I have had the TV for almost a month now and I am very pleased with my decision to purchase the Sharp. I did a lot of research, both on line and with actual “in store” comparisons at a nearby TV/Video store. The store had the Sharp LED, the Samsung LED and a Sony XBR, all in 46″, side-by-side with the Sharp in the middle. The Sony was eliminated immediately because it’s picture lacked the crispness and clarity that the LED televisions had. In three separate trips, I had almost 3 hours of watching the Sharp and Samsung televisions side-by-side. In viewing programing with darker backgrounds, I found no difference between the two. In programs with very bright backgrounds, I found the Sharp had an even brightness through the entire picture due to its full array LED and the Samsung was slightly brighter along the edge due to its edge lit LED that probably would not have been noticible if it were not sitting next to the Sharp. The decision was made during a Food Network show, and a red and white curtain in the background had a slight purplish tint on the Samsung, and was true red on the Sharp. If I was hanging the TV on the wall, the thinness of the Samsung would have been a consideration; however, the Sharp is not a thick television and would hang on the wall just fine. I also looked at several plazma TVs, but they put out an extreme amount of heat. I can hold me hand a few inches away from the screen of a LED and do not notice any temperature difference from the rest of the room, but you can really feel the heat from a plazma when standing 2 to 3 feet in front of it. The Sharp is considerably cheaper than the Samsung, and overall, Sharp has the better picture. The TV/Video store knocked 0 off of their advertised price; however, I was able to get another 0 off of that through Amazon.com. With shipping and no sales tax, I saved about 0 off my best local price and ,000 off the local advertised price.

I recently purchased a Sony 52″ 52Z5100 LCD television. Ultimately, I ended up exchanging it for the Samsung on this page. Why? Well, read on.

First, I had a 42″ LCD projection 720p. Nice picture but time to upgrade. I always disliked glossy screened models but drooled over the thinness of the Samsung LED’s. At Best Buy, I looked at all the TV’s. I didn’t care about 240hz b/c it’s not a noticable difference over 120hz, so I was considering many displays. I kept coming back to the Sony 52Z5100 (99) and the Samsung UN46B6000 (39.) I know Sony makes good displays and I was worried about the glossiness so I purchased it and had it delivered. When I got it hooked up I was impressed but I never could quite get the picture they had in the store that was almost 3D. I know part of that is b/c they have all the settings pushed real high in-store, but even when I did that I couldn’t get it. Now, don’t get me wrong, it looked really good and I was really thinking of keeping it. But every time I looked at it from the side it just seemed a little bulky. The other issue I was having was the brightness. Even with the backlight turned to 1 and brightness turned down low, the display was too bright. It was fine when watching a show but if a commercial came on with a white background it sometimes hurt my eyes. It was that bright. Some would view that as a good thing but I constantly found myself adjusting the backlight and brightness. I can’t say I wasn’t satisfied with the display but after 3 weeks I found myself still considering the Samsung and I saw that as a sign that I should exchange it.

Having had the Samsung for 2 weeks now I am happy that I made the exchange. The glossiness, while not ideal on a bright day, isn’t that bad. In fact, I would say that if this TV didn’t have the glossy screen it would be almost perfect. The extreme brightness on the Sony tended to wash colors out a little…something I didn’t really notice until viewing the Samsung. Colors were much more saturated. Some people have mentioned uneven lighting with the Samsung. I have looked hard for it and as picky as I am I can’t see it at all. The sound is also very acceptable…much better than I expected, and that’s nice since I don’t always want to play it through my stereo. The Samsung also gives you more control over its settings than the Sony did. Perhaps that’s why I could never get the Sony to exactly where I wanted it. The only negative I would give this TV is the motion control settings. Honestly, my favorite is usually off. I don’t see much blur at all with it off. Putting it on Smooth, Clear, Standard, or even Custom with the blur on 10 and judder on 0 can look somewhat artificial at times. For instance, I replayed a scene on my DVR using all the settings. During this scene the camera pans across a bunch of people sitting on a bus. While smooth looked kind of neat, it created a little “jump” or judder at one portion of the pan. In fact, all the settings except off did this. (I also tried custom with judder at various settings.) Now, many people wouldn’t even notice this and by no means does it ruin the experience, I’m just left with the feeling that this whole 120hz and 240hz is much ado about nothing. Like I said, turning it off is fine…even when watching football.

To sum up, by no means do I mean to imply the Sony is a bad TV – far from it. If you have recently bought one you have a very good TV with a beautiful picture. Just for me, preference wise, I prefer the Samsung. I love the thinness and deeper color saturation. Now, perhaps if I sat further from the TV (I’m at 11ft) or had this in a room with windows facing the TV (mine are to the side of it) I may feel differently. It all comes down to personal preference when you’re talking about TV’s of this caliber, so hopefully I’ve just provided a little more for you to help you decide which is for you. Happy viewing!

I am a bit of a gadget guy and a techy. As such, I was not expecting to be surprised with this purchase. I knew the features, I knew the details, I saw this in stores. I was surprised at 2 things.

The picture looks much better in my house then it did in the store! It has better depth and the color/tones are fantastic. Both are much better then I experienced in the stores. The color/tones was the main reason I was leaning towards Sony but the bightness of this set was needed for my enviroment. So I was surprised that I got the brightness I needed and the fantastic color that I wanted.

Additionally, I was please to find that Samsung opened up all of the A/V settings so you can seriously adjust the picture to suit the envirmoment and the types of viewing you will do. {I have a lot to learn on this aspect. My previous Sony you had to go into a special mode for those settings. I never bothered}.

A shout out to the white gloves service. They were simple, effective, and quick. They brought it in, unpackaged it, connected it, tested (with me observing) and were gone after cleaning up after themselves.

I installed this on the wall myself using the Samsung Ultra-slim mounting kit. This kit was as easy as hanging a 50lb picture. The kit also includes a special movable “leg” that allows you to tilt the TV out from the wall to make connections. It worked great.

Bring on the remainder of Football season!

I’ve owned this TV for a week now. I haven’t experimented with white scrolling text to look for the blooming and I almost don’t want to. After working with multimedia encoding and 3D graphics, I’ve discovered that ignorance is sometimes bliss. Once you notice something, you can’t stop yourself from seeing it all the time (like macro blocks from MPEG compression, motion “judder,”, etc.).

I’ll also agree with other reviewers that you really need to play with the advanced menus in order to tune the picture. “Vivid” and “standard” are nice for cartoons and anime but are too over-the-top for anything else. The auto-adjusting setting is a nice idea but in practice is annoying because it pops up a logo to tell you it is adjusting the picture. I was watching one night and every time I turned a table lamp on or off, the picture would adjust (which would be fine if it didn’t annoy me with an on-screen logo to tell me about it).

This TV is no Samsung (LED). I can definitely tell the difference in the local showroom and the Samsungs are very svelte. But for this price, I don’t think you can find anything comparable. The LED backlighting definitely increases the visible contrast; you’ll see blacks that you just won’t see on a non-LED LCD. I haven’t seen the blooming or LED “popping” that other reviewers have mentioned, but even if I turn off the dynamic lighting, the LED still gives me brighter lighting, less heat and (theoretically) longer life and greater reliability. Plus, I get bragging rights for a while. “Check it out; the very latest in big screen HD tech!”

Speaking of bragging rights, all of my friends have commented about how wonderful this TV display looks, even people who have bought Samsungs and Bravias in the past year. Considering that I bought this TV at a price that was the same as the non-LED Samsungs, I’m quite happy. All the technical negatives noted about this TV are probably spot on, but for the price, I don’t think I could have done nearly as well with any other TV. I bought this TV as sort of a memorial to my brother who died just this past Christmas. He was very into big screen TVs and the latest tech. I think he’d be happy to see his nephew watching Bakugan in HD glory.

Much has been said here about picture clarity, features, design, etc… Let me pass on a few different comments which may benefit those contemplating this purchase, or who have already made the purchase.

To those of you who are skeptical about buying electronics online, relax. Although it is risky buying from those Manhattan online electronics resellers, every step of ordering my Samsung UN46B8000 from Amazon was perfect. Lets start with pricing. After a little web surfing, I found a site that mentioned a significant discount would appear, once the TV is placed in the shopping cart at Amazon.com. I tried it and it worked. For kicks, I printed the page and took it to Best Buy. They admitted they could not come close to matching Amazon’s price. Went home and ordered it from Amazon, saving hundreds of dollars. Emails from Amazon soon followed with updates on my order. A couple days later, a phone call to schedule delivery. Two guys delivered the TV and lifted the box cover to verify no visible damage in transit. After a brief conversation, they explained they do a lot of deliveries for Amazon. BTW, I also ordered the Slim-Mount Wall Mounting Kit from Amazon. Best Buy = 0, Amazon 5.

A bit about wall-mounting the TV. Two grooved, hockey puck size disks mount to the wall, spaced about 7 inches apart. Another pair of disks connected together with a cable, mount to the back of the TV. You then hang the TV over the wall disks. Like everyone else, all I could envision was my TV crashing to the ground, but it works….scary, but it works. Note, if you need help aligning vertical placement, drill your wall holes 7 inches apart and 22 inches above where you want the bottom of the TV to be. Note to Samsung: Put this in the manual. The instructions that come with the mounting kit are worthless.

And now, the TV. More features than I have time for. I noticed a new firmware update had been released, so I downloaded it from Samsung. It’s a single executable, which you run to unzip as a folder containing several files. Open the folder and drag the files to the root of your USB flash stick. Plug the stick in the back of the TV and perform the software upgrade. The TV wont find the files if they’re still compressed or not at root level. Samsung: Put this on your website. For users connecting their TV to the Internet via the TV’s RJ-45 or optional USB Wifi Stick, the process may be simpler.

Other process’ like deleting unwanted channels are not accurately explained in the manual, but after a few minutes of screwing around, you learn how to select the channel lineup, pick a channel then press Tools to get a pop-up menu and choose Delete. Connecting my laptop to the TV via a 15 pin VGA cable yielded a sweet, finely detailed image. If you’re not planning to display movies/pics from websites via an Internet connection, you can still display content from your PC, if your PC has video out. The TV also has a 2.5mm audio in jack, so you can run audio from your PC as well. One other cool feature is by holding down the Volume Down button on the TV for 10 seconds, the Remote Control beeps making it simple to find a lost remote.

All in all, a very nice TV with some cool features. This is our first flat-panel TV, so nothing really to compare to. BTW, to the guy who commented on two hot spots on the bottom black bar during movies, I’m getting none of that. Just a perfect picture from all sources: HD Cable, SD Cable, SD DVD, PC and PS2 (PS3 and Internet coming soon).