poor manual some frustration but AWESOME RECEPTION & CLARITY!
While I love gadgets I'm not into spending tons of money on televisions. I frankly don't watch TV as much as I did in my teens and as long as I can see everything without snow I figured I didn't need anything too fancy. I was content with the 32" Sony CRT I had for the past 8 years until it went off to be with the Lord.
I went to some local super centers to look at their offerings - it's nice to have lots of TVs in a certain price range all playing the same loop side by side so you can compare color depth along the entire gamut as well as refresh rates intensity glare etc.
I had heard that HDTV was the next wave of the future and since I expect a TV to last at least 10 years (or until it gives up the ghost) I didn't want to be left in the technological dust regretting my purchase so I compared prices and quality and this Samsung SlimFit was the hands-down winner - NO CONTEST.
The clarity in HD is stellar and in regular non DTV mode it's no slouch either... but if you're used to a regular analog (non digital) TV you will notice lower quality on analog channels. Why is this? A typical analog CRT set has about 300 lines of phosphors top to bottom. The HDTV has 1080 lines - so it has to take the 300 lackluster analog lines and basically triple the info - so it looks ok but underwhelming if you are switching from a nice expensive analog TV.
I asked tons of questions at the big box retailer to make sure that if and when I got this home I wouldn't be coming back with an AK-47 if my reception did not match what they had in the store.
I live in a town of about 90000 people and while we have digital cable we do not have HDTV available via cable. The big box retailer is stuck in the same town and they assured me they were not getting a satellite feed.
When the delivery men came with my TV and set it up I was underwhelmed. The reception was worse than on the dead TV when it was still living. I went back to the store and talked to the salesman who filled me in on some great information.
With HDTV over the air if you get as much as 51% of the signal you get the whole thing... so I got some RCA HDTV-ready rabbit ears and voila - I get local HDTV streams for free over the airwaves from Dallas and it is so stunning I've caught myself frozen on the carpet standing and staring at vacuum commercials. The depth the clarity - mind blowing.
I have an old DVD player - about 7 years old and it does not have progressive scan but a fairly new DVD "The Bourne Identity" looks freakin' awesome on this TV even w/o the progressive scan. The better option from progressive scan is the up-conversion which gives even more of a clarity booster.
The TV has it's own equivalent of an A/B/C/D/E switch via remote so when you want to switch from Playstation to DVD to TV to PVR you don't have to keep hopping out of your seat and flipping a switch. Three cheers for couch potatoes!
My less than stellar review is for the following reasons:
1.) The directions are incomplete. I have a PVR/DVR and while I had everything flawlessly hooked up with my previous TV myself even the "specialists" that set up my TV didn't know what to do. I had a committee meeting of sorts with the guys at the big box retailer until after about 30 minutes one of them came up with the solution that was not provided in the manual.
2.) If you've pointed your antenna toward the transmitter in your town for DTV signals sometimes you'll get all but one of them and one will fade in at out - but will have brain freeze while you try to change channels while it tries to decide if it's getting a signal or not. It is MADDENING!
3.) You can add/delete channels but not the HD sub channels (ie 4-1 5-1 5-2 etc.) so if it doesn't get it by auto scan you have to keep fiddling with the antenna and pray and auto search the entire spectrum over and over again. This drove me freakin' crazy and everyone at Samsung should have their fannies smacked for this.
4.) The warranty sucks unless you get an extended warranty which I did. It's covered for a year but the set weighs over 200lbs and you have to pay to ship it to Samsung w/ the 1 yr warranty! Then they decide if it's covered or not. Even if it's covered by the warranty you still have to pay to ship it back. It's crazy! I paid the big box retailer a couple of Benjamins for a 4 year warranty that not only quadruples the warranty but also means that if it croaks the big box retailer comes to my house and hauls it off at no charge and they take care of everything through Samsung for me. If I never need the warranty my daily cost of ownership over 4 years is pennies a day - but if I ever do need to make use of the warranty it's worth its weight in freakin' gold.
The friends and family that have come over to visit have had their jaws drop on the clarity of this TV and are all coveting one themselves. I looked at HDTVs for 3 months before settling on this one and despite the shortcomings cited above this is the best one you can get for the price. The next step up is going to get you in the big-time 4-5 digit range to get a DLP - which in comparison makes my own awesome set look like doggy doo... which is hard to fathom being possible until you see a Samsung DLP in person - it's enough to induce convulsive sobbing from the sheer emotional joy your eyes experience... but until I hit the Lotto this 30" SlimFit is going to do the job quite nicely.
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