The Samsung hdtv's are the most beautiful ones from the outside, they just look stunning.
Hoewever picturequality is always two steps behind of a Panasonic of Pioneer plasma, but consumers are strange people.

They buy a hdtv almost always without testing an when I say testing I don't mean watching blu-rays or demo's with the arms crossed!
People don't touch the tv, don't change picturesetting and don't take there own dvd's or xbox360/ps3 with them.

I did that when I wanted to buy a hdtv, because I wasn't content with my 30 inch Iiyama lcd.
I absolutely wanted a full hd lcd from Samsung and was ready to buy it, but I went to 2 stores taking my xbox360, some games and dvd's with me.

An anoying person on forums was só pro-plasma that I tested a hdready Panasonic after I tested the full hd lcd Samsung, only so I good make fun of him on the forums. I was blown away from the picturequality! What the hell???? How can a hdready (!!) plasma give a much much more beautiful and sharper picture-image than a full hd lcd?

I tried everything I could to make the picture of the Samsung just as good as the plasma, because I had my mind set for a Samsung lcd, but it didn't even came close!
I have the Panasonic for 2 years now in my home and every day I'm dazzled by the beautiful image.
The full hd lcd's from friends are a joke compared to this plasma and they all say that themselve too.

But consumers do not test and the Samsungs look fantastic from the outside. Also, they just cannot see the difference with better hdtv's. How often you come to somebody's home to see that the picturesettings are still like out of the box!!

The smartest thing Samsung did is working with Microsoft when the xbox360 got launched and in every gamestore was a xbox360 demo with a Samsung lcd. For most people this was the first engagement with hd and when you come from a sd crt, you're blown away.

I live in Europe and I follow a lot of forums about hdtv's. Because I wanted a Samsung, I followed that forum for more than 2 years, just like the Panasonic plasma forums and what a difference that is! In the Samsung lcd forum a lot of people have picturequality problems (disapointing blacks, viewing angle, judder etc etc) and in the Panasonic plasma forum only very very happy people.

I still think it is not a smart decision from Pioneer to stop producing the Kuro plasma's.

So what if they didn't make any money with them. They are seen as the best hdtv's on the market and from an advertising view it is priceless.
No better way to make a name for your company.

Offcourse Flash!

It is a joke that a modern gsm that the manufacturer calls an internetdevice cannot play flash!
Do you know how many sites are made with flash??

Luckely the latest upgrade fixed a couple of other major flaws. If I have known this before I would never buy this. More than once I'd almost thrown the #$!@ thing against the wall. Now I know why many of the casings has been thorned by other people.

It looks great and the screen is beautiful, but this is the first and last time I'd bought a non-Windows device.

Nice, local dimming!

The price is ridiculous! $3500 for a 46 inch??
In the Netherlands I can buy a 50 inch Pioneer for €2200 en the 60 inch for €3200.

Dr Evil, why did you say: "I am sure many gamers out there disagree strongly with your statement - myself included?"

I use my plasma for 80% gaming. The motion resolution is much much higher with a plasma. Most full hd lcd's don't go higher than 600 against 1080 for the latest Pana and Pioneer. Even my 50 inch hdready has got a higher motion resolution than these full hd lcd's!
The refreshrate of a modern lcd is 2-6 ms, a plasma does 0,001ms.
These plasma's also have a game-mode, with pixelshift. Burn in? Old news. I'm gaming hours at a time and ofcourse there is no burn in.

The only reason that lcd's are popular with gamers, is that the first time most people saw a hdtv, was on a Samsung lcd on the xbox360 stands.
When friends who has got full hd lcd's see my hdready plasma, they cannot believe there eyes.

The worst thing about this tv is the edge lit leds. These do not have Local Dimming, so the hole screen is being dimmed just like a conventional backlight!

The blacklevel is not great, viewing angle is not good en the details in the blacks are not even in the same sector as a plasma.
Because of the bright picture people think the picturequality is good, but when you take a good look you can see it flaws.

Maybe it's the first lcd with thx? Everybody knows plasma is the best, but lcd is getting better.
But $3000 for a 55 inch lcd? Don't make me laugh! For that kind of money I can by a 60 inch Pioneer (60 inch 5090) wich is a reference model in hdtv's

Same here, I couldn't care less for a 1 or 2 inch thinner screen. It's the picturequality that matters and the new edge lit leds don't impress me at all!

Pay attention to the very low 4000:1 contrast ratio! The Panasonic plasma's have a 40.000:1 native contrast and that is a very important part of picture quality and so are the details in black etc etc.

These kinds of contrasts doesn't say a thing about picture-quality.
What they do is letting the tv producing the most bright picture it can do with the backlight fully open. Then they do a black as possible picture with the blacklight as low as possible and the difference is the dynamic contrast.

Why is this useless? Because you will never look at a picture that way. However: there is a different and realistic way to measure contrast and that is with the ANSI-methode where they let the tv produce a picture of black and white fields like in a chessboard. Then they measure the difference between the white and the black fields and you got a more realistic contrast that is telling you something about picture quality.
Samsung dynamic contrasts are a joke because the're lcd's have a much lower contrast than a plasma and that's why more and more people see that the picture quality on a plasma is so much more beautiful. Not to speak of the bad motion resolution of the lcd's. People want nothing less than full hd, but they don't know that the motion resolution of a full hd lcdtv drops from 1080 lines to 300-650 lines. A full hd plasma shows 900 lines when showing a moving picture like movies etc. Even my hdready plasma is sharper and has a higher motion resolution than a full hd lcd! Specs specs specs....it doesn't say much!

The bandlines have nothing to do with contrast, but with how many colours the screen can show (8bit of 10bit). When the tv cannot show the amount of colours in a picture than it should do, you will see these lines.