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352 of 355 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent LCD (better than my former plasma), October 9, 2007
I've had my LN-T4671F for a couple of weeks now, and I'm very happy with it. I previously owned a Samsung plasma (4254), and this is definitely a better TV.
There are numerous good things about this television, including dark blacks, low noise (no noise except what is coming through the source), high-quality panel (low incidence of panel defects seen in earlier LCD televisions), wide range of adjustments available, beautiful picture quality (on par with the best LCDs available), and a very good price for all of this quality (as of Oct 2007 market).
There is only one known issue (as of Oct 2007): The TV needs to be set to Game Mode to watch football or soccer. This is a simple On/Off setting in the Setup menu. If the TV is not in Game Mode then football passes or long kicks often (about 50% of the time) exhibit a triple-ball effect. It looks something like this: (o). As it moves on screen, the image of the ball shows a repeated image of it's front (nose) and rear (tail) on either side of it. Most folks will see this triple image, some might just see it as an exaggerated blur (but the triple image is clearly visible when the playback is paused). This should be fixable by a firmware update, and turning on Game Mode fixes it as well, so it's not a big deal. Game Mode does limit the available picture adjustments, but in practice I can get the picture in Game Mode very close to what I get with the full range of adjustments. (The only thing is that Game Mode turns on some image sharpening that is ok with sports, but is not great with cartoons. So, I use Game Mode when watching football and turn it off for regular viewing. A lot of folks find that watching full time in Game Mode is very pleasing. It's a matter of preference).
Recommendations for new owners:
1. Give it about 100 hours before the picture settles in. The backlight is a bit bright in the first 100 hours, so I found myself slowly adjusting it up during burn-in.
2. For basic adjustment try Movie with Standard color, Gamma -1, and color on Auto. After 100 hours, backlight can be turned up to 7 or 8 (unless you watch in a pitch black room), and for TV watching Brightness can be 45-50 and Contrast 70-80. On this TV, brightness sets the black level and contrast sets the white level. Turn the brightness up so that the actual black parts of the picture remain pitch black (ESPN HD SportsCenter is a good source for this. You should see detail in the dark suit jackets, but the shadowed areas on the set should remain rich black). Then adjust the Contrast just to the point that pure white objects (like lights or reflections off of football helmets) are white. You can tweak the contrast up from this point to give the image some snap, but don't go too high (the image can look harsh or washed out).
3. Turn off all of the image processing (DNIe, Edge Enhancement, etc.). The picture will look more natural (give it a couple of days if you're used to these things on). These things distort the picture slightly to make it look exciting, but the there is noise and other false information added to the image. Turning these things off lets the source be displayed undistorted, so a good source will look terrific.
4. For image size, use Just Scan. This passes the input directly to the screen without any processing to scale the image, resulting in a bit more crispness and clarity. However, some TV signals have a bit of noise at the very edge of the screen. In that case, set the TV to 16:9 and it will slightly crop the edges of the incoming image (this slight cropping, or overscan, is common on a lot of TVs and some broadcasters get lazy and just assume that the very edge of their picture (2-3%) will be cut off).
5. Play around with the Auto Motion Plus feature, but don't expect it to be great for everything. I've tried it on a lot of sources, and generally I leave it off. It can actually make things look too smooth. It's doing its job as advertised, but the result can look odd.
6. Consider a Harmony 880 programmable remote. I got one after buying the 4671, and it is terrific at automating the changing of inputs as you switch from TV to DVD to Video Game, etc.
7. The Apple TV looks amazing with this TV. It was an unexpected surprise to that see that the Apple TV can upscale to 1080p/60Hz and that the results are on par with my Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player when it upscales DVD content. I'm very happy that my Apple TV can remain a high-quality source.
8. Standard definition television looks pretty good with this TV, much better than on other LCDs that I've seen (but of course it's still obviously standard definition).
9. The 4671 clearly reveals variable quality among HD sources. When watching HD television channels, some are obviously more compressed, using poorer-quality cameras, and otherwise not as well produced as others. ESPN HD and Discovery HD Theatre generally look excellent, although on HD Theatre you can definitely see the differences in production quality between the various shows.
10. Finally, consider getting an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player that outputs 1080/24Hz content. Movies are shot at 24 frames per second, and the 4671 can accept a 1080/24 signal. This provides the purest movie-watching experience without interpolation of frame rates.
Happy viewing.
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120 of 124 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wish I had bought this one..., September 6, 2007
I researched the 81 and 71 series for as long as they had been announced (~ 6 months, since CES show). I got all hopped up about the "100k" contrast ratio on the 81 series due completely to the new "LED" backlighting. Well, at AVS forums, one guy bought both, and concluded that it only mattered when the screen was totally black (like the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen when watching a wide screen formatted movie, or a fade scene), and then only a little. The general conclusion seemed to point to the 71 series being the sleeper hit so far this year (dunno about the xbr5, but some reports put this one right with it), and that the 81 series wasn't worth the extra grand or more.
Too late for me, because I rushed into BB to pay up front for an 81 series tv as soon as the store had the sku in their system (4 weeks before they even showed up). Yeah, I got to use a 12% off good customer coupon, but in the end I could have had a 52" 71 series instead of a 46" 81 series (especially seeing how heavily discounted they are now on Amazon). The anti-motion options in the 81 are only available in "movie" mode, and are buried in the menus, and only has an on/off option, versus the 71's easy to navigate 3 level options for the anti-motion feature.
The reviews point to the colors and picture appearing just about the same between the 2 tv's when the screen or a large portion of it wasn't all black. Other than that....get this one. It is worth the premium over the 61 or 65 series. As long as you can live with a glossy / semi-glossy screen (versus the xbr4/5's matte screens), you won't be sorry. As for me, I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet and be one of those turkeys who uses the 30 day guarantee to return the TV and get a 71 series...it is a lot of money not to be totally satisfied with the purchase. Best of luck.
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180 of 194 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beware of "18 month no interest promotion", November 18, 2007
Product is great; the best picture I've seen.
This post is to make customers aware of an issue with the "18 month no interest promotion" for this item.
PROBLEM:
1. Banner says buy this item with the Amazon store card and receive no interst for 18 months.
2. Cost of the TV is $2299.
3. Fine print states that the offer will "be terminated if...you exceed your credit limit".
4. Credit limit on the card when you apply is $2000
RESULT: 18 month offer is terminated the minute you place your order for the TV because the purchase price exceeds the credit limit.
I called the toll free number and both the rep and his supervisor confirmed that this was the case. To make matters worse, their policy is that you cannot request a credit limit increase in the first 6 months.
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