Samsung PS50A650D - DVB-T + full HD

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Batman

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#30209 1-Feb-2009 19:53

just to inform that i've bit the bullet and bought this box for $3400 at uncle harvey's. you know it's so hard to get the right tv, plasma vs lcd, but in the end wanted full HD and cheap and big.

50 inch plasma that kinda compares with the viera picture quality but largely inferior sound quality. has built-in freeview hd tuner so the sales person says (hmm will it work will it work? i can get prime and maori tv pretty clear).

waiting to be shipped. anyone want to strongly advise me to stop them loading the truck tomorrow morning? if not a review will be posted when able.

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#193285 1-Feb-2009 20:40

You won't regret it, I bought the Panasonic equivalent and it's amazing compared to my old 32" TV. I've got it connected to my HTPC and although LCD is meant to be better as a computer display, you wouldn't know it + the in-built HD Tuner is well worth it.

Good luck and enjoy.........by the way how much did you pay?

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#193408 2-Feb-2009 14:11

ok all my skepticism about decoding freeview is dissipated. tv works like a charm. when i turned it on there was an auto channel setup which took all but 3 minutes and then the epg works too! i guess reading the dvb-t et extraterriestial thread gave me undue stress ...

no other tv to compare picture quality but anything with 3million pixels can't be bad! the 100hz picture engine is amazing, eliminates jerkiness completely, but makes it less sharp. the sharper option of 1080 @24p was surprisingly jerky. in fact a google review said to leave it on 1080@30i (which the tv will convert to 100hz). i wonder if the panasonic 480hz subdrive works any better.

sound is nothing to shout about but i dont care, with 2 under 2's in the house there is no room for noise be it fantastic or trash.

overall i think it's the price that counts. for $3400 it's cheap.

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#193815 3-Feb-2009 21:28

found out the model is actually ps50a650t1f. even has a new firmware which i have installed - apart from wiping all settings an australian forum suggested it has improved 100hz up-scanning when you choose the option. upscanning is bad for high def content as the sharpness decreases, but with the new firmware it has retained most of its sharpness, but in doing it so well, it's become 'fake' (the movies play like cartoons!) ! some jerkiness is needed! obviously upscanning is permanently disabled when playing content in 1080@24fps ...

the other annoyance is - it can't display 1080@60fps from my laptop. the max it can read is 720p. which is annoying, and even then it says it is receiving 1364x856 (or something like that) which is obviously isnt output at that. pixel matching is not perfect with 720p, but not bad. googling says it is a known samsung hdtv annoyance.

the other annoyance - it plays hi def content so well (we had a 1280x756 sony grand wega before) we love it. but when it is given sd content - it looks crap highly pixellated, completely unsmooth - well it's not bad, but compared with the grand wega engine (was able to make it look like 720p with that tv, it was that good) this is hopeless. however it's not designed to play sd so ... can't complain too much.

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#193825 3-Feb-2009 21:48

It's an unfortunate thing but IMHO SD content (particularly low bitrate) looks terrible on any full HD panel when you start moving above 40".

720p panels do a lot better job with SD content which is perfectly logical - for the same size panel you have less pixels so there is far less upscaling to do.

As for the 100Hz (and now 200Hz) stuff it's one of those things that is both good and bad. It imroves some content vastly and makes some look terrible and sped up.