Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome Picture., September 19, 2008
I teach film and wanted something that would enhance my viewing experience without overwhelming my medium sized, 14 wide by 20 living area. This TV is perfect and the sound, unlike some of the smaller Samsungs, is very good. While not the theatrical surround sound experience, the down facing speakers work well and produce realistic tones whether you are listening to voice or music. They also allow for a clean appearance which is further enhanced by the touch of red screen. If you are not the techie type and cringe at hooking up one more wire or don't want to lay out another $500 on sound, you should be quite happy with this set just the way it is.
My couch is about 12 feet from the screen, while the arm chairs go as close as 6. I find this distance just about perfect for watching the 50 inch screen. I've even had a few friends comment that they almost felt dizzy watching large, fast moving, objects on the screen. If you are wondering how big to go, I personally don't think paying $$$ for an inch or two more will make a difference unless you have a very large room and want to bump up to 60 or 65". The kids should be adequately wowed by their video games on this one. I also like the set of video connectors on the side of the TV which allow you to connect cameras and other devices without having to get to the back of the set.
My TV arrived fully assembled in the box. No struggling to get the base on. Amazon offered free white glove delivery and the gentleman placed the TV on my stand without so much as leaving a finger print on the frame or screen. Since the TV is quite heavy this was good to have. He also told me about adding a "line filter" to remove sine waves from the AC as he said some clients encountered small squiggly lines on their screen. Luckily the power center I bought already had digital filters on all the lines.
BTW that power center is the Belkin PureAV F9A1033fc10 from Amazon. I also purchased a SONY HDMI cable which you need to connect your DVD player and sometimes the Cable TV to your TV. HDMI is a much higher standard of connector and DOES make a huge difference in quality over traditional RCA connectors. Most local dealers carry MONSTER brand cables. I have found them to be no better or worse than the high quality devices provided by the above vendors. The only thing MONSTER about them is the price!!
I should add that CEVA was the company that delivered the TV and sent a very polite and knowledgable man to do it. He even disposed of the box and all of the packing for me. I'd never heard of the company before but I was able to communicate with them about the details of delivery by speaking directly to a rep at their local New Orleans area warehouse. Hurricane Gustav was in the Gulf at that time so a timely delivery was important to me. I would recommend this company to others.
I've had the set for two months and use it with a new Sony s350 Blu-ray player. The only problem I've had so far is not wanting to leave home!! Great product.
UPDATE: It has been a year since this TV was delivered and I still LOVE it. No complaints. People often worry about plasmas burning in images on the screen. I haven't had that issue and my Wii game system is designed to comphensate for that when a program is left running and unattended. I would imagine most systems are. I am thinking of getting a small Samsung for my bedroom.
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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic for 2 months solid, November 24, 2008
I'd like to give this 4.5 stars...I can't give 5, and 4 is too low, but amazon only limits this to whole stars, so 4 it is.
Got this item at a steal of a price from a local retailer who was desperate for business. That aside, I had done plenty of research prior to purchasing and after a week, I can say I have no "buyer's remorse" for jumping on a TV at a great price. We've been looking to upgrade our old 27" zenith tube and the choice has been between this set and the 50" Panasonic PZ85U. Finally getting the opportunity to see these side by side in the store was where I made my final decision. I thought the Samsung looked a little more natural than the Panasonic as I come from a photography background. The Panasonic just looks a little too warm for my taste next to this set. Now...I'm sure neither one of the sets were calibrated at the store, and honestly, I don't think anyone can go wrong with either of these TVs...both produce an exceptional picture, but I liked the A650 over the PZ85U. To boot, the final price on the 650 was 50$ cheaper than what the salesman would give me the 85U for, so we got the Samsung.
Now that I have it home, here are some impressions...
Video - The digital tuner built into the set means you don't need a fancy box to receive over the air broadcasts after Feb. 2009. Oh yeah...the hi-def broadcasts out now over the air look fantastic on this set. One thing I have not yet had the chance to test is a separate HD video source since I don't have an HD dvd or Blu-Ray player, but I can say that the 480i my current DVD player puts out is pretty awesome looking on this TV as well. We fired up Ratatouille over the weekend...conveniently, the DVD comes with a set of test-patterns you can adjust the contrast, brightness, sharpness, and color with so I did the best I could prior to hitting play. All I can say is wow...the shadow detail was fantastic compared to my old tube and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie. I used the same settings to watch Sunday night football last night, and I tell you what, I don't know how I'm going to be able to watch standard definition sports anymore. No motion blur at all with this set, crystal clear and sharp pictures...the only distracting thing is that now I can tell when the cameras that are recording the action on the field are having problems focusing accurately. You literally see every detail with this TV set-up correctly.
Audio - This is the only area where I "ding" this set. Now...for most folks out there, this is going to be part of a Home Theater or entertainment system, so they will have a separate audio source, but for me, this TV is all I have (for now). The audio is by no means bad...it is just not as crisp and clear as I would have expected. The audio is a little muffled and maybe after some more tweaking of settings, it will get better, but if I had an entertainment center, I would certainly buy a separate speaker for the center channel and turn the one from the TV off.
Looks / Usability - Wow...this set looks great in the basement. The "Touch of Color" design is sleek, and it will look fantastic once it's mounted on the wall. The touch-pad power / channel / volume / menu are a sleek 21st century feature and give it a hint of class. The remote and settings you can access is very well laid out and intuitive. There is almost nothing you can't tweak. Samsung even gives you the ability to tweak the white balance over the RGB color scale without having to access a special menu through a remote sequence (basically these levels control how your TV is set-up to interpret colors from the video source). A nice feature that I don't recommend messing with unless you know what you're doing...being a part time photographer on the weekends, this is a welcome feature to get the absolute best color out of my TV.
The number of inputs on the back and side is more than ample...I don't ever know that I'll have 4 HDMI sources to input, but it's nice to know I can. There are 3 component video inputs as well, so unless you have like 5 gaming systems and 3 DVD players, you should be fine with the number of inputs.
Overall, I'm very happy with this TV, and would have no hesitation recommending it to anyone. If they made a 46" version, my neighbor would buy one too as his space does not allow a 50" set and he wants to maximize his screen. He's going to go with the Panasonic 85U, but after seeing my Samsung A650, he might be re-locating his space to be able to step up to a 50" TV.
UPDATE 3 DEC 2008:
A word of caution. If you are going to watch this TV even though Samsung claims there is no break in period for issues like image retention and burn in, you need to break in the phosphors on this TV. Avoid gaming or anything that has a static logo on the screen for an extended period of time in order to uniformly age the phosphors that make up the plasma picture for at least 100 hours. Keep the contrast and brightness dialed back to 50-60% during this break in period.
We recently noticed some Image Retention after watching 4:3 format picture from the cable box for 4 hours one afternoon. I popped in a DVD for my son and noticed that the edges where the black bars were from the 4:3 format picture were brighter than the center of the screen. You could also see a vertical line on the left and right of the screen separating the regions. However, this is correctable. A few hours of the scrolling white bars across the TV removed the retention issue and the picture is once again uniform.
UPDATE 6 JAN 2009:
Well, after hooking up the Blu-Ray player and firing up Kung-Fu Panda which we got for Christmas on Blu-Ray, all I can say is that this TV has an amazing picture. Shadow and bright scene detail was spot on...No black crush or white clipping. Motion blur? - Nope...not once in any of the martial arts sequences that I could see. This plasma performed exactly as expected...perfectly. I got an HDMI cable though monoprice.com, and if there's a quality issue, I have no idea where it might be. There is no reason to spend mega $$$ on Monster cables. Keep in mind that the out of the box settings for Brightness and Contrast need to be adjusted so you can see all the nuances in the shadows and bright scenes.
Oh yeah...the playoff football over the air in HD...amazing. I don't know how I kept my old set for as long as I did. The picture is so clear you can literally see when the cameras are having small focus issues with the action on the field. No, this is not image blur, it's a focusing issue. When everything is in focus, the picture and action is fantastic. I can't wait for the superbowl party and March Madness in the upcoming months. This set was worth every penny.
The only issue is audio...again, it's not bad, but it's clearly not up to par with the video this set puts out. When I get a receiver and speakers, I will not be using the TV as the center channel...I will buy a separate center speaker. However, for the time being the audio is acceptable for what I'm doing.
Ultimately about 2 months after my purchase, I could not be happier with this TV. It does get a little warm when it's on for 12 hours a day between the Wii, movies, and Football, but the picture has been stellar since day 1 and I have noticed -0- pixel fading, burn in, or Image retention since I took action to prevent it.
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great display, amazing value, July 17, 2008
I have had my PN50a650 for a almost 2 weeks now, and have been very impressed. Colors can be calibrated to be almost perfectly accurate, and black levels are great as well. There are not many professional reviews of the 650 series out yet, but the reviews of the 550 series have been extremely positive:
http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/samsung-pn50a550/4505-6482_7-32887581.html?tag=prod.txt.1
http://www.hometheatermag.com/plasmadisplays/808samup/
http://www.guidetohometheater.com/flatpaneldisplays/708sampn50/index4.html
The 650 series adds an additional HDMI connection, a more advanced version of Samsung's DNIe picture quality enhancement engine, a better glare-reducing screen filter, and the Touch of Color bezel that shows a hint of dark red from some angles. There are a number of display setting recommendations in the reviews noted above and on www.avsforum.com message boards that provide a good starting point for a great picture, but professional calibration or use of a calibration DVD/Blu-Ray disk such as Digital Video Essentials can really dial in a reference-quality image.
Overall, I highly recommend this set. I have had no issues with it, and Blu-Ray images in particular amazingly clean and vibrant. This set is a great value.
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