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122 of 129 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great TV, bad quality control from Samsung, May 5, 2009
This review is from: Samsung LN46B750 46-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV with Charcoal Grey Touch of Color (Electronics)
Let me say that this TV is one of the best in the market for the price point. The pros are too many to list and so far has been a great choice as far as features and performance. I'm an early adapter for HDTV in 03 going from a Zenith C32V37 RP CRT (4:3); which unfortunately is getting replaced due to a humming power supply. The B750 can match the black levels of the RP CRT and has no clouding or flashlighting that I was seeing on the A750/A850 sets, which my wife and I almost decided to get. With Amazon's pricepoints coming very close to the discounted price of the previous generation Samsung sets it was a no brainer.
Now onto the Cons, I would have given this B750 5 stars if not for the crappy Samsung Quality Control. I received my TV out-of-the-box with a remote that had 5 dead/non-working buttons= mute, up arrow, play, red options button and "1". Also, after 2 days of setting up the TV and getting all our inputs connected using almost all of them (analog & digital); yes even both USB ports, the HDMI inputs 1-3 stopped working properly. Now, those inputs will only take the signal from the HDMI 4. EG: If I select HDMI 1-3 and have a source such as Bluray running on the HDMI 4 (side-port) it will display that source signal. Talk about disappointing QC. After a few calls to Amazon and Samsung; I will be getting a new remote and have Samsung's local service technician out to fix the HDMI input problem. I can't believe these QC issues out-of-the-box are occuring for such as middle-tier to higher end line of prodcut; very poor testing on Samsung's part.
Overall, I am very satisfied with the performance of the B750 but very disappointed with their QC process which can be greatly improved. In my 20-30+ years of owning electronic equipment I have never encountered these types of QC problems out-of-the box with any products.
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246 of 266 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great picture, but a few glaring issues made me decide to return it, July 27, 2009
This review is from: Samsung LN46B750 46-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV with Charcoal Grey Touch of Color (Electronics)
If you are seriously consider purchasing this tv, please read this review completely. This is a bit critical in nature, but I hope to provide a balanced review based on my experience with this unit. Depending on what you are looking for, this set may or may not work out well for you.
Just for background context, I mainly watch HD content hooked up via hdmi on my PS3. This includes bluray movies, hd content and some gaming. Regular tv and sd viewing were not as much of a concern to me. I own a 3 year old 26 inch sony lcd, and have also more recently owned a vizio 42 inch xvt, and samsung's latest 40 inch b550, which is the non 120 or 240hz model of their current lineup, and most recently the 50 inch Panasonic G10, which I purchased after returning this B750 that I am reviewing. I may refer to some of these in the review.
As you will read there are a few major issues I found that made me return. If you feel these wont be a problem for you, this model should work great for you. After all if you are going to pay a little under $1,700 for a tv, one should be completely satisfied with it.
Design
This tv looks beautiful, understated, elegant and simple. It has a very slight touch of gray at the bottom that you can barely notice, and it should complement pretty much any decor in your home. The unit is quite thin at around 3 inches, and I was able to lift and set up the tv myself. Cheaply made screws, almost as bad as ikea used to setup the stand were a bit of a pain to put in and remove when I decided to return the unit. After a correct assembly, the tv still sort of wobbles around and generally doesn't feel like it is solid on the stand, though it shouldn't pose any problems. I noticed the same thing on the Samsung B550 by the way. The swivel design works smoothly and easily, and though I didn't use it at all, I could see how it would come in handy.
Picture Quality and Viewing Experience
The picture quality in general on this unit is gorgeous. Nicely saturated colors and comfortably deep blacks for an lcd. I tested several blurays and they all looked excellent. You will definitely need to dial back the setting to get a more realistic picture, as much of the regular setting have over-cranked saturation, brightness and contrast to impress in stores like best buy. Overall, I can say even the most discerning movie goers and enthusiasts will find it hard to really put down the picture quality itself, though there are definitely better sets out there for the money. The picture was definitely an improvement over the cheaper Samsung B550, but wasn't drastically better. i think much of the sense of better picture over the b550 was the glossy screen and better motion processing. It supposedly has a better/newer panel (10-bit vs 8-bit) over the b550 and other cheaper model lcd's. I guess the difference between very good and very very good is a subtle one.
You are given a bevy of picture tweaking options to adjust the picture to your particular room and your eyes. If you are like me, you will fiddle at least a little bit with these, and will switch between settings depending on what you are watching.
The 240hz processing to my eye, and many other reviewers will not provide any visible difference from 120hz. But the manner in which it is implemented is really nice. You can adjust judder and blur separately to get the picture to the way you like it. I felt this worked well, and really helped in the overalls smoothness and motion intense scenes. I had blur at 10 and judder between 3 and 6 depending on what I was watching.
However, this was all marred by a few issues, the worst of which was auto dimming. I had read about this on the led side lit samsungs 6 & 7000 series (which you can also find at your local best buy and amazon as well), but did not know this was included with the b750. Gizmodo did a feature on this for the b7000 with the phrase "avoid!" in the title. Basically, anytime the scene gets dark, the tv will sense that and automatically drop or dim the backlight dramatically to get deeper blacks. The problem is that is happens usually a split second after the scene has already started and it is extremely distracting. It also darkens many bright spots in the picture somewhat, like city lights over a dark sky, or stars in a dark sky. This is very noticeable for example on the Dark Knight bluray. The more I watched, the more annoying it got. The fact that the lcd already does a good job of getting very black without the dimming is what makes it really unnecessary. It also does this while flipping channels on tv, and pretty much anything you watch. There is no way for the consumer to switch this off, as far as I know. I tried everything in the menu, from dynamic contrast to eco mode etc. There might be a more techie way, but I am pretty well versed in tech, and was not able to turn off this distracting feature. It is possible the autodimming wont bother you, but if it sounds like it might, please take note. This was a bit hard to swallow for me, because almost none of the reviews mentioned this on the b750, including cnet. This also may be solved by a future firmware update from samsung, but don't hold your breath for it. (UPDATE: Apparently this can be fixed from the service menu. However the average consumer should understand that this could potentially void your warranty and mess up your tv. If you are confident though, search some forums online and try to fix this yourself.)
The next issue was what appeared to be slight "clouding" or patches of grey-whitish color on the panel. I didn't notice at first, but once a few black screens or dark scenes came on, it was both noticeable and distracting. This could be just my specific unit, or a defect. I had read that the b750 was very good in this respect and had a uniform screen, but the whitish patches became very noticeable, and in dark scenes, it looks like there were subtle hints of cloudy patches on top of the screen. I have read that this is a common issue with many lcd's, so it depends on what you end up with. But you do run the risk of this problem with the b750 or maybe any lcd. Still, my old sony, and the samsung b550 never had this problem, so it was a little disappointing.
Another issue was a thin flickering white/silver line that would flicker on top of the screen right under the bezel during many dark scenes. It was not too noticeable, but enough to become a slight nuisance. This was really obvious on dark knight, and also the Planet Earth bluray during the immersive underwater scenes.
I know the issues of glare on lcd's has been addressed ad nauseam, but I just thought I should chime in. The screen is pitch black and VERY reflective, to the point of acting like a mirror. I have a room that gets ambient, not direct, sunlight and it was quite distracting during the day. It is rather difficult to see, so you need to crank up the brightness, which helps a bit. The display definitely gets as bright as you need. In the evening, with very dim lighting, it is still possible to see yourself reflected in the tv when it goes black in between scenes. The Samsung B550 (a cheaper tv), has a sort of matte-glossy hybrid display that I thought worked much better when compared to this one. But, the glossy display is partly responsible for the richer color and deeper blacks you get on this unit. Always tradeoffs. If you are ok with glossy screens on tv's, you will be ok with this one too. P.S. best buy is not a good place to figure out if you are ok with glossy screens. They don't look the same at home.
Off angle viewing on this unit is just not very good. The moment you move even a little bit away from the sweet spot of the couch right in the center, the blacks start to wash out, and the whole picture starts to look different. Not necessarily terrible, but different. The cheaper B550 had much more consistent viewing angle experience for some reason, I'm not sure why. Basically, if you have 3 or 4 people over for a movie, some will probably be seeing a slightly different picture.
Gaming
Reading several reviews of the b750, some said gaming was too laggy (ie: when you press a button it doesn't register right away) on the it, some said it was fine, so I had to give it a shot. I felt it was far too much lag to play games well. In other words, you will die or miss more often. You wont know why, you just will. The lag is on a millisecond level, but much of the twitch response in gaming is that way. Your eyes wont really notice that it is lagging, but it is definitely there, and significantly I might add. The "Game" mode does a little to remedy this, but it is still not perfect and the picture a bit harsh in game mode, since you can't adjust any picture settings. If you are a very casual gamer and are playing games that don't really require good timing, then the lag wont really bother you. For me, I can't really recommend it for gaming. For reference, I was playing games like Resistance 2, Little big planet, Street Fighter 2 hd remix, guitar hero etc for testing. The lag is much better, almost nonexistent on the Panasonic G10, which is a plasma. For lcd, I believe the Samsung B750 gives average or maybe below average performance. Strangely, the Samsung B550 for comparison was a little better in my experience and so was my old sony lcd.
User Experience, Menus and extra features
Going with the theme of lag, I have to say Samsung's menus are extremely slow to respond and laggy. They look ok I suppose, with a blue graphical touch. All menu navigation has extra animations and movements that make them less responsive (reminds me of a Samsung cell phone I used to own). Compared to other tv's I have used, Samsung menus tend to cover more of the screen, which I feel is also a...
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63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good TV with Some Overlookable Issues, May 23, 2009
This review is from: Samsung LN46B750 46-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LCD HDTV with Charcoal Grey Touch of Color (Electronics)
This is the first TV I've ever purchased and it's a great buy. I was hoping to read some professional reviews before I bought this, but with the Amazon $300 coupon being a limited time offer and my 6x points (basically a 6% cash back) on my Amazon card ending at the end of this month, I had to take advantage of this opportunity now. I think I made a good choice. Up until I got this TV, I've been using a Dell 24" 2405FPW LCD monitor (really a Samsung screen that still gets more positive reviews than new cheaper 24" Dell LCD monitors).
I don't want/need to repeat most of the positive comments other reviewers have already mentioned, so I'll talk about topics not well covered.
240 Hz Auto Motion Plus: The default setting is "standard." I don't have regular TV, so I connected my PS3 and popped in my Iron Man Blu-Ray disc. I quickly noticed the high quality resolution of my HDTV, but after some moments, I realize how the movie had a TV soap opera look and how some things just didn't seem right. The lighting was more sterile and bright instead of dramatic and when there was a scene where the camera moved, it felt like I was watching a 4:3 formatted pan & scan movie instead of a modern wide-screen movie. After checking out the TV settings (not having a paper manual was a little annoying, but quite a bit of paper was saved, since the PDF version is about 290 pages due to the multi-language versions), I realize that it's the 240Hz AMP that was making my movie experience more TV-like. I tried all the different preset AMP settings (i.e., Off; Clear; Standard; Smooth; Demo, which shows AMP off next to AMP on at the same time), I came to find that I like the "Clear" setting, which is the minimum setting with 240Hz on, the most. The lighting then looked like what I remember from the theater and the scenes still seem smooth and clear. AMP not only gives the appearance of more frames/second, but also more clarity. You'll notice a big difference when you take the time to watch the same scene over and over again with different settings. My guess is that it will probably work best with TV shows that have fast moving scenes and bright lighting like sports programs.
Computer Files: This feature is so cool. Video files which were originally computer-only can now be watched on my TV without any additional hardware. I think this TV can play more versions of MPEG and DIVX than my PS3 can (it says it in the Samsung manual, but I didn't do a side-by-side comparison). I can take an AVI file from my computer, copy it to a USB compact flash disk, then plug it into my HDTV and watch it in the full 46" glory. The remote offers some simple fast forward and rewind capability (the longer you hold down the buttons, the greater it moves forward and backward, respectively) and rewinding doesn't jump as smoothly as forwarding, but it's bearable.
Ethernet Connection: My FiOS modem/router is in my bedroom and my HDTV is in the living room. I couldn't test it, but considering that the wireless module for the Samsung TV is $80, I think I'm going to relocate my router. I wonder if there's a cheaper workaround or if the Samsung USB WiFi module is proprietary.
Remote Control: It is a long controller which makes it a little uncomfortable to use without sliding your hand to reach some buttons and it has an unconventional wing at the bottom of the controller that's there for weight balance. It also feels fragile because it looks shiny and lightweight. More negatives is that the buttons require me to either push them down at a different angle or just with more force. I hope that once I use the controller a little more, the buttons will be more sensitive. Right now, some of the buttons take me two or three times before they register because I am apparently not doing it right.
Delivery Service: I got the usual call about setting up my delivery date and time. They gave me a 4 hour delivery window and the 2 guys came around the end of the first hour, so it wasn't a long wait. There was something on the form I signed about a blue screen test, but they didn't test that for me (maybe it works only with TV reception?) and I didn't see it when I skimmed through the manual either. Basically, they physically set it up, turned it on, and tested some menu options. Not a very scientific test, but I guess they completed their tasks. They didn't stick around to get tipped either. I did stop them to hand them one though.
Ultra Clear Panel: I don't know why the Samsung.com website says that it doesn't have an UCP when it obviously does. The reflection is quite strong and I have very good daylighting in my living room from the windows, so the reflection can be annoying. However, the good viewing angle comes in handy, so I just sit at an angle from the screen (probably 20 degrees), and the reflection from my window goes away. I don't notice any drop in contrast or color quality, so it's not that big of a deal. Also, if you compare this to some of the reflection problems from older CRTs, it seems about the same. The big difference is that there may appear to be more reflection problems b/c this screen is just a lot bigger than most CRTs.
Overall, I am happy with my HDTV. I was very tempted to buy the 52" version, but with the 30% premium over the 46" (currently, the 52" costs 21% more with the most recent limited-time coupon), I rather save the money for when I get a bigger apartment and when 60+" screens are in the best value range.
UPDATE 20090731: It's been a little over two months and the remote is still not very responsive. I don't log that many hours into the remote, but I don't remember having this problem with any remote in the past. Fortunately, it's the only real negative about this TV. Oh, since I wrote the earlier review near the end of May, I have hooked up my old computer to it via the TV's VGA and RCA mini-plug. It's nice to be able to watch computer video files from my PC, but that's about all I recommend it for. I had to change the Windows XP interface to a mostly black background with green text look so that it wouldn't strain my eyes. Also, the 240Hz AMP doesn't work with the VGA connection, which isn't a huge loss since very few computer video files and internet streaming videos are greater than 720p (most of them are 480p and less). One final thing is that I have toyed around with the custom AMP settings. I have 10 for blur reduction and 3 for judder reduction most of the time. The blur setting doesn't seem to affect my viewing experience, so I use the max setting. The judder reduction is really noticeable to me at 4 or greater b/c of the inconsistent frame rate and brighter and more sterile lighting. For darkly lit TV shows like 24 (on DVD) and movies like Dark City (also DVD), I have to turn off the judder reduction or set it to at most one for it to be unnoticeable.
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