58" of plasma glory. Only downside I found in reviews was not being able to turn off a dejudder feature, but that can easily be fixed in the service menu.
The old Sony kp-51ws500 served me well and is still going strong enough to be a great upgrade for the downstairs.
The next 7-10 days waiting for the freight shipper is going to suck though.
Feel free to hate away about this being a bragging thread if you want. I haven’t bought a new expensive toy in a long time while the wife and I worked at paying off a bunch of stuff.
Plasma is better at motion, color saturation and black levels. LCD has gimmicks like 120 and 240 hz to mask their inherent flaw with motion but it makes the picture look unnatural.
LCD is better at being really really bright, so if you have a bright room LCD is the easy winner. Where mine is I have control over the lighting so that’s not an issue. They also use less energy and are lighter, two things I couldn’t care less about.
^ Pretty good read about LCD vs Plasma. Two weeks ago I thought I was going to go LED LCD but after researching a lot ended up going plasma.
I have heard horror stories about people’s power going out during the winter and having their Plasma’s freeze and break. that is the only reason I don’t like plasmas.
Yeah, I was thinking that if your house got cold enough to actually freeze and break your TV you probably have bigger problems like frozen and burst water pipes not to mention hypothermia.
Nice purchase, definitely good choice going with plasma.
I did a ton of research last year when we upgraded, went with a 54" Panasonic G10 Plamsa (THX certified display) and couldn’t be happier. We have a 42" Samsung LCD in our bedroom, yes it’s VERY bright but nothing near the picture quality of the plasma.
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Review from CNET:
Samsung PNC8000: The second-best TV of 2010
Ever since we tested the Panasonic TC-PVT25 series in June, we’ve been itching to compare it directly to Samsung’s flagship 3D-compatible plasma HDTV for 2010. After finally getting the chance to review the Samsung PNC8000 series–the odds-on favorite, if there is one, to defeat the Panasonic–we can declare the verdict in this dogfight. Panasonic by a black nose.
The PNC8000 is an excellent performer, and deserves the silver medal among plasma TVs we’ve tested so far this year. In addition, we’d wager no other as-yet-announced TV will outperform either one in 2010. But the Samsung’s crucial reproduction of black can’t achieve the same inkiness as the Panasonic, so it falls short. It beats the VT25 to a greater or lesser extent in a few other areas, including overall color reproduction, bright room performance, and video processing, but none of those margins of victory are convincing enough to close the gap. The Samsung costs less, however, and its style and feature set will certainly turn heads, although for this price we’d expect to get a pair of those 3D glasses thrown in too. The VT25 might be the better performer, but the picture quality of the PNC8000 series will rightly claim its share of videophile devotees.
I purchased a samsung plasma. Reviews were complaining about the sound quality of it. I figured being in an apartment, it couldn’t be that bad. WRONG! I can’t believe how high you need to turn up the volume to just be able to watch a show or movie. Other than that, I’ve been very happy with it.
I haven’t had the TV speakers turned on in the 8 years I’ve owned my Sony and I expect this Samsung to be the same. What’s the point of having a sweet TV and being stuck with 2 channel audio? Surround sound FTMFW. They should have a speaker delete option and sell it for $100 less.
did you do research on the 3d capabilities? for that point are you even interested in the 3d features…i ask because i assume you researched this thing top to bottom and i figure you would have a pretty good opinion on 3d in general and how the new televisions produce it.
I did “some” research on 3d but not a ton. The big problem for 3d with me is we have a lot of movie nights at my house with friends and getting everyone Samsung glasses is too expensive.
I found that plasma tends to be better at 3d because of it’s really fast refresh rates and this set in particular ranks high 3d wise. I’ll probably pick up a 3d starter kit when I see one on a really good sale, but it’s not a priority for me. At first I wasn’t even going to look for a 3d set but the price difference when you get into the higher end plasmas like this was small enough that I decided to go 3d just so I wouldn’t be pissed if a year from now it’s really catching on.
Dejudder is a smoothing feature that is on by default on the 7000 but a feature you can disable on the 8000. For some weird reason Samsung gives the user no option to turn this feature off on the 7000. Of course if you’re willing to hack there are always ways around this in the service menu. After the break in I’m going to test it out with it on and off and decide for myself. Some people prefer the dejuddered picture.
I haven’t bought a new expensive toy in a long time while the wife and I worked at paying off a bunch of stuff.