Review by jartwo for Samsung PN50C550 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Black)
Rating:
I had tried to buy the previous “B” model at close-out prices, but I missed the boat. Thought I might be outta luck until the “C” version started showing up a day or so afterward and it turned out to be basically the same TV, just about 25lbs lighter – only 2 people needed to wall mount – I was down with that and $[...] bucks still didn’t seem too bad. I had already researched for some time and Plasma was it for me. The Panny G-10 had a similarly good picture too, and although it offers much to consider, I liked the Sammy’s picture just a bit more, but you may want to check it out as well. I received the set with zero problems or issues: no dead pixels or any buzzing, whines or anything amiss at all. Outta the box the picture was quite good, and showed me good resolution performance even with SD cable with no video noise issues (although initially I did find it necessary to use the 3 supplied ferrite, choke magnets that snap onto the power cord. These not only eliminated the several horizontal noise bands in the picture, but cleaned up the resolution on the overall picture with no downside – an easy fix that totally nixed the problem for me).

But, tweaking the picture a bit is where this set shines the most. When researching, I came across a site that offered a list of picture control settings for the “B” version. Since this is really the same panel, I factored it into my buying decision accordingly. Especially since the settings were said to be obtained with a Sencore color analyzer (about a $10,000 pro device for calibrating video displays and is the sort of thing used by the Imaging Science Foundation – ISF. They at least did pioneer and continue to legitimize the video calibration practice, but more to the point, it WASN’T done by any of the more lame imitators that have since cropped up (like Geek Squad, Spyder and others) whom, I feel, exist to separate you from your money (at about $300 a calibration) while hardly giving you a better picture adjustment than you can get on your own with a $25 calibration DVD).

What this means to us is that the results of, what I’m taking to be the equivalent of a $300 (legit) picture calibration, for this particular set anyway, have already been posted on the web for free – not an inconsequential consideration, for anyone interested. I’m posting those numbers here, for those who are:

White Balance Settings:

Red-Offset: 22

Green-Offset: 25

Blue-Offset: 12

Red-Gain: 33

Green-Gain: 25

Blue-Gain: 33

Picture Settings:

Picture Mode: Movie

Color Temp: Warm 2

Brightness: 56

Contrast: 90

Cell Light 8

Color: 53

Tint: G35/R65

Sharpness: 10

Black Tone: Off

Dynamic Contrast: Off

Gamma: 0

Colorspace: Auto

Flesh Tone: Off

Edge Enhancement: Off

Digital NR: Auto

HDMI Black Level: Low

Film Mode: Auto

When I tried these settings I noticed a very organic, natural-looking picture, one that offered me a few surprizes. This set happens to be inherently capable of showing a more-than-generous amount of color saturation without problem. I personally prefer a picture that’s just slightly undersaturated, if anything (but, I expect this set will accomodate anyone’s taste on that score, if yours are different than mine). With all this, what I found was that even when slightly undersaturated and I felt the picture was indeed realistic-looking, whenever an unusually colorful object was displayed (like a particularly vivid piece of clothing, or a brightly flourescent color – like some NASCAR colors, for example), this TV displayed BOTH the less intense colors of the more mundane objects, and the most decidedly vivid ones, equally well in the same scene AT THE SAME TIME – never subduing the most vivid colors even when the overall color level looked ‘properly’ undersaturated to me on the more everyday objects. Nor was it unnaturally emphasizing them, for that matter. The result was a TV that, on any good, HiDef, cable feed, regularly showed me a surprisingly wide (yet natural-looking) “dynamic range” of color intensity in the images. I could just about feel as if the TV itself were getting out of the way and showing me clearly (and more truthfully than I’ve seen in my home before) just what the camera saw. Very nice and, as I say, surprizingly convincing (and this with simply 1080i and 720p cable feeds – a Blu-ray player is definitely next!). This set, after my preferred adjustments, didn’t make all the colors look too subdued, like some plasmas I’ve seen have ended up doing, nor all the colors too vivid, like some LCD’s. I felt like it walked the line beautifully – not merely a good compromise, but it seemed truly the best of both in this regard. Black levels were great and with excellent detail – no complaints.

In the end, I did opt to deviate from the settings above, but only with respect to overall contrast/brightness and color level settings, everything else was the same. This gave me an appreciable gain in contrast that suits me and my family’s tastes in our well lighted, daytime living room. Plasma is usually not as vivid in the contrast department as most LCD’s or LED’s, but in the mid-price range ($1,000-$1,500 retail) it’s a small price for me to pay for a picture that I feel (with adjustment) is otherwise decidedly sharper, clearer, more life-like and dimensional than anything else for the money. I haven’t felt that any comparative lack of overall contrast has resulted in any buyer’s remorse for me at all, as no such notion has yet remotely entered my head anytime I’ve watched it.

I’ll add that in my experience with LCD’s vs. Plasmas, Plasmas kill LCD’s and LED’s when it comes to motion – at least in the sets in this price range. Up over about $2,000 and differences between the panel types start to get quite a bit smaller to me. But, just before I settled on this Sammy, I went to Wally World and dragged home a Vierra LCD, mainly to see if ‘taming down’ an LCD picture to suit my tastes could possibly be better than trying to ‘pump up’ a Plasma. In this case, a huge waste of time! What I saw was a 120-Hz LCD on sale at just under a 1,000 bucks that just couldn’t do motion very well at ALL. I popped in a SD DVD of Lawrence of Arabia and it looked like it was shot “live-to-video”, perfectly goofy. I also found out just how bad a 5-ms response time can look on a 47″ set. The 120Hz feature DID work as advertised and made fast motion MUCH better than without, but any slow-speed pan or movement caused a nearly instantaneous defocusing of the area of motion, until the motion stopped and the blurred area was able to snap back into focus. When watching a head shot of someone speaking, for example, their face would perceptably blur in the areas of facial movement while the face of another person in the scene next to them (not talking) remained in sharp focus – too disconcerting. And too much of a disconnect to the experience to NOT want to look at a person while they were talking(!). Plasma (600Hz or no) inherently has no such motion problems that require the consumer to spend money on to overcome. If that wasn’t enough (and, believe me, for me it was) the somewhat artificial vividness to the picture proved, at least on this LCD, to be something I could never quite tame, no matter what the settings.

For me, to pass muster, a flat panel must make no major blunders in the 4 most important performance areas of color, contrast, resolution and motion. To me this Sammy does all of that and at a very nice price – I don’t know how I can do much better than that, especially without another free video calibration. In fact, the only Plasma that I’m confident could beat it hands down is the discontinued-but-still-available Pioneer Kuro 50″ plasma. But then, it should, it retailed for a mere $4,500 when new. But, a few months ago it could be had on the web for only 1,600 bucks. It’s just that at the time, I didn’t have the scratch. Now, the remaining ones, if you can find ‘em, were, the last time I looked, hovering around $3,000. Oh well, I’ll tell you one thing, though; this machine at this price, has certainly eased my pain…;) I know this isn’t 3D, or more colors than RGB or anything, but I’m more than content now to wait all that out. Til the next round, this will do me just fine!

Review by G. Bell for Samsung PN50C550 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Black)
Rating:
I’ve had mine for two weeks now and could not be more pleased with my choice. I reviewed LCD, LED and Plasma as I was looking for something in the 46″-50″ range. I had narrowed my options down to the Panny G15 ogr G20 and this set. Frankly, they both had a few reports of problems. The Pannys being the changing black levels that panasonic says is a planned adjustment as the set ages vs. the buzzing that some Samsung Plasma owners seem to get. I decided that the buzzing was a hit or miss and if I got one that did buzz, I would return it and by another at a later date. Sicne the Panny is engineered to adjust it’s black levels and they are clearly not going to fix the issue with a firmware update, I scratched them from the list. This set has the best picture of anything I looked at straight out of the box. After tweaking with some settings I found on the web, It is truly like looking out a picture window into the real world. Acturate, lifelike colors that are not over saturated and look as natural as I’ve ever seen. Sound on this set is much better than many reviewers give it credit for as long as your not expecting 5.1 theater type sound from a tv. Plenty loud, no humming or hissing or problems for my family. There’s plenty of hookups (4 HDMI, PC, Componet and composite for most everyones needs.

I’ve mounted mine on the wall using a mount from monoprice and it’s now it’s like the home theater I always wanted. Great picture from about 10′ viewing distance. For under $1200, I feel like I stole this set. If your looking, make sure you give this one a try.

One last thing is to READ the manual. there are a few tips inside that are priceless. One is that the “pixal orbiter” that prevents burn in requires a certain setting (can’t remember it exactly since I set it up and forgot it). I used the settings in the Most Helpful Post in this forum and then tweaked slightly to the lighting conditions of my room. I’m currently running well below max brightness to help break the set in but it looks great so I doubt I’ll turn it up any once I get a 1000 hours on it.

Review by Jeffrey Bowman for Samsung PN50C550 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Black)
Rating:
Having reviewed Consumer Reports, AV Forums, CNET etc I determined that plasma was the best choice given that picture quality is the most important factor in a TV purchase in my opinion.I had been carefully reviewing the Panasonic G10 but passed when the black level “scandal” came about. I trust CNETs reviews and the AV forums. I watch a lot of films and black/low light scenes are an important consideration for me as this is an area where LCDs struggle. We upgraded from a reference level Sony 34XBR960. The picture quality is excellent on the PN50C550. Black levels are very good although not the absolute best possible. For that i would have had to spend 4k+

I did the Spears and Munsil Bluray calibration. It needed some adjustment from the factory settings to get very close to reference levels of contrast, blacks, color saturation etc. The factory settings aren’t awful but if you want test bed/reference quality then I suggest spending the $25 for this disk and doing it yourself. Very easy to work within the Samsung menus to achieve the best picture quality. It took about 15 mins to make all the slight adjustments. Most factory settings are too bright and over saturated colors. I want reality not hyper colors. Especially when watching sports. I know what the court at Staples center looks like, the grass at Qualcomm Stadium and the colors better match at home. They definetly do.

It does have that slight hum or buzz. This is not audible unless you are within 4-6 feet or less of the TV with no other sounds in the room. I don’t use the built-in speakers. The hum is coming from the power supple I believe. It’s a constant buzz similar to a computer.

We didn’t need all the bells/whistles of the higher levels in this series as we can plug an ethernet or wireless router into the Tv if we want internet or picture streaming.

Bottom line: Best bang for your buck under $1200, heck I would put it against a 2-3k LED/LCD in a testbed showdown! Amazon has the best price and delivery was easy/on-time with CEVA. I picked it up from the dock in Los Angeles as I didn’t want to wait an extra day for them to home deliver since I live down the freeway from CEVA.

Jeff

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Review by Brandon W. Knutson for Samsung PN63C550 63-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV (Black)
Rating:
Yes, I absolutely love this TV! I’ve had numerous LCD TV’s, and evenlast year’s Samsung 63″ PN63B550. Since I have very few windows nearby to cause glare on the shinny screen I went with another Plasma for my family room. This PN63C550 TV was actually the warranty replacement for my PN63B550, which buzzed so much from day one to day 60 when it left the house that I could hear it will sitting 10′ feet away watching the TV and normal volume. I did an on-line service ticket with Samsung, they sent a tech, the tech thought it the buzzing was a just a little loud. He actually called Samsung a day later and without any asking or begging, Samsung sent me a replacement TV, this PN63C550. It is almost silent due to better insulation used and it much lighter. It is a thing of beauty and doesn’t blur like all LCD TVs I’ve either owned or looked at in a showroom. There’s no on-screen / on-line features, but my Samgsung Blu-Ray player and Nintendo Wii give me those features. Because the Blu-Ray and TV have “Anynet+”, a real plus is that feature’s automatic turning on of the Blu-Ray and setting the input to Blu-Ray. No regrets here!