Samsung LN-S4041D

Summary: I was pretty excited to see this one come out of the box. As more and more LCD's come down in price, the more they'll soon take over the market from Plasmas. I work for a Major Electronics store in the Bay Area. This TV has a great look, similar to the Sony 55A20 in design. Not surprising since Samsung is business partners with Sony. Right off the bat, the picture quality is superb. Very sharp, very crisp, and not a hint of Blue in the White. processing is great. Very little artifacts, even when viewing a dvd (upconversion dvd player Samsung HD-755). The remote was also redesigned. Slim, V Shaped, and nice button configuration. It isn't back lit though and we all know that can obviously help in dark rooms. As with all LCD's, blurring from response time is a worry, but this LCD is extremely smooth. When viewing a 720P football game, there wasn't any visible "tracers". Classic issue with LCD is Contrast. This TV lacks the ability to show major details in dark scenes, tending to be more of a solid black than even an artifact filled black. Good if you hate noise in the picture and bad if there is detail in the black that you are missing. You can turn the contrast up to try and compensate but you will end up just washing out the picture. That is the biggest con to this LCD. On the other hand the sharpness and the brightness are absolutely brilliant. After a few monutes of "tweaking the picture" you can make this TV sing and you'll forget all about the contrast issues with LCDs. Samsung likes to claim extremely high contrast levels, such as 3000:1 or even a crazy 10,000:1. The truth is there isn't any standard in this industry for contrast, so they can claim anything they want. In reality a Great LCD is usually around 1000:1, just like a plasma. major pros to this TV, life span, 60,0000 hours, servicable, more energy efficient, no burn in, 2 HDMI inputs, and of course a PC input and Picture in Picture which is a dying option these days.