Samsung LNT4671F 46-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD TV
See it at Amazon.com for $1,898.00Average Customer Rating
(5.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First (5 out of 5)Excellent LCD (better than my former plasma)
I've had my LN-T4671F for a couple of weeks now, and I'm very happy with it. I previously owned a Samsung plasma (4254), and this is definitely a better TV.
There are numerous good things about this television, including dark blacks, low noise (no noise except what is coming through the source), high-quality panel (low incidence of panel defects seen in earlier LCD televisions), wide range of adjustments available, beautiful picture quality (on par with the best LCDs available), and a very good price for all of this quality (as of Oct 2007 market).
There is only one known issue (as of Oct 2007): The TV needs to be set to Game Mode to watch football or soccer. This is a simple On/Off setting in the Setup menu. If the TV is not in Game Mode then football passes or long kicks often (about 50% of the time) exhibit a triple-ball effect. It looks something like this: (o). As it moves on screen, the image of the ball shows a repeated image of it's front (nose) and rear (tail) on either side of it. Most folks will see this triple image, some might just see it as an exaggerated blur (but the triple image is clearly visible when the playback is paused). This should be fixable by a firmware update, and turning on Game Mode fixes it as well, so it's not a big deal. Game Mode does limit the available picture adjustments, but in practice I can get the picture in Game Mode very close to what I get with the full range of adjustments. (The only thing is that Game Mode turns on some image sharpening that is ok with sports, but is not great with cartoons. So, I use Game Mode when watching football and turn it off for regular viewing. A lot of folks find that watching full time in Game Mode is very pleasing. It's a matter of preference).
Recommendations for new owners:
1. Give it about 100 hours before the picture settles in. The backlight is a bit bright in the first 100 hours, so I found myself slowly adjusting it up during burn-in.
2. For basic adjustment try Movie with Standard color, Gamma -1, and color on Auto. After 100 hours, backlight can be turned up to 7 or 8 (unless you watch in a pitch black room), and for TV watching Brightness can be 45-50 and Contrast 70-80. On this TV, brightness sets the black level and contrast sets the white level. Turn the brightness up so that the actual black parts of the picture remain pitch black (ESPN HD SportsCenter is a good source for this. You should see detail in the dark suit jackets, but the shadowed areas on the set should remain rich black). Then adjust the Contrast just to the point that pure white objects (like lights or reflections off of football helmets) are white. You can tweak the contrast up from this point to give the image some snap, but don't go too high (the image can look harsh or washed out).
3. Turn off all of the image processing (DNIe, Edge Enhancement, etc.). The picture will look more natural (give it a couple of days if you're used to these things on). These things distort the picture slightly to make it look exciting, but the there is noise and other false information added to the image. Turning these things off lets the source be displayed undistorted, so a good source will look terrific.
4. For image size, use Just Scan. This passes the input directly to the screen without any processing to scale the image, resulting in a bit more crispness and clarity. However, some TV signals have a bit of noise at the very edge of the screen. In that case, set the TV to 16:9 and it will slightly crop the edges of the incoming image (this slight cropping, or overscan, is common on a lot of TVs and some broadcasters get lazy and just assume that the very edge of their picture (2-3%) will be cut off).
5. Play around with the Auto Motion Plus feature, but don't expect it to be great for everything. I've tried it on a lot of sources, and generally I leave it off. It can actually make things look too smooth. It's doing its job as advertised, but the result can look odd.
6. Consider a Harmony 880 programmable remote. I got one after buying the 4671, and it is terrific at automating the changing of inputs as you switch from TV to DVD to Video Game, etc.
7. The Apple TV looks amazing with this TV. It was an unexpected surprise to that see that the Apple TV can upscale to 1080p/60Hz and that the results are on par with my Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player when it upscales DVD content. I'm very happy that my Apple TV can remain a high-quality source.
8. Standard definition television looks pretty good with this TV, much better than on other LCDs that I've seen (but of course it's still obviously standard definition).
9. The 4671 clearly reveals variable quality among HD sources. When watching HD television channels, some are obviously more compressed, using poorer-quality cameras, and otherwise not as well produced as others. ESPN HD and Discovery HD Theatre generally look excellent, although on HD Theatre you can definitely see the differences in production quality between the various shows.
10. Finally, consider getting an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player that outputs 1080/24Hz content. Movies are shot at 24 frames per second, and the 4671 can accept a 1080/24 signal. This provides the purest movie-watching experience without interpolation of frame rates.
Happy viewing.
(5 out of 5)Beware of "18 month no interest promotion"
Product is great; the best picture I've seen.
This post is to make customers aware of an issue with the "18 month no interest promotion" for this item.
PROBLEM:
1. Banner says buy this item with the Amazon store card and receive no interst for 18 months.
2. Cost of the TV is $2299.
3. Fine print states that the offer will "be terminated if...you exceed your credit limit".
4. Credit limit on the card when you apply is $2000
RESULT: 18 month offer is terminated the minute you place your order for the TV because the purchase price exceeds the credit limit.
I called the toll free number and both the rep and his supervisor confirmed that this was the case. To make matters worse, their policy is that you cannot request a credit limit increase in the first 6 months.
(5 out of 5)Wish I had bought this one...
I researched the 81 and 71 series for as long as they had been announced (~ 6 months, since CES show). I got all hopped up about the "100k" contrast ratio on the 81 series due completely to the new "LED" backlighting. Well, at AVS forums, one guy bought both, and concluded that it only mattered when the screen was totally black (like the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen when watching a wide screen formatted movie, or a fade scene), and then only a little. The general conclusion seemed to point to the 71 series being the sleeper hit so far this year (dunno about the xbr5, but some reports put this one right with it), and that the 81 series wasn't worth the extra grand or more.
Too late for me, because I rushed into BB to pay up front for an 81 series tv as soon as the store had the sku in their system (4 weeks before they even showed up). Yeah, I got to use a 12% off good customer coupon, but in the end I could have had a 52" 71 series instead of a 46" 81 series (especially seeing how heavily discounted they are now on Amazon). The anti-motion options in the 81 are only available in "movie" mode, and are buried in the menus, and only has an on/off option, versus the 71's easy to navigate 3 level options for the anti-motion feature.
The reviews point to the colors and picture appearing just about the same between the 2 tv's when the screen or a large portion of it wasn't all black. Other than that....get this one. It is worth the premium over the 61 or 65 series. As long as you can live with a glossy / semi-glossy screen (versus the xbr4/5's matte screens), you won't be sorry. As for me, I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet and be one of those turkeys who uses the 30 day guarantee to return the TV and get a 71 series...it is a lot of money not to be totally satisfied with the purchase. Best of luck.
(5 out of 5)Best TV i have seen
I was at first looking to get samsungs 46 inch 65 series model (lnt4665f) because i loved how it looked, especially the blacks. but i decided to wait for the upcoming 71 series and 81 series... and decided the 71 series would be the one for me (lnt4671f). When they got this baby into circuit city I could definantly notice this difference between its older model.(unlike sony flat panals, which most of the time have very hard to see differences between "better" models)
The colors were definanlty more vibrant and the blacks were blacker, also this model has pretty much no motion bluring due to "auto motion plus". (I noticed motion bluring on the new sony XBR4 when they were demoing fantastic 4 on blu-ray) also, at my local circuit city they had this model displayed next to the new sony XBR4 and with my eyes i beleive that the samsung looks better, especialy in the black levels. I highly recomend this model to anyone who wants a top of the line tv, needless to say i'll be picking one up this weekend.
(4 out of 5)*The* LCD to own right now...
I've been hesitant to buy a flat panel TV up until now. I was using my 30" CRT HDTV up until I received this TV last week because that TV still has better picture quality than 99% of TVs out today. This TV may be the exception.
First, let me say that I had an absolute great experience with the delivery of this item. Eagle delivered at 8am before I left for work and set it all up for me. They stuck around for a few minutes while I turned it on and checked for defects -- All is good!
*Amazon.com censored my review due to complaints about a call I placed to them in regards to this TV*
Now on to the TV -- it's fantastic. At first, I was underwhelmed by the picture quality because the factory settings are really that bad (do not use "dynamic!!!"). After about an hour of tweaking I got the picture quality to an astounding quality. I do a lot of gaming on my Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii and I'm absolutely blown away by the quality of the picture with gaming on this TV, especially the 360. The games really look "3D" and pop out of the screen, couldn't ask for more.
As for TV and movies, again this TV does not disappoint. Honestly, this is *the* LCD to own right now. The black levels are to die for, the image quality is too. I ran it through the calibration material on the Digital Essentials disc and even without color tweaking the color reproduction on this TV was near perfect, better than my CRT!!! I decided to not even bother tweaking the color values further as they were already so close. That said, there are still some criticisms that I can offer:
The Auto-Motion Plus (AMP from now on) feature is really hit-and-miss. It is supposed to help with fast moving images, but the ironic thing is that sometimes it actually makes them worse. Honestly, the feature seems very temperamental and highly dependent on the source. Sometimes I'll turn it on and get miserable stuttering that makes the video unwatchable until it is turned back off. Other times, there is no stuttering, but I'll get what is now being dubbed the "triple ball effect." That is when small objects that are moving fasts such as balls in sports get a sort of tripling affect, basically they blur like hell. Honestly, "TBE" does not bother me at all, I can deal with it. The stuttering is what I cannot deal with.
Like I said, AMP is very temperamental so you have to experiment and find out what it works for and what it does not. When it does work right I absolutely love it. It gives the image this 3D-esque "live" feel. Some people seem to not like that, personally I do. It's incredible. Rumors are on the AVS Forums that Samsung may be working on a firmware update to help fix the issues with this feature. I hope they do as that would be the right thing for them to do considering this is a $3k TV (unless you buy it from Amazon :) ).
All in all though, I couldn't recommend this TV more to anynone especially to HD movie/game buffs. I don't want you to be turned off by this TV due to my criticisms over the implementation of AMP as it is not a deal-breaker IMO. It's one of those features that is neat, but it's not a necessity. The image quality and other features of this TV (ie, tons of detailed picture setting options) easily make it worth the price of entry along with 120hz. Please do remember that even with AMP off, this TV is still running at 120hz and therefore the image is still smoother and more "3D" than other TVs.
I am giving this TV a rating of 4 for the following reasons:
1/2 star taken off because the AMP issue is something that should have been fixed prior to putting this TV on the shelf. Like I said, it's not a deal breaker IMO, but it's still buggy nevertheless.
*Amazon.com censored my review due to complaints about a call I placed to them in regards to this TV*
PS - I want to add also that even though there is a "game mode" you only have to use it for 480i sources. Any game system that can run in 480p (Wii, 360, PS3) or up does not appear to suffer from any noticeable lag with normal settings. This is good considering that the image quality is much better with game mode off.
This TV is a gamer's dream!