Samsung LCD TVs

For the past few years I have been on the plasma tv band wagon.Why?Well for a long time it has been carved in A/V stone that tvs over 40" were just better as plasmas for a number of reasons.Black Levels were better,color saturation and contrast levels were just way better.This year for the first time I am breaking the rule.Recently while perusing the tvs at my local distributor a group of Samsung tvs caught my eye,I asked my rep for more details and a demonstration.We hooked up a Blu Ray player and put on the Planet Earth discs.If you have not seen it I can only say its a must watch.The reason why this is a good demo disk is that some of the scenes have millions of objects (birds) moving across the screen and then there are just vivid slow motion moments that really show contrast ratios. On the Samsung LN55A950  the scene with the birds was processed so well that I only saw a few digital artifacts.which is on par with any of the top Plasmas from the last year (Kuros).

The Colors were so vivid and at this point I was 80% sold ,but the real test for me is how it does with black levels.This is normally the Achilles heel for LC tvs.We put on Iron Man and moved to the scenes featuring Tony Starks time in Afghanistan.Dark caves and some bright light sources.Again I was just blown away,there was hardly any blooming and the black is really black. 

Now these were just taken out of the box and thrown on the wall,no calibration of any kind.I cant imagine the images I can get with a little time and a few tweaks.So for me this is the product I will be putting on my customers walls.The 5gs for a 55" price tag is appropriate for a tv of this caliber. If you want to spend less and get 90% of the performance they do have the a cheaper model.The nice thing is that the LN52A860  is ultra thin and almost as good for $3400. 

The only down side to these tvs is that the glass is pretty reflective. Some other brands put tints or less shine on the glass,but you miss out on the brilliance that ultra good glass gets you.So for a lot of daytime tv watching this is something to keep in mind,but is not a deal killer.

Netflix player via XBOX 360

Last November XBOX 360 revamped their operating system and one of the key features that they added was the NetFlix instant watch player. I have been a subscriber for years and for a while I have been watching movies on my PC via the instant watch feature.The problem to this point has been the amount of movies watchable .But with the release of the XBOX player they also announced a ton more movies to be released .The STARZ network partnered with NetFlix and added a lot of newer content. The setup is a 5 second deal with your laptop and Xbox on. The software took 2 minutes to download. Even the most tech challenged will find the Xbox set up easy. You do have to have a gold live membership,but that's worth it. 

Some of the content is Hd , and these titles have longer load times (30 sec compared to 20seconds) and some times have to pause to reload.But a normal DVD plays uninterrupted .Fast forward and rewind are not as smooth as a normal DVD ,but its the price to pay for the convenience.After using the service for 3 months and building my instant watch Que to 300+ movies I cant imagine not having it.If the DVR is recording two shows at once we can go to the xbox and find a movie. Shira uses it at times and has no problems navigating the menus. I know that I have been touting the 360 as the best media / game machine out there and this just puts the nail in the coffin.The PS3 is nice and is the best Blu Ray player on the market but it just is not as refined as the xbox.I own both and use the 360 so much more.There are other options to get the instant watch,there are some Samsung BR players that have it and the Roku box does just the instant watch for $100.00 . But with all the other features its a steal.Also just announced was that Netflix will be doing instant watch only subscriptions,but at $8.00 a month to start the regular one is really cheap.

If your a movie buff and want a ton of movies at your fingertips there is no better option.