Samsung PN42A450 42-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV

I bought this TV about two weeks ago... I was originally looking for a Sony LCD Bravia 40" 1080HD (W300 Series) or the Samsung PN50A550 (50" Plasma 1080p/i resolution).

I went to a local store and saw this TV lying between the models described above - I thought it was a 1080 TV... image quality was about the same. It has better color and sharpness than the Sony LCD, and as in all TVs, it has a slight advantage over the bigger Samsung Plasma despite its 720p versus 1080p so called "disadvantage".

Then came the issue of pricing and looks... this one is a looker and for around $900 bucks it is a steal. Something told me to buy it and so I did.

When I got home I was first disappointed in its display of standard cable (coaxial analog)... standard cable only works in a regular CRT.

Next day I took it to a friends house who has digital cable and lord behold - Digital Cable is 720P so there is no real use for a 1080 Tuner - Image quality was great.

Then came the real reason I wanted a Plasma... My Sony Playstation 3 AKA Blue-Ray Player.

OH MY GOD... I had purchased Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Turismo 5 Prologue. I connected it USING A $20 Radio Shack HDMI Cable (Dont spend $100 on Monster Cable, its not worth it) and the games came alive. I could feel myself driving in the Ferrari F430, I could literally feel my self in the middle of war as I played MGS5. The definition, color depth, sharpness and lack of image noise was incredible. Its a great TV for any PS3 or new generation video game console.

Then I went and purchased Transformers the Movie in Blue Ray... Holly Cow!!!. You haven`t seen this movie until you have seen it through blue-ray and this TV. You can see every minor detail about Optimus Prime, Bumble-Bee and the rest of the characters... plus the size is excellent for a small living room or your bedroom (mines is about 60 square feet and it looks gigantic)

I dont understand how it works but it has and integrated circuitry that takes and ordinary 720P signal and digitally converts it to 1080 resolution, plus ·D filters for gaming. Believe me, I hate Digitally Remastered anything (just try using your digital zoom on a digital camera and you know hoe poor this technology usually is) but in this case IT WORKS... Realistic Colors, no aliasing, no blurs, great whites, great blacks, blues, reds, and little or no image "double-edges".

Both my games and Blue-Ray movies are converted to 1080p resolution and they look amazing.

One complaint: Speakers at 10x2 watts are weak and have no bass power... but we all know that is not the idea behind an HDTV... I have a Sony 6.1 Home Theater... I just plugged it to get outstanding sound and a recreate a real movie theater experience... Any Sony, Denon op Kenwood Receiver with 5.1 or better performance (500 Watts at least) will solve this problem in a snap.

It is definitely a great bang for your buck deal, it is truly designed for HDMI devices and it looks cool too.

I am One Happy Camper!

I bought this tv for my living room and I loved it. I was considering the same tv for my mancave in the basement, but then I saw a combo special with the Panasonic Viera TH-42PX80U and Xbox 360 at a great price. I bought the Panasonic and the picture was nice, but it bothered me that there was no swivel base and no headphone jacks.....the Samsung has both of these features. I returned the Panasonic and got another Samsung. I am so glad I did so. With a 10% mover's coupon that you can find on the internet, you can get this tv at Best Buy for $808. It's just a great value.

Got TV 3 weeks ago and it plays great!! I choose an Amazon affiliate so I could't get the "White Glove" delivery. They called me first and delivered right on time. They only plug in the TV to insure it plays and no obvious damage but I am satisfied. I'm not a TV geek so for right now we are using the same hookup we had on our tube TV. Dish Network and co-axail cable to a 322 Dish box and co-axail to TV. I don't believe I have true HD but it's great reception any how. I've got the componet cables and will hook them up soon. The TV is absolutly great!! The whole Amazon experiance was great and would highly recommend.

Good product, and delivery service. Picture is good on HD channels and best when using the HDMI connection. Suggest you purchase a good quality HDMI connection cable. I am connected to a cable service and the box provides the HDMI as an option for connecting to the TV. There are many settings that can be utilized and I am at a loss as to which settings work best. I simply find a setting I like for a particular type of program. The documentation that comes with the TV doesn't give much help with settings other than to define what they are.
Overall I am very satisfied with my purchase and the service from Amazon. Watching HD is great, now I hope more programing will be HD in the future. Looking forward to football season!

When you see a digital tv in a typical showroom, you're watching a set configured for juiced-up color, pushed reds, artificial edge enhancement, and the kind of comic book/screensaver imaging preferred by today's consumers with an uneducated eye for accuracy. But Samsung advertises the benefits of over 20 picture and color controls that allow you to customize and calibrate this set to NTSC color specs (NOTE: "ATSC" is a transmission spec that has nothing to do with image color. All SD and HDTV images are still broadcast and manufactured by NTSC and D65 color specs. The NTSC spec for SD color is Rec.601, for HD and BluRay it's Rec.709. This set's RGB offset and gain supposedly support both standards). But once this set was shipped and set up, it was immediately apparent that factory settings would put green streaks in Marilyn Monroe's platinum blonde hair, and dark actors like Morgan Freeman had cheery-red skin that looked as if Morgan hadn't washed off all the green and blue war paint he wore in a previous movie somewhere. Shadows were purple, green, or red, never black or gray. I used a pro-grade colorimeter and calibration software to tweak this set's picture controls (the user-provided RGB setups are the same as those in the set's Service Menu). Test patches revealed severe color errors in the PN42A450's decoder and some really screwy manipulations by the Chroma processor, especially at low IRE's. These appear to be the same decoder and chroma chip Samsung has used for years, and they have the same color problems I used to see on older Samsung CRT's. I paid $$$ to a certifed ISF tech to look over this unit; his conclusion was that none of the A450 plasma or LCD tv's could be calibrated to D65 spec at any point, due to encoder and chroma chip problems (he was honest enough not to charge the fee for a full calibration). The settings he came up with, we both agreed, were no better than those I could have achieved on my own. It's now too late to return this product. On top of that I noted the display taking on pink streaks and smudges that won't go away; they are especially annoying in b&w movies like "Dr. Strangelove". The streaks and smudges actually come from Samsung's menu screens. The obvious and inconvenient cure: never use the onscreen menus in this tv. You can even see the smudges in color broadcasts. I suppose that people who've been watching cheap uncalibrated GoldStar CRT's for the last 25 years would consider this kind of color performance to be "great". Gosh, they say, you can count the pores and warts on faces and see the hairs in their noses. If watching pores, warts, and nose hair is your idea of home entertainment, you're welcome to it. The tv does have a very sharp image, even with SD material. But the color is ludicrous and the menu burn-in problem has largely been eliminated in competing products of this type. If you want inaccurate, exaggerrated, comic-book color and weird shadow color casts (which seem to be very popular with gamers and PC freaks), this is the product for you. But if you're used to enjoying accurate color and image depth, and don't like low-gamma clay-face effects or crimson blotches on women's chests, I suggest that you should avoid this product. I've seen cheap Walmart CRT's that don't have color problems as severe as these. Almost every digital display made today has similar problems. As for the absurd 10,000:1 contrast ratios tv makers like to advertise: the actual contrast ratio here is somewhere around 450:1, which is typical for HDTV's. For those of us who spent years enjoying the accurate images on well-made, well-calibrated CRT's, it's a sad day.