Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome LCD TV - well worth the money, 4 Mar 2009
I purchased one of these for christmas, and I have got to say it is supurb.
All the connections are labled clearly, so there is no chance of plugging something into the wrong place. When you fire her up for the first time, it will take you through some really simple setup steps which you can pretty much just OK through mindlessly. During this simple setup, the TV will scan for and detect both terestrial and digital channels without any fuss (assuming you have a half-decent signal of course!) It was all up and running within about 2 minutes, and I had no need to change any settings from their default values. It's so nice when things "just work" like this. Switching between digital and analogue TV is a breeze aswell. The Source Select button allows you to cycle through all the different inputs like the HDMI and AUX ports, and includes the analogue and digital feeds as part of the cycle. That's usefull enough, but Samsung have also had the foresight to provide a second button which switches specifically between DTV and ATV. Very nice little feature which saves you cycling through a hundred and one different things you dont really care about 90% of the time.
Menu options are pretty comprehensive. The "guide" button when viewing a DTV source will bring up a list of all digital chanels, and show you what programs are coming on when. You can also highlight these and press OK to either watch (if it's currently broadcasting), or schedule to watch (if it isnt broadcasting) that particular show. A pretty standard feature nowadays I know, but one I have seen done wrong plenty of times. With this TV, all the features tend to operate very intuatively and as you expect. Theres few (if any) times where I've thought "hay, why can't I click on that to watch it" or "why did they do it *THAT* way?" It all works exactly how you think it should, which is quite a rareaty these days.
As for picture quality, I would say it rivals (if not exceeds) most modern plasmas, which considering this is an LCD, is really saying something! With just minor tweaks to the display options in the easy to navigate options menu, you can produce vibrant images that take your breath away. Stick any digital source into it, and you can really see the sharpness of the 720p HD kicking in even on standard def sources. It also handles 1080p HD very well. We compared a 1080p source on both this TV and a TV which supports full 1080p HD, and the difference was really negligeble even close up. If you are asking yourself "is 1080p worth the extra money?", I would say "not if you get this TV", because the up-scaling is so good, and it's going to be a good 5 years or so before full 1080p sources become ubiquitous anyway. This will certainly see you through untill then.
On the same subject, this TV also makes a very nice computer monitor. A simple DVI-HDMI cable will link you up with no problems, and will display very nicely at a resolution of 1024x768 (although it can handle 1280x1024, the writing does tend to look a little bit "blury" on the desktop. Works well for games though.) Have tested the likes of Fallout 3, Left4Dead, and Dawn of War 2 on it, and they all look absolutely amazing. So if you are a gamer, it is definatly worth picking up a DVI-HDMI cable (and dont forget an audio-composite cable for sound aswell ;) ) and hooking it up to your rig for those late-night gaming sessions.
Sound quality is standard sterio. It's no sub-woofer enhanced surround-sound system of course, but it is very clear and crisp, and the speakers can go impressively loud. Very nice for a built-in sound system.
My only real critisism is the somewhat slow responsiveness of the remote. The slightly delayed reaction, combined with the chunky (read: hard to push) buttons means accessing menu options or changing channels can feel rather slow/slugish/heavy at times. This is ok for those who have a habbit of sitting on their remotes, but for me I personally prefer remotes that are light to touch and TV's which have a snappy response to them. Perhaps I'm just a bit too used to highly responsive PC's though.
So, all in all, with the slight niggle of the heavy-feeling remote aside, this TV is an absolute dream. Lightweight, low power consumption (read: "doesn't kill hundreds of polar bears each day"), fantastic picture quality which rivals a plasma, decent sound quality, and a whole host of features that will keep you fairly future-proofed. A recomended buy.
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