Samsung LN40A550 40-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV

This TV is just like everyone else has commented, it's truly amazing in terms of color, picture and so on. I got this TV for my home office, so I use it as an external monitor for my laptop as well. If you ever wonder that a TV could also serve as a great monitor, let me tell you, this sure is THE one. I connected it to my laptop, plug-n-play worked right away, and the resolution got automatically set to 1920x1200. The screen looks bright, sharp, and crystal clear. For less than $1,000, you get a great HD TV and a big monitor, a good deal indeed!

Had this tv for about a week now. The tv looks great in the living room. Picture quality, especially with HD looks really good. Obviously, without HD you just have a nice 40 inch flat panel tv that will pretty much have the same picture quality as any other tv. That's what I have found anyway. The sound is not nearly as bad as people made it sound. Speakers are fine. I hooked mine up via HDMI to my xbox 360 and it looks pretty amazing.

As far as Amazon goes, I ordered my tv on a monday, received it the following Thursday....broken. the tv would not turn on. (and yes I used different outlets and plugged other things into the outlets to make sure they worked). I do not blame amazon for this as it was probably the shipping company, but the fact remains that I was skeptical to order online in the first place and this just confirmed my worst fears. I refused delivery and was charged nothing...yet. Customer service was fine, neither very helpful nor really bad.

I went to get this same tv at Circuit City that Friday. Albeit more expensive but I did get the 24 month no interest and didn't have to wait another week and a half or fear it would not turn on. Take that for what it's worth. The tv is a good tv, espcially for the price, bottom line.

A very good LCD TV with all the features I was looking for,excellent for the price.Am very happy with this purchase.

After months of looking at a variety of LCD tvs to replace my Sony XBR CRT, Samsung was the clear choice due to the phenomenal picture and great price-value equation. The television is great,but I have knocked off two stars due to delivery and warranty service problems.

I have mixed feelings about the delivery by Ceva. Six days after placing my order,the Ceva dispatcher called to schedule delivery. Unfortunately,the "local" (actually based in another county) Ceva only offers two options each week for deliveries,between 10am and 2pm on Monday or Wednesday. I had important client conference calls scheduled at 10:30a.m. on both those days and asked the dispatcher to put a note requesting delivery after Noon. She refused to do so. Ultimately I had to wait an additional week for delivery due to their limited options for delivery windows. While I understand and am used to delivery "windows",to only offer delivery during two timeframes a week does not give you many options. Once the driver called me to get directions,he was very flexible and in fact made the delivery on a Tuesday,which the dispatcher had insisted was not possible.

After 5 weeks of enjoying my new LCD, suddenly it stopped working (had power,but no picture and no chimes). I went through all the trouble-shooting steps then called Samsung,who said they would schedule a service call.The Samsung rep also gave me the name and phone # of the designated repair facility and recommended I call them myself,which I did the following day.

The earliest appt.they could give me for repair was more than a week away. We scheduled the repair for a Friday and I arranged to work from home that day. At 11 am,the dispatcher called to tell me they were canceling the repair appt.because the part they suspected was the problem (power supply) had not arrived from Samsung. Even worse,they said that Samsung was backordered on those parts and could not provide an estimate of when more would be available!!!! She said she had a dozen other appts.to cancel that day for the same thing.

So I waited another week. Finally I received a call from the repairman letting me know he was on the way to my house. No one had notified me in advance so I left work to meet him there. Once the repairman arrived,he repaired the tv (turns out it was the main board) quickly and efficiently.

Overall summary:

- GREAT television picture and beautiful set at an excellent price
- Many have complained about the sound,but I adjusted the audio settings based on the recommendations at the AVSforum,which made a significant improvement. Also sounds great running through my Sonos system and external speakers.
- Scheduling inflexibility by Ceva and the Ceva dispatcher's attitude did not feel like "white glove"service to me. The attitude and professionalism of the deliveryman,once we were put in direct contact,was great
- The local repair service was friendly,although communications could have been better.
- Samsung's inability to communicate when they would have more power supplies available is unacceptable. From what the repair service said,it sounds as if they're having to replace a lot of power supplies on these tvs. However,since it turned out to be a completely different part that required replacement, the repair service should have kept our original appt. Their "guessing" delayed the repair by a week.
- The fact that the main board failed after only a few weeks of use concerns me....
-All that said,the tv repairman said the A550 is the model he is planning to buy.

Great picture, easy to use menus.
But the sound is horrible.
Had to plug in a PC 2.1 speaker system as the built-in speakers were not listenable due to distortion.