New Samsung LCD HDTV Review

Great bedroom TV
I bought this TV for our bedroom and it works very well there. It has a great picture and the speakers are better than most televisions this size. Since it's in our bedroom, I didn't want to have to hook it up to a receiver to have good sound quality. This would also be a good TV for a kid's room where they might want to hook up a Playstation or X-Box and have good sound effects.

The Best!
I just bought this TV. It is amazing. Easy to set up...clear picture...great sound...amazing response time...and it picks up approximately 15 over the air free HD channels. Furthermore, the delivery was excellent (came about a week early). I will definitely use Amazon.com to buy future HDTV's. Thank you Amazon!

Beautiful TV, but there are sound problems on many units if you don't use a cable box/DVR
This is a beautiful TV with a great picture, but, unfortunately, the QAM tuner is defective in many of these units. The sound will get robotic and distorted on HD channels if you do not have a cable box/DVR hooked up to a defective unit. Every few minutes the sound will get really distorted when HD programming is on, last from anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, then disappear and get really distorted again every 3-5 minutes or less. The problem may not occur right away, as it did in our case; it took a few weeks for it to occur. This happens not only on this model of Samsung LCD TVs, but on numerous others. Some units have the problem, while others do not, so getting the problem is quite random depending on what TV you get. Mostly this is a problem with Comcast, but I have heard it also happens with other cable companies without a box. Search the Internet for Samsung "distorted sound" and "robotic audio" for more information on the problem. Samsung is completely unresponsive about this problem and there are many angry owners. It's an extremely annoying problem that currently has no permanent fix. We've had the circuit board replaced once, but the sound problem came back within a matter of days. We tried to get the circuit board replaced again, but the circuit board they gave us was defective. What great products Samsung makes, huh? Then they tried to replace our TV with an older, less expensive model. Their customer service is also the worst we have ever experienced; they just don't care about their customers. We do not plan to buy any more Samsung products in the future because of our experience. We really are very disappointed.

My best advice is to avoid this TV (or any Samsung LCD TV, for that matter) if you don't have a cable box. If you do have a cable box/DVR, there is no problem at all with sound and you can ignore my review. However, not everyone wants or needs a cable box (we just have basic cable and do not need the extra expense each month or the extra channels, which would cost more a month at least for us), so having a faulty tuner is a big problem. There is no excuse for shoddy products. The TV should work fine in any environment, not just in homes with cable boxes, and that is the main issue here. I have no clue how this got through inspection. This has just been our experience with this TV and it has not been a good one.

Update: There is a temporary fix for this problem which involves doing a factory reset by holding down the Exit button for 10 seconds and reprogramming all of the channels. This seems to fix the problem temporarily until the TV stops receiving power (either by power outage, power fluctuations, or by unplugging the TV). It's not permanent, but it's something until a permanent fix is found, if one is ever found.

arrived broken
I wanted to love this TV. It looked great in the store. The price was right. But it came out of the box broken. It turns on for about half a second, then goes black. Samsung tech support tried transferring me to "level two service" twice, each time I was disconnected before the third tech person said that level two service was closed. I had to call the next day to schedule an appointment for them to come to my place to repair it, and now I'm going to have to use a vacation day waiting from them to come out, because they don't do repairs evenings or weekends. So far, a pretty miserable experience.

UPDATE: Samsung repair came to the house, but they didn't bring the right part. Apparently, this TV's innards are plastic, not metal like the last model, and the official Samsung repair people didn't even have this plastic part yet. A day taken off of work for nothing.

UPDATE2: Got a replacement TV and it's great. Great picture for the price. BTW, the reviewer who said you can't use a VCR with this set because "it doesn't have the outdated composite video input that VCRs require" is incorrect. One of the component video inputs also works as a composite input. I've attached my old VHS player, and it works just fine.

nice performing and relatively inexpensive enty level HDTV
Just bought this set a couple of days ago. I have had my eye on the new models that run at 120hz but just couldn't justify paying over 00 on th 46 inch set I wanted. I bought this set as a test to see if the reviews on Samsung sets are accurate.
Set up is a snap with this set. I only had to consult the manual to figure out how to turn off the welcoming chimes. Everything else is easily found on the on screen menue.
DTV stations on my over the air antenna look great. Weak analog stations need some picture manipulation to make them visible but the tuner over all performs well. HDTV content over the satellite is excellent. I was suprised at how well the set performs on fast motion action. It's rated a 6ms which is just 2ms more than the much pricier 120hz models. Granted you don't get as high of a contrast ration, but for the price I can't complain the black level is good. Blue ray disks and playstation 3 games look amazing.
I run the sound through my Denon home theater and it performs well. The set speakers do an adequate job although sound separation is limited even with the SRS sound engaged so I just use my Linaeum center channel.
I plan on using this set as a pc monitor as well, I just haven't hooked it up yet.
I still plan on buying the LNA630 wich is full 1080p and runs at 120hz, but until the price drops this set will suffice.
Bottom line this is a good set for the price and it is small enough that you don't need to run 1080p. The refresh rate is only 60hz but motion blur is minimal. The only down side is the remote is not back lit and seems a little cheap. I will review this set again in six months to keep you posted on how it is holding up. If it continues to perform well I should be buying another larger set at that time.