I've had this TV up for almost a week now, and thought I would post a review to help some folks out. First off let me say my TV has absolutely no buzz whatsoever; i think Samsung was the victim of the internet here where people sit with their TV muted and listen for the buzz until they drive themselves crazy. Even with my TV muted sitting 6-8 feet away i hear nothing out of the ordinary. The other hot topic with these TVs seems to be burn in/image retention. My kids have watched several hours of Nick Jr. with their stupid bright orange logo fixated on the screen. I've watched ESPN with the ticker at the bottom. Also we've left the TV paused for 15 minutes or so a few times. I've also played several hours of Final Fantasy XIII (which looks absolutely ridiculous by the way). I have not seen even the slightest hint of a ghost or anything on the screen whatsoever, so if you buy this TV do yourself a favor and don't worry about image retention, just enjoy your awesome TV! The last issue i read about was the whole 1080p/24 cinema smooth deal, and i can report that my tv switched between 24 and 60 hz with no changes to my picture settings before and after i watched a blu ray.
The picture on it is easily the best, smoothest, and most natural looking i have ever seen. Even HD commercials look staggeringly good. I've played with the settings some using a couple calibration guides i found on the net, but in all honesty this TV looks incredible right out of the box and 90% of people will be completely happy with the stock settings. The only thing i did right away was turn the contrast down a bit because it was factory set at 100. This TV produces the brightest, cleanest whites and deepest, richest blacks i have ever laid eyes on. I watched Lost in HD and my jaw was constantly dropping. Even the little water splash on the ABC logo during commercial breaks floored me. I played Finding Nemo on upconverted DVD for the kids and even they were amazed. Also a couple buddies came over and i played the opening sequence on Fast and Furious with the surround sound jacked up and i could tell they were thinking about killing me and stealing my tv.
i paired mine up with the HT-BD1250 Blu Ray surround system also from Samsung, and it has a couple integration features with the TV that are quite nice. I can control all basic functions of the Blu Ray player with the TV remote; and at any time no matter what i'm watching on what input, i can hit "tools" on the tv remote and turn on the surround sound and the 1250 automatically turns on and turns to the correct input, and the tv remote volume control automatically switches to control the surround sound. pretty sweet. also when i turn the tv off the blu ray player automatically turns off too which is a nice feature, and you can turn that on or off in the menu.
UPDATE: spent some more time with the TV, and a couple things i thought i would mention for everyone. first off be aware that all the inputs are on the very bottom left corner of the TV as you look at it. i fished my cables through the wall and they ended up being too short because of this. go to Samsung's website and they have some good shots of the back of the TV; wish i would have seen those earlier. Also i thought i would post about glare/reflections. yes, the screen is super smooth and shiny so if you put the TV right across the room from a window you will see a reflection. i would say putting any TV across from a window is dumb though. my last TV was rear projection and this TV is WAY better for glare. ambient light from windows in the room, as long as they're not directly across from the TV, do little to affect the picture. i watch TV with the blinds open on a 6'x4' picture window on the adjacent wall and still have excellent picture. granted it does improve a bit when you close the blinds, but it's nowhere near the old projection where you could watch the birds playing in the puddle on the street outside through the reflection in the TV.
I also forgot to add my one negative to this review, and that would be the shipping handled by Pilot Freight though Amazon. Their tracking was miserable; they had it leaving Arizona then nothing for 6 days until I finally called THEM to set up my delivery on the day it was supposed to be delivered. Amazon had the TV leaving Arizona, then arriving here 3 days later, then 3 hours later leaving Arizona again on their website. When I called, the rep told me that was "normal". I guess they track things different than everyone else on the planet. Lastly, Pilot insisted on coming between 10-2, right in the middle of the day, because that was "the only time we can get 2 guys out there". Sure enough, when the truck pulled up at 1, there was the one guy by himself at my door asking if I could help him carry the TV up my stairs. He was also going to attempt to use a tiny hand truck to cart the TV across my lawn, so I ended up actually helping him carry it in from the truck. Other than that he was helpful and fairly knowledgeable about the TV.
UPDATE: Finally got some internet wired to the TV so I could check out the "widgets". Overall they are fairly stupid and definitely not something i think i'll be using with any regularity. Also as some have reported the entire thing moves painfully slow so it's really kind of a chore to navigate the menu system. Even after signing in with my Yahoo account and entering my zip code, the Yahoo weather widget displayed several temperatures from a bunch of cities nowhere near me. If i don't end up using the PC streaming feature I doubt I'll even leave the ethernet hooked up to the TV. So in summary the Medi@ 2.0 is definitely not worth the upgrade from the 550 to the 650, but in my opinion the picture quality and media player do make it worth it. On that note the USB media player is an excellent addition; you can plug in a flash drive or even a USB HDD and play music, movies, and photos instantly. This feature does work well and also has a built in screen saver to prevent image retention. The only down side is the music player doesn't support WMAs.
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