HDTV Reviews and Digest
Samsung PN58C550 58-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Black)
- Stylish TV frame with Touch of Color design
- Sharp images and bright colors with Full HD 1080p
- Reduce glare with E-Panel Technology
- Wide Color Enhancer brings color to life
Get a true cinematic experience without going to the cinema with a Samsung plasma HDTV. This Samsung PN58C550, with Mega Dynamic Contrast Ratio makes sure every frame is saturated with dense, rich color. Samsung is also ENERGY STAR compliant so you are assured that your 58 -inch plasma HDTV is helping the environment by using less enery while saving you money.
List Price: $ 1,999.99
Price:
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Great TV So Far,
Set up my unit on 5/21 which I bought from a brick/mortar store (sorry Amazon!), after researching the hell out of it. My equipment includes a WDTV Media Player (HDMI w/optical out), Nintendo Wii (analog), HD HTPC on the make, and Denon AVR-590(two optical audio inputs and three HDMI inputs).
PROS:
- NO BUZZING! YEAH!!
- Great picture out of the box – will be fine-tuning things later, but early indications are very positive. Several units had more features but PQ suffered. With so many blu-ray players and HTPCs that stream Netflix/Pandora, don’t get lured in by feature-laden units that fail to deliver great PQ.
- Media Play – plug in any USB or HD into the unit to watch video, listen to music, and view pictures.
- Input panel is easy to access – swivel base is a real plus.
- The manual states that it can connect to a home network and “can access the Internet through your LAN connection” – this one might be interesting if I could get a third party wireless USB stick to work. So far, no success – I’ll report back on this one.
CONS
- No memory card access – will attempt access with a card reader.
- Cannot tell unit to show subtitles only when muted – 7 different versions available, but none of them allow you to read subtitles when it’s muted.
- Lack of widgets – I really wanted the web widgets, but wouldn’t sacrifice PQ. With the new HD HPTC almost finished and running WMC 7, it will interesting to see if WMC will be enough.
- Sound effects and music sound great through Denon, yet dialogue is sometimes difficult to understand – I suspect that is due to my inability to read the language known as Denon and to configure it accordingly. Audio is being passed through the Denon with a single HMDI connection to the back of the Samsung.
Manufacturers like Sony and Samsung make way too many units. Once you choose a manufacturer or a set of features you cannot live without, eliminate as many inferior units as possible. Then, find where your top 3 prospects are sold and get full demos on each including use of the remote. This was the only way I was able to determine that the 550 would work.
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|Great TV for the price and size,
I purchased this TV brand new about three weeks ago. I found it to be an excellent plasma for the size and price. The color and contrast are great. I have to disagree with the other reviews saying this TV has a loud buzzing sound. Mine doesn’t buzz at all. The TV looks great with HD cable, DVD’s, XBox 360, etc. I would purchase this again and would recommend it to anyone.
The only thing I would caution anyone about is the speakers. Mine do not buzz, but they aren’t great. They seem too quite and there is hardly any bass (comparing them to my older 42″ Panasonic Plasma). Even after changing the equalizer, the sound is still weak. If you do not have any sort of home theater system, you may want to consider one.
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|I do like it,
I was hesitant at first to buy a product without any reviews but I really needed a tv so there it goes…..
First one was delivered damaged but i got a replacement in about four days.Tv looks good on or off.I think it has really nice colors and after messing with it for a day or so I got it where I wanted it.I think the colors look better than on an LCD.Being a plasma I was a little worried about the screen letting out some heat and consequently the energy consumption but I was impressed once I hooked it up to a kill-a watt monitor.I Normal mode (after calibration) it takes between 130W to about 170W which I think it’s impressive for a 58 inch plasma.Also it emanates just about as much heat as a new lcd which is very little.I hooked it up to my router and now I can stream movies and pics to it from my laptop wirelessly(wired from the tv to the router but wireless from the router to my laptop).I would buy again.It does buzz a little but I can’t tell unless I sit a couple of feet from it.
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