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Help with plasma TV choice

Greetings,

I would appreciate comments/suggestions to help me with my choice of plasma TV. This TV will be our first HT set-up, and will be used in a weekend home. It will be used for DVD playback, movie downloads, and the kids' video games (Wii). NO cable or satellite. Video signal will be supplied by an Oppo DVD player, and/or the TV's (or Oppo's) internal Wifi connectivity for movie downloads. As such, I would strongly consider a dedicated display, but don't seem to be able to find one in my price range.

Size-wise I would like something in the 55-60 inches diag range, and I
would like to spend $1300-2000 (street price), or so. After some research at a local dealer, I am pretty sure my choice can be narrowed to either
Panasonic or Samsung. The Samsungs' picture quality looks somewhat better to my eye, but I have concerns about screen reflectivity given reported issues with the Samsungs and the fact that there are many windows in the room where it will be used. The Panasonics in general look very good but somewhat subdued and less bright and defined than the Samsungs.

Rest of the system will be a Totem Dreamcatcher 5.1 setup driven by a B&K 307 receiver.

Thoughts? Thanks.
frogman
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
All sets come out of the box in torch mode for the sales floor. As mentioned above, you can't really compare without some careful time consuming adjustment.

Based on my own and friend's anecdotal experiences, I'm not convinced that Samsung has a firm handle on product quality and consistency. They make stuff that looks great on paper but seems to me to have too many premature failures.

YMMV!
audiomike1
21 posts
 
Just purchased a 60" Panny GT50... Bottom line.. the best TV i have evr owned.. blew away my old DLP Samsung 61" and totally outdid the Sony LED HX850 that i tried... has a more real picture with accurate colors and a fantastic looking cinema-like picture.. can't be beat for $2,000.00!!!!!
The Sammy plasma came in a close second.. which I almost bought.. just think the Panny is superior. But these plasma's totally blow away all of the LED's I have seen.. the LED's give me a headache literally and are hyper-real and not very good looking...just my opinion.. hope this helps!!
bojack
650 posts
 
LOVE my Samsung Plasma. It has made concert DVDs a revelation. I have heard the Pannys are good as well, but I remember reading that the Samsung has a better rep among the hard core videophiles for naturalness of skin tones (if that matters to you) and picture adjustment options. I never thought I would like watching DVDs as much until I got mine.
willland's avatar
willland
846 posts
 
Another thumbs up for Samsung plasma. I just bought an open box Samsung PN59D6500 59" Smart plasma at BB for $1199.00($2200.00 msrp) and could not be happier. Very rich and natural colors and very black blacks.

I owned a Mitsubishi 57731 57" dlp for five trouble free years and was very pleased with its performance with the exception of dark scenes, where the images were washed out in darkness. Black level performance was less than mediocre but the whites and bright scenes were about as good as any. Native contrast ratio was tested very low because of the not so good blacks.

This Samsung plasma has taken my viewing experience to a totally new level, especially BD and some of the better broadcast HD channels like Natural Geographic.

Bill
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
Hi Frogman - if you know anything about it, you could probably do it yourself. I knew absolutely nothing about it. The guy did have a piece of equipment, but I believe all he was doing was confirming what he was doing with the remote. So no, I don't think the test equipment is necessary. You can also, by the way, calibrate it for a few different settings - he did two different TV settings for me, one daytime, and one nighttime, and also did a third setting specifically for my DVD player.
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