Don't let someone tell you that you will get as good a picture from a comparable $800 big-box special because you won't! Much of what needs to be said has already been said so I will only reinforce the stunning picture quality of this tv. Most people will never see HD at its full potential, be it blu-ray, the airwaves, cable or the dish. You will never look at a picture and think the tv is a window unless you're connected directly to the source, digital compression is the culprit. Anyone that thinks otherwise either needs an eye exam or seriously has not seen true hd, sorry, the FCC, rules of the airwaves and greed will always hold the quality back. With that being said, out of the box this tv looks about as close as you're going to get. Over the air signal is probably the least compressed followed by either blu-ray or cable (How do you think the dish people get so many channels on their birds anyway? Heavy compression - No, I am not slamming the dish, just stating a fact)
To show how good the picture is out of the box, very little needs to be changed to achieve full professional calibration. Even watching dvds this tv has a way of making them look clear as glass. I recommend NOT using an upconverting dvd player/HDMI as it passes on digital compression, if you use Component instead, the tv is expecting a certain amount of analog noise, the input filters do their job and it looks fantastic. Want proof? Watch the intro to Stargate SG-1, say the last season, the Antarctic scene is very full of digital noise if you use the HDMI input, try it again with Component, it's almost speckle free. Same series, any episode, when they're in the Colonel's office sitting, the door is usually open at a 45 degree angle. HDMI, very speckled, Component is almost perfect. The input filter doesn't appear to cut down the resolution of the image, it just handles digital noise differently.
Cons - I bought this tv because of the bad reviews on the LED series sets. The complaints that the menus were slow as if they had to 'load' each option and that certain functions were greyed out/inaccessible. Well, much to my disappointment I downloaded a setup guide from tweaktv and started plugging away on this tv. Calibrating this set according to the guide is no substitute for a professional but based on modern manufacturing techniques, you can come pretty damn close as every unit is close to identical! The same problems that plague the LED series exist here as well. The menus are so slow to pop up sometimes you wonder how well the remote reception is working as it is quite nonresponsive. Certain items were greyed out/inaccessible much like the review of the LED series. I have asked around how to overcome this issue and no-one knows, even Samsung is unable to provide a useful answer. To change video sources, much like the LED series you have to hit several buttons. I don't remember my 71 series being this difficult because it wasn't.
Don't let my Cons be a deterrent to purchasing this tv or even the LED series, how often do you go into the menus or switch video sources? It's only a minor annoyance on an otherwise great tv.
It should be noted they released a firmware update on Nov 9th, I am in the process of downloading it now on my slow connection, what it addresses is to be seen, I didn't see any readme notes prior to downloading.
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