Samsung PN58B650

Great TV. Plugged it into my Yamaha HTR-6180 A/V receiver which upscales the DirecTV signal to 1080p over HDMI and the picture is phenomenal. As with the other reviewers, I do hear the occasional buzzing… which is why I haven't given it 5 stars. Overall, I am very pleased with this TV and still feel that plasma technology is superior to LED and LCD, especially when viewing sports and action movies.

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The 58 inch Plasma HDTV arrived in the time they said it would. The two men carried it into my living room and offered to unpack it. Very nice! The carton it arrived in was pristine (not a dent or… puncture anywhere). I unpacked and set it up, and was watching HiDef from FIOS within 20 minutes. Setting up the contrast/brightness and so forth, I ran a search on the internet to find those people that excel in those areas, set up my new set accordingly and am very happy! Highly recommended! I wanted a plasma set instead of an LCD since the plasma sets tend toward having better contrast and better view-ability in a dimly lit room.

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I purchased this TV after many hours of online reviews and comparing models at local stores. After deciding that plasma was probably a better way to go for a large screen (acutally cheaper and offers a… better total viewing angle over LCD), my choiced narrowed down to the Panasonic and Samsung models. I wanted a 54-60 inch for my viewing space. The 58 inch Samsung appeared to me to have a little more "pop" and picture tuning controls than the 54 inch Panasonic. Since I was not mounting the TV on the wall, I felt that I didn't need the 1 inch thick B850 model along with the higher price. I chose the B650 after reading many on-line reviews The picture is outstanding! Because the plasma picture is not quite as bright as the LCD in the "normal" mode, I use the "dynamic" during the daytime. There are plenty of HDMI jacks (4) so I can hook up my cable box, blue ray player, and and older VCR. The sound is not so hot so if you are spending this much for a TV, you need to get some sort of surround sound system. Even a cheap one is better than the sound from the TV. The plasma screen puts out plenty of heat as I expected, but have not seen any "burn in". Overall, an outstanding product. The delivery company opened the box for me and pluged it in and powered it up to ensure it was working and so I could inspect it.

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Several years ago my wife and I got our first HD tv, a 40" Sony Bravia, and paid more for it than we did for this 58" plasma. I know that's a lot like comparing apples and oranges and across different… harvests. Anyway, we feel we got a solid deal for the size of tv. I pretty easily managed to manually tweak the picture and sound settings and was able to get pretty deep blacks while maintaining a decent contrast ratio. We've got Dishnet, watching sports and regular tv shows has been as good as it can be from a satellite signal. Watching blu-rays via our PS3 is exceptionally nice. The BBC's/Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" was awesome on the Bravia; it's mind blowing on 58 inches of Samsung Plasma goodness. For the $ this tube doesn't disappoint.

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Yes the 2009 Samsung B650 provides an excellent picture, but only under certain limited conditions. Pros: 1) Fantastic picture quality during daytime viewing 2) brighter than 850/860 series Cons: 1) Blacks… become grey at nighttime (even worse with Cinema Smooth engaged) 2) hot screen - high power consumption 3) large percentage of 2009 Samsungs have weird buzzing at primary seating location 4) The Cinema Smooth feature raises the black level My advice is to wait for the 2010 Samsungs which hopefully will have corrected these issues. I'm amazed at the rave reviews that don't offer a balanced perspective which allow consumers to make an informed choice.

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