Samsung PS50C550 50-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p 600Hz AllShare Plasma TV with Freeview

Just got one of these babies 2 days ago and the sound quality is good and I do use the tv sound for normal viewing but I use a samsung 5.1 surround sound for movies.
The picture quality is fantastic, i tinkered with the settings because the factory dynamic setting was just a little too harsh on the eyes and the standard setting was a little dark, tinkering with the settings was very simple / straight forward and done quickly, the darks are perfect and soo very dark.
The colours are great and the whites are really white.
Weather you watch this in full HD or on a standard broadcast channel you will love the picture and sound Quality.
There is absoluty no motion blurr on this tv ( I tested with some action movies and ps3 games)
I also did a firmware upgrade via a usb stick that i downloaded from samsung, dont know what the upgrade was for but it went through easily.
Ive got a virgin media HD V+ box plugged in, a ps3 and a samsung HT-C453 5.1Ch Home Cinema System all pluggd in with HDMI leads and an optical lead from the V+ box to the surround sound for the ultimate experience, I also got myself a 1TB external hard drive for music / pictures and movies and plugged into the tv via USB pord and it finds the files and plays without any problems.
The tv design itself is in a word STUNNING, lovelly clear display that looks glass like but is not.
The outside edge of the tv is black with a glass covering.
There have been reports or rumours from some people about this tv having a loud buzzing noise, well I have run the tv when the house is totally quiet and even turned the sound off, I heared no buzzing, but if you put your ear right upto the screen you can hear a very soft buzz like a flourescent bulb would make, my hearing is in very good order and you seriously would have to have your ear about 2mm from the screen to hear the tiniest of buzzing.
Overall this is the mother of plasma tv's and you will not be dissapointed if you lay out your hard earned pennies for this.
Its very good quality and a very sexy sleek tv.
Go on buy it, you know you want it.

From the outset this t.v. looks like a real bargain. 50 inch plasma tv for this price and with this spec, and it doesn't dissapoint.... in most areas.
Picture quality is stunning especially in hd or blu ray. Sound is good and the design of this t.v is also very good. So most boxs ticked then. However there is one major design fault with this tv is the constant buzzing noise coming form the back of the set. This gets worse after long periods of watching and gets worse if you change picture modes i.e going from standard to movie or to dynamic (being the worse one). You may think (like i did) you can drown the buzz out by increasing the volume on the set. This will work to an extent, until there is a pause in the sound on what you may be watching then it is right there annoying the hell out of you! So a good idea then would be to watch things that have audio pumping out the speakers non stop to drown the buzz out. Say for instance just play vidio games on it. But this just leads me onto my second beef about this product. The image retention or ghosting or burn in (call it what you want).
This being a plasma screen it suffers from this problem (and quiet badly as well) but then all plasmas do. So be carful how long you play games on it for. I have been informed however that this only happerns when the sets are new and it wont be as bad say after 100 hours of viewing (but it wont complety be burn in free). Also there are tools on the tv to help rid the screen of ghosting and these do work. So that is more of an annoyance then a major problem and one that gets better over time, unlike the buzzing noise which is very mutch a permanant fixture on this.
I have read alot of reviews about this, some with same problem as me and others saying there is no buzz problem. Maybe they are lucky ones who got one with out this problem but i think its a design fault (hence the cheap price) and not an individual fault on the set i had as i did return this set and ordered another from a different retailer and that set had exactly the same problem.
I guess everyone is diffent on what they can put up with and what they want out of a t.v. Like i said before the picture is stunning on this and the price is really good but after thinking long and hard i decided i could not put up with this constant buzzing noise as its a problem that simply wont go away.

I have had this TV now for around a month and I am very pleased with it. Other TV's around this size are usually a lot more, and you wont get half the features that come with this one. I will start of by saying what I use the TV for. The main two uses are Blu-Ray movies and gaming, this TV is perfect for both.
The picture looks beautiful, first thing I did when I got it was put some of the best looking blu-rays through it and they have never looked better. There are three default picture modes, which you will probably want to tweak to your own preference but this is an easy and straight forward process. The look of the menu is also is well thought out and looks more like a media player's menu on a computer. One problem with plasma as we all know is the burn in, which this still suffers from, however the TV does come with measures to reduce it and has the scrolling bars to remove burn in. I have had 10 hour straight gaming sessions on it, which resulted in quite bad burn in, but after 30 minutes of scrolling it had been completely removed and has been restored to its previous perfect condition. I have had previous 'removal' methods on other TV's and non worked as well as this one.
The sound from the inbuilt speakers is really good, and more than enough quality for your standard TV needs. I have never had to take the volume up past 25, in a relatively large room, for internal speakers I would say its the best I have had on a TV yet. I do use a 5.1 Samsung set up for movies, but that is purely because I like 5.1 and not because the TV detracts from the experience, and is more than capable of coping with movies.
The extra stuff it comes with is well managed and is easy to do. As of yet, I have not needed to look in the guide for anything. The plug in and play feature is excellent, though it is worth mentioning that it will not play songs of an iPod Touch. I also tried the latest Nano on it but that seemed to work. This is not really a Samsung problem, more of an Apple not allowing you to use their products on other companies products problem, but it is a question that gets asked a lot. It does however, recognise with ease hard drives and memory sticks with movies and MP3's on. The in-built Freeview tuner is excellent with perfect reception quality. I use both my Sky HD box and the Freeview tuner, and cant tell any real difference between the two in quality.
I think with this TV its the little things (as well as the massive screen with perfect image quality) like the HDMI select button on the controller, the AnyNet support, the renaming of different sources for easier organisation, if you don't have it on a wall, the ease you can swivel it round, as if it weighs nothing at all and so on.
Another plus point is the amount of connections available to you. The four HDMI slots are a God send, for example, I currently have connected a Sky HD box, PS3, Xbox 360 and an 1080p up-scalling DVD player. They are placed in good areas, for example a HDMI slot is put on the side of the screen, so I can quickly change the 360 for for my laptop. As well as your HDMI, you have connections for PC's that aren't HDMI compatible, scart, AV, digital audio out. (Full list on samsung website) But basically everything you need to connect normal things to it.
Some people have had issues with buzzing. Personally I would have to say I have no knowledge of this. If I get up close and stick my ear near it, I do hear a faint buzzing sound, but bar doing that bit of stupidity, it's silent.
I would say that this was probably one of the best investments I have made in recent years. The picture and sound quality is second to non, the design of the set is beautiful, the layout and design of the menu's is stylish and well thought out and above all that, screen burn, the silent killer of the Plasma Tv, is kept at bay.