Accessories

Samsung LN46A550
Great TV,outstanding transaction with Amazon. Delivery was so prompt that we wern't home from vacation when the first scheduled delivery date was called to us. We ordered the tv on June 20th and it was going to be delivered on June 27th. We rescheduled for July 2nd and it came right on time.
Picture was perfect out of box, even with our old Dish Network non HDTV receiver. The new HDTV receiver and dish are scheduled for installation on July 12th. Can't wait to see picture.
Amazon was super on adjusting the price to a lower advertised price one week after shipping in accordance with their policy.
Amazon is the only way to go and the LN46A550 is the best TV for the price on the market today,

fantastic picture, easy setup
After spending many hours researching products, checking with friends that had made similar purchases, reading many reviews, and finally getting the courage to pull the trigger on a $1000 + television, it all let to this product. Amazon was the best price I could find from any company with a reputation or that I had ever heard of, and the free shipping was a big bonus. Installation was easy and fairly intuitive. Picture is outstanding and I had it just in time to watch the US Open Golf in HD. It was just beautiful. I don't think anyone can go wrong with this product.

Samsung LN46A550
Samsung LN46A550 46-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV I've had this TV for 30 days and am very impressed with the picture quality, however the sound is muffled and hard to understand. I purchased a sound system to hear the TV surround sound as it is intended to be heard. I have a hearing problem and that is possibly the reason that the sound is poor.
All the LCD TV's that I looked at had the same sound problem as this one if not worse. I love all the detail that I can see with the High Definition quality of this TV. The remote is easy to navigate as well. Delivery and setup from Amazon was outstanding.

Wonderful!
We love our new television! Everything related to this transaction was perfect--except for the suggested installation service, which we ordered but shouldn't have. Don't buy it! It's not necessary, and we ended up canceling ours because the installation guy wasn't available until about 5 days after we got the tv. The truck delivery was timely--it came exactly one week after we ordered it. The driver connected our tv and waited to see if everything was working before he left. In addition, we took advantage of the 24-month no-interest payment plan. All in all, we are very pleased and will look to Amazon in the future for more purchases like this one.

Fantastic TV With Fantastic Options
I was replacing my old Sony 42A10 Grand Wega Rear Projection LCD. That's an older set and the black levels were notoriously bad. After some calibration, I was able to get a decent picture out of it. Apparantly this line had been lemons though, as optical engine after optical engine being replaced had failed. Time for a new TV.

I was honestly going to go for a Panasonic Plasma originally. Plasmas are known for great contrast levels. I've seen 30,000:1 for some plasma contrast levels, but LCD's are catching up and Samsung this year brings out an affordable set that's below the popular $2000 budget, and makes it a breeze to use.

Out of the box the color levels aren't bad at all. Grey scale is actually not too far off from being accurate with the 'movie mode' setting, which takes off most artificial effects to the picture which would really make colors pop un-naturally and crush darker shades of black so you lose some minor detail. Of course, I did a calibration for this set based on some calibrations done in the AVSForum online and this set at that point blew me away even more. Samsungs over months and months of figuring out what I should buy between plasma or LCD, or what brand even, have come out on top in picture quality and color reproduction.

So there's the praise on the picture, but we all know that if you're serious about an HDTV you need to consider everything else. The 5ms response time is nice and works just fine with time sensitive games... forget wasting your money on the more expensive sets that give you 4ms response time. Hundreds of dollars for this and a 50,000:1 contrast ratio alone aren't worth it. This TV doesn't have 120hz but there's really nothing to say negative about any kind of motion blur, this set holds up extremely well with very very little or no blur at all.

How about the ease of use? The menus are very easy to navigate. I mentioned I did some calibrating, which usually means you have to go into a service menu that has to be accessed by punching a secret code in a remote. Then, you're staring at menus that you have no idea what anything means, so if you change the wrong values, you could potentially turn your TV into a large paperweight. Don't like the new service menu settings, and forgot to write down what the old ones were? Well, you're screwed. Especially since service menu tinkering voids your warranty!

Not so with this set, and this is my favorite part of the TV's settings since I love to tweak my set:

All of the color and white balance options are accessible via the normal user menu. Change your color mode to custom, and you can change all of your gains and off-sets... and if you don't like what you've done or if you messed up... there's a option in each color menu that says 'Reset'. Tell me that's not convenient. If you never wanted to shell out $200-$400 for a professional calibration, and you've always been a little weary of tweaking your service menu... fear no more.

The only downside to this set, is that the speakers sound pretty bad. Most people like myself, already have a surround sound system so this may not be a deal breaker... but the options for the sound can be calibrated to sound decent enough as long as you're patient.

Last but not least, Samsung has given us a much larger viewing angle for this LCD than we'd get with normal LCD panels. Samsung is ahead of the game with LCD's and if you're thinking about LCD (which I did because I game a lot and didn't want to even risk image retention with plasma), Samsung is the way to go. When Sony is using Samsung parts now-a-days, you know that's gotta mean good things, right? Great contrast, good black levels, good viewing angle, lots of HDMI and component inputs, can't ask for much more than that.