Customer Reviews
Great TV! Awesome Picture! Occasional HDMI audio drop 
2008-04-23
I've had this TV for a while now and have been very happy. It's great having all of the input options. I have experienced the occasional audio dropout when using HDMI as others have referenced, but I know only use the HDMI for video processing and route the audio through a receiver so problem solved for me!
GREAT TV FOR THE MONEY 2008-04-23
THIS TV IS ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS IN HD. I CAN'T SAY MUCH ABOUT REGULAR DIGITAL TV STATIONS, I DON'T THINK THEY LOOK TOO GREAT. BUT, THAT'S WHAT MAKES THE HD LOOK ALL THE BETTER ON THIS TV. THE MENUS ARE A CINCH TO NAVIGATE AND I LOVE THE SLEEK BLACK CASING THE TV IS IN. THE SOUND ON THE OTHER HAND IS NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT ALTHOUGH I HAVE MINE HOOKED UP TO SORROUND SOUND, SO NO PROBLEM THERE. GOOD VALUE FOR THE MONEY
Big and cheap but has image retention 
2008-04-23
I had a Hitachi plasma prior to this that never had burn-in or image retention problems, ever. So needless to say I was not worried about this when buying a plasma. I figured the technolgy would be the same because I bought the Hitachi almost 2 years ago. Know I understand what image retention really is. It retains images pretty quickly, I thought this would go away after the "break-in", but it still does it. If you do the scrolling screen burn in feature it goes away. It is a big TV and has a great picture for the price, but if you are going to not like the fact that it does have image retention that goes away I would not buy it. However the better plasmas are probably going to run over a grand more. Overall I would say I would definitely buy it again, but the image retention is a pain in the butt.
Great tv, great price, great value! 
2008-04-17
Great tv, great price, great value!
Beautiful color on both the screen and the frame of the tv.
Overall good buy.
Best bang for the bucks 2008-04-15
Very satisfied with picture quality. Shipping was painless and overall buying experience.. very good.
Why 720P?
Deciding factor was the bottom line of what I was gonna watch.
80% Regular TV.. no difference if you use 720 or 1080.
20% DVD Movies.. All of my collection is regular DVD. HDVD on 720 VS 1080, no significant difference.. IMHO.. my eyes couldn't tell the difference.
so why spend extra 500+ for 1080.
Pros: Excellent design and picture quality
Cons: Glossy screen
simply sucks 
2008-07-08
it`s not even 2 years since I bought this tv and it already started crapping out on me, I have been seeing blue patches, pixels moving back and forth on the side of the screen (not a burn in. the patches are moving) definitely killing all the fun and enjoyment. now samsung would charge me $100 bucks just to come and take a look at it, and the technician over the phone said he thinks it could be a defective Plasma screen and would probably be have to replaced with a new one which would cost me a hefty $$$ of course the piece of crap tv is out of warranty and although it`s a defected screen Samsung will do absolutely nothing about the situation unless I pay for it. I have seen a lot of complains over the internet about the same issue on Samsung Plasma`s so I would recommend you to buy LCD, if you set your mind on Plasma then definitely go with some other brand since this Samsung is a huge piece of crap.
Read this review if you play video games 
2008-06-17
I bought this TV in January and loved it. Eventually I noticed a flickering problem where the screen brightness would flicker up and down. Read about it on the AVS forums and got it fixed through Samsung support. Then I noticed the image retention. If you play any xbox 360 games or watch tv in 4:3 with sidebars it will show up. You can run the screen burn in program that will eventually wipe it off but it always comes back next time you play. Ever play GTA4? See that radar in the bottom left? That is always going to be on your TV after you are done playing. The longer you go without wiping it with the cleaner the longer it will stay on there. If you play video games do yourself a favor and don't buy this set. I sold mine and am saving for another set preferably LCD. I just wanted to warn people trying to decide which set to buy. Avoid this set.
Great picture until you get screen burn-in 2008-05-13
I use this TV for my baby to watch Noggin which isn't HD. After a few weeks of use the Noggin channel logo and side black bars burned into the screen. I tried using the burn-in removal feature (Samsung recommends running it for 1+ hour )which only helps about %30. I guess this is one of the biggest draw back of plasma TVs. Totally unacceptable. This was my first plasma and will probably be my last.
satisfied 2008-05-04
Amazon was a very good company to deal with, no problems and no hassels. The TV has been great, and I am very satisfied with the whole transaction.
Great TV with a few caveats 2008-05-01
This was my first HDTV purchase. As such I did weeks of research reading every review I could find and poring over forums. In the end I found that this was one of the best picture quality/price combos you can find.
I used a DVE DVD to calibrate the picture (just the basic brightness and contrast, no color calibration yet). Overall I found most of the opinions I read to be right on. Always use the Movie mode with "Warm2". I could see possibly moving up to Warm1 or normal but I trusted the experts out there who say that warm2 has the best color fidelity.
Aside from that I kept all the extras off (Noise reduction, DNIe, auto-contrast, etc). I had an HD cable box, Xbox 360, PC and HD-DVD player hooked up (all HDMI except the PC which was through the VGA monitor hookup). All looked great. On the Xbox though I found I did actually like "Game Mode" better with some other adjustments quite different from my movie watching settings.
The picture quality on this TV seemed awesome to me. Even with the "energy saving" mode on High, contrast at 90, and Brightness at 45 it seemed plenty bright, although our living room doesn't have a lot of ambient light either.
My 2 big gripes with this TV were:
1. Image Retention. This thing has BAD IR. Sometimes I would turn the tv on and just the text that flashes up telling you what input your on would leave some IR. Now to be fair the IR has always gone away after some watching or running the built in "scrolling" screen. I'd play Rock Band for 30 minutes or so and would definitely see IR from elements of the interface. I would run the scrolling screen or watch TV for a while and all would be fine. Nevertheless, very annoying to me. I love the History Channel but would refrain from watching it because they use such a vivid, bright annoying logo on screen at all times that it would very quickly cause IR.
2. Possible noise appearing as green dots in the blacks. Now I managed to get rid of this by turning my brightness down (the level at which I ended up setting the brightness was still within the calibration range and still made for a great picture so I didn't need or want to turn it up any more) but there was definitely a threshold where if I turned up the brightness past a certain mark, dancing green dots appeared in the blacks. From everything I've read this may be perfectly normal and only really noticeable if you're too close to the TV. The fact that I could achieve a perfectly good picture while dialing out these dots made it pretty much a non-issue for me, but it still kinda bugged me and made me wonder if that was indeed normal. The more you turn the brightness up the more green dot noise would appear, but again it still wasn't too terrible from a decent viewing distance.
If I had it to do again, I would not get this TV. While it has some great features and a great picture quality, the quirks just get to me a little too much. Maybe it's just because I'm new to the whole world of HD, but I find myself wishing I'd gone with the Samsung LN46A530 LCD instead.
Great bang for the buck, especially if you're primarily a movie watcher, but I'd be wary if you're a gamer or want to watch anything with a vivid logo, scrolling ticker at the bottom, or black bars (like non-stretched 4:3 TV).
