mention it since the TV seems to draw in more stations and at a higher quality than the DTV converter box ever did.

USB: I truly love being able to take content from my PC (or someone elses), slap it on a thumbnail drive, plug it in to the side of the TV and watch whatever I've loaded. This is a great feature. I should probably invest in a slingbox or some other utility, but this is working for me so far.

I gotta say, I'm still really liking this television and haven't had any difficulties with it yet.

Update (12/17/10):

Networking: No issues. Once setup, always setup. Moving the D-link router around got me a better connection.

Widgets: I hardly mess with them.

Sound / Picture / ease of use and remote: All excellent. There are only tiny details about the remote that I would change (like moving the Favorite channel key closer to the channel change key), but those might be a personal preference.

DLNA: I finally figured out how to stream media content (avi, mp3, jpg, etc.) through the router to the television.

(NOTE: some formats are not compatible, such as .mkv, but if you're dedicated there are free shareware programs that will convert mkv to avi and do a resonably good job.)

It took some doing, but it wasn't a Samsung issue; it was a Windows issue. I'd see folders show up, then not show up. I tried every sharing trick I could find, and again hit the CNET forums to figure out what I was doing wrong. The PC wasn't in sleep mode, so it wasn't that. I even downloaded the PCShare software that Samsung offers on their website (onto my PC).

Here's what finally worked: In Windows Control panel, under networking, I would see the network map, but not see the TV listed. I also didn't see "Play to" listed in the dropdowns on any of the folders, and in Windows Media Player the "Play to" feature was missing and the "Play to" icon was greyed out. In the network map, at the bottom I finally spotted a "device". The icon looked more like a phone, but when I clicked and installed it, suddenly my shared folders had the "Play to" feature again. I'm not sure if the device showed up because I downloaded PC Share (which I've sense deleted, since this version of Samsung TV didn't require it) or if it had always been there, but I hadn't noticed it. Note: the "Play to" icon on Windows Media Player never did ungrey, but right clicking a movie or song and chooseing "Play to" brought up the choice "HDTV".

I still had difficulty figuring out why some folders would show up in the Media Play on the TV and some wouldn't. Right clicking and choosing share on the folder in Windows didn't help. Right clicking and choosing properties, then choosing the Share tab and clicking the box for share was the first step. The next step was to right click on the folder and choose "Include in library". It seems like those two steps are necessary, though I couldn't tell you why.

Now everything is working the way it was intended.

Outside of that, once or twice when loading Netflix movies, the screen would go black and freeze. I had to unplug the TV and plug it back in. Once or twice when loading Netflix or media content the TV would go black and freeze then suddenly turn itself off and on. Those occasions have been rare, and for all the hours I've watched TV, DVDs and content streamed from both my PC and external sources (Netflix, YouTube, Pandora), it's been an excellent purchase.

Samsung could've provided better support (it sounds like) when their customers needed help connecting their TV to different routers, etc. But overall, any device your connecting to your PC wirelessly is going to have the same kinds of issues. That's more of a windows issue than Samsung's fault. In other words, I'm not sure how much of this problem is Samsung's failure to design a TV that works easily with most mainstream routers, and how much of it is the complexity of networking through routers and windows. There is enough blame to share evenly, I think.

If your choosing this TV for the networking features, be prepared to spend some time figuring it all out. Once done, however, you won't be sorry.

****UPDATE*** 9/20/11

Still no issues. I've noticed more widgets, including Twitter, Pandora, etc. but nothing amazing. Netflix, Pandora and other Internet apps still work fine, better since Netflix updated its interface to include search capability.

As for as the file sharing, it appears to work through Windows Media Player. I can share any folder, but unless I open Windows Media Player and let it "find" the content, it won't appear in the shared folders on the TV.

Once or twice the connection has been lost in mid-stream and I've had to re-establish the Network settings (enter the PIN of the router), but then it works fine.

The most troubling feature is that there is no good rewind/fast forward feature for shared media content. You can skip ahead and back by a few seconds, but no actual fast forward. (Internet content like Netflix fastforward fine.)

Another little troubling feature is that I often have to edit my internet applications. Some times I have to re-add them, because they've disappeared (usually after an update). Twice now I've gone and deleted the ESPN application, because it falls from the recommended apps down into my loaded apps.

These little troubles pale in comparison to everything the TV does.

The TV is everything I needed plus internet which hasnt been installed yet. Got a Belkin router to run internet movies on the TV. The router is fantastic but needed instruction from maker how to set up with cable internet. Also had to have cable come in (twice) to set up connection for the TV. Cable here makes every thing hard to do. Once everthing was set up the TV works perfactly. Also the delivery provided by Amazon was great. No problem but an optional small charge to put the stand on. It has to be balanced and not good for one person to do alone.
Only one problem and has notheing to do with the TV..
If you get the promo with Amazon Store Card be prepared to have GE charge every fee they can. The promo said 24 month NO INTEREST on payments. Wrong....GE still charged fee. Beware for back and forth resolution. Still not corrected yet. But the TV is everything it said it is.

There is no doubt that the Samsung LCD picture quality is excellent and I am very happy with the choice. The question I ask myself is should I have paid for the internet ready option, which was about an additional $150 (I don't remember exactly). Although I like the feature, if I want to input characters (numbers and letters) the method is through the number keys like on an old, non-smart phone, which is cumbersome to the point that I will never use it. Also, there are a number of add-on boxes that provide internet access for less money than having it built into the TV and which are more user friendly. It is, however, nice not to have another box to connect to my system. Overall, if I had to do it again, I wouldn't pay for the internet option.

Pros:

- Great picture, great upscaling of DVD's and SD channels.
- Swivels a bit, although it looks perfect at almost any angle.
- Plenty of jacks, easy to reach.
- Pandora works well. Had to restart the cable box to get it to connect, but its been smooth ever since.
- Sound quality is nice. I saw that most of the negative reviews of previous models stated that the speakers sucked. That problem seems to be fixed in this model.
- Xbox360 looks excellent, seems to have zero lag.

Cons:

- Turned off the 'TruMotion' effect immediately. It makes everything really smooth and completely unnatural. This shouldn't be on by default.
- Remote looks like it was made in the Eighties, but works just fine.
- Attracts dust like nothing I've ever seen. Not a bit deal though.


Overall, it is the nicest HD TV I've ever seen. Very happy.