Get a Samsung UN46C6300 46 in. Widescreen 1080p LED HDTV for $929 at Buy.com, a $770.99 Savings! Valid through 02-06-2011
The Good:
*Vibrant colors--of which ancient, grunting, CRT-watching man could only dream.
*HD content is displayed so realistically I'll quit my job and live under a bridge to watch TV all day.
*Even standard-def shows look quite good on this set, like super models only five or ten years past their prime.
*Black levels are significantly deeper than I would have expected based on all the online whinging about edge-lit LED screens (e.g., "Give me local dimming, or give me death!").
*Supa-thin profile makes the compact fluorescent "flat" panels look McDonald's chubby.
The Tolerable:
*Crowded buttons on the remote, which I hardly use in favor of the cable company's universal (or maybe no more than planetary) remote. I'll only pick up the Samsung remote on occasion to adjust advanced settings, but when I do, I often push an unintended button.
*Very slight edge-lit brightness on black borders. Much of what's on TV will fill the screen, so you won't even have the opportunity to notice the effect. Really, it's not that bad--I've seen far worse light leakage while watching movies on my 2007 alum iMac.
The Tolerated:
*There's only one thing that bugs me a bit, and it's not a deal breaker. (Besides, I already bought the TV, so the deal has been, well. . . concluded, if you must.) When the screen is mostly black and only a small graphic is displayed somewhere, the LEDs go a bit dim--you can actually see, over a fraction of a second, the light levels drop. I'm assuming that the TV was set up this way so that the LEDs wouldn't be leaking ghostly light on a largely black screen. I've fussed with the settings, but I can't make this effect go away. I haven't yet fully explored all the setting menus, so I just might hit pay dirt soon, or maybe Samsung will nix that effect with a firmware update. At any rate, whatever text is dimmed is still very legible, and when the next screen-filling scene pops up, the LEDs power up without any detectable delay so that thereafter the screen's as bright as it should be. No biggie--it's not enough of a problem for me to scratch a star off the rating.
The Tweakable:
*Turning off motion smoothing is not difficult under most circumstances; indeed, some content begs to be smooved, e.g., sports and competitive cooking shows. But when I first plugged in a movie via the USB drive, I got motion smooving by default and wanted none of it. Whenever I pushed the remote's "Menu" button, I ended on a screen far, far away from the USB drive's content, and ended up adjusting the picture settings for the cable feed and not the target movie on the USB drive. I was bedeviled awhile, but a bit of snooping around the owner's manual led to this minor discovery: by pressing the "Tools" button on the Samsung remote, I could enter a submenu that let me turn off the smooving effect without leaving the movie. Cheap soap opera video effect, begone!
Conclusion:
The picture is what matters most, and this TV's output makes my jaw drop to the floor. Which is rather fortuitous, because I need something down there to catch my eyeballs.
Get a Samsung UN46C6300 46 in. Widescreen 1080p LED HDTV for $929 at Buy.com, a $770.99 Savings! Valid through 02-06-2011
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