When it arrived, I popped it into the PS3 and began down the road to perfection. But something happened on the way– I was hi-jacked by Spears & Munsil! (and the Amazonians who wrote the sparkling reviews for this, well, let’s say ‘spartan’–instead of worthless–piece of fluff)

Let me say here that ALL the pre-sets on the Samsung were factory set at 50 (0-100 scale).
Each “test” had a picture on what correct and incorrect were supposed to look like

The first test was to balance the high and low black/white differences. “You will see 4 bars appears. When the outer 2…” it then goes on to say “sometimes you’ll only see 2 bars” as was the case with mine. Once I went up and down with the control, turned the lights in the room from bright to dark and whirled like a dervish while eating a tuna sandwich (ok, maybe that last part is embellisment)–once I did everything to the disk’s specs, guess what? My new contrast setting was 51.

On to brightness. “You will see 22 bars across the top and bottom. 17 and on is good for the black, all 22 white should show”. NEVER did!. I got the 17 blacks to show but only a 3rd of the whites. So, on to the gradient test. White to black and back to white; black to white and back to black. “Note that the white line in the middle will be thin and the black line thick”. NEVER!
No matter what I did to tweak the contrast, brightness, edges, etc, NOTHING would allow me to see a fully “correct” image.
So, naturally, I got as close as I could to ‘correct’. And guess what? New settings of 48 and a 52 (trust me, there was barely a difference between 48 & 50 or 52 and 50).

On to color. This one actually worked fairly well. But?? Yup, new settings were 50.
All the other tests were equal wastes of time. ALL of my ‘new’ Samsung settings were between 48 and 55.

Perhaps the others who wrote the reviews which lead to my purchase bought lousy TVs to begin with; perhaps it DID make a difference to theirs. But my nephew bought a LN46B650 the week before I did; and he got the exact same results (and frustration) that I got– and he knows a LOT about computers and home video components.

In short– BAD BUY. Save your money
Rating: 2 / 5