Great HD Picture w/o Glossy Screen Reflections, June 15, 2009
By Carl B (Arvada, CO)

Love the HD picture quality (PQ) of the Samsung 52B750, but don’t watch TV in cave and don’t want to deal with all those reflections off a glossy screen? Well, the Sony 52Z5100 is the answer. HD PQ with the Z5100 is excellent with great black levels, but without the “shaving mirror” reflectivity of the screen during dark or black scenes. We were looking at the 52B750, based on reviews and seeing it at UE, but after testing our viewing room at various times of day with a glass picture frame and our “bright screen” LCD notebook, it was obvious that the reflections would drive us crazy over the life of the TV. We have two older HDTVs, both with matte screen and we don’t miss the reflective glass screens of the old CRT TVs. The 52Z5100’s screen is best described as semi-matte. Un-powered, the screen is reflective though dull. Power it up and there are essentially zero reflections, even with very dark scenes. What ever Sony has done to defeat reflectivity and minimize glare, it works very well.

As to performance, PQ with HD sources (OTA DTV and Dish HD) is as good as it gets, absolutely excellent and easily equal to the Samsung B750 (we viewed the Z5100 side-by-side with the B750 and the XBR9 at UE and couldn’t discern any difference in HD PQ). Blacks are excellent and shadow detail is the best I’ve seen on a TV. No flashlights, clouding, or uneven lighting across the screen. Color realism and saturation are excellent. Viewing angle is average or typical of CCFL LCDs, which is about 45 degrees off center. Not bad and much better than the LED LCDs, which could be important if you plan to show off your new HDTV with a Super Bowl party next February (not everyone can sit right in front of the TV to see great PQ, like they have to with the LED LCDs).

We’re just thrilled watching Starz and Cinemax HD movies, prime-time HD drama on the major networks, any live HD broadcasts, and especially any live HD sporting even broadcasts. The WOW factor is back! Can’t wait for the NFL season to start. We watched the men’s and women’s French Open finals via live, OTA, HD DTV, with the Scene setting set to “Sports (MotionFlow on High, 240 Hz) and it was like we were standing behind Roger Federer on the court. BTW, the on-board ATSC digital tuner in the Z5100 is excellent. It is obviously of the latest generation as it is the most sensitive and most stable of any of our DTV tuners, including the Zenith CECBs we bought for our old, remaining CRT TVs. If you buy the 52Z5100, try hooking up an antenna to it and see what you can get. The uncompressed live HD from an OTA antenna is something to behold.

PQ from non-BD DVDs is excellent. Upscaled DVD movies on my Sony 1080p upscaling DVD player look as good as many of the HD movies on the pay HD movie channels. I don’t have a BD player yet and with the PQ of my upscaled DVDs, I probably won’t get one until the price drops substantially.

PQ from SD sources is a mixed bag. It really depends on the source. Decent 480i stuff comes across excellent, but some older video and movies look pretty bad and the MPEG Filter and CineMotion filter don’t do much to help regardless of which setting you use. I’d give this set Average to a little above average on SD PQ. Using the MPEG filter set to Medium or Low improves bad SD video over no filter at all.

I’d rate the on-board sound system as above average for flat panel HDTV sound systems, even though I typically us the sound from my DD7.1 sound system. I don’t do games, so I can’t comment on that.

As for the internet connectivity, I’m not impressed. I’ve surfed through most of what is offered and it isn’t worth much. A nice universal remote comes with the set. On-screen menu is poorly arranged (not intuitive, not logical, redundant in places).

Overall, I can’t see anyone being disappointed if they buy this LCD HDTV and your friends will be impressed as well.

Excellent product from Samsung, July 27, 2008
By Craig D (San Jose, CA USA)

Very happy with the 750. I was considering the 550/650 but in the end got the 750 because it was cheaper than the 650 when I bought it. I really like the styling and even like the way the outer edge of the bezel catches the light like the bevelled edge of a mirror (the halo effect for those who don’t like it, I think it looks cool). The hint of red is nice too, gives it a bit of style.

I have it in a very brightly lit room with lots of windows and the glare off the screen is not an issue. The black levels are very deep provided you have it set up properly (HDMI black on, HDMI full range on, Dynamic contrast Off, Backlight 3). You have to play around with the settings a bit, I found that turning on Dynamic Contrast made a normal picture more contrasty but really killed the blacks (made them light grey) on a black screen so I turned it off. During the day none of this is noticeable but at night with the lights off the lack of the LCD’s ability to actually go black is very noticeable and can be annoying if the settings aren’t right.

The color and clarity of this are amazing. Watching “Mickey’s once upon a christmas” blew me away, it was hard to believe it was only a standard definition DVD and the colors were out of this world lush. It is a bit critical of poor quality video from say, DirecTV for example but DVD/PS3 look wonderful on it and Blu-Ray even more so (although I have to admit there’s not much difference between a really good DVD and most Blu-Ray movies that I’ve watched). Overall the set does a very good job of upscaling and handling lower resolution inputs.

I had some problems getting HDMI1 to lock onto my receiver so I just use HDMI2 and that locks on with no problems. The front panel controls are seriously hard to find and disappear completely when idle. You have to look in bright light very closely at the front right edge to see the faint white icons and then touch in the right spot to get them to light up. Cool, and great for keeping little children from touching the controls but had me wondering where they were for a while.

The built in stuff is a bit of a yawn. They show these beautiful lush pictures on the main contents menu, then drop into some dark low contrast mode to play the games – not sure why but not a good advertisement for their picture quality. The food stuff looks nice and the get fit material (which rightly follows the desserts section) is some sort of flash animation that I would rate useful for a quick giggle only but not overly useful.

I loaded up some pictures from my Shutterstock collection (via a PS3) and the image quality was just amazing. The pictures looked nearly as good as my desktop monitor (which cost more than the 52A750) and going through the collection on a 52″ screen was quite a treat.

On fast moving video response time was a non-issue with no noticeable lag or blurring. 120Hz motion flow works well with no apparent down side, and I definitely notice the stuttering if I turn it off. The built in sound is really very good, not as good as my multi-thousand dollar home theater system but for a television it’s among the best I’ve heard. For the most part I don’t use it though, since the receiver is always on when the television is on.

Overall top marks for an excellent television.

Excellent TV…and here’s why…, June 20, 2008
By Kaz Dosh (New York, NY)

I have had this TV for about 2 weeks now. It’s one of the best purchases I’ve made. I’ll try to go through some of the positives and negatives (there are so few!) about the TV.

Picture – absolutely amazing. I’m not an expert when it comes to HDTV picture quality and won’t say that this is the best picture out there, but it just awesome to watch. I try to always find something on the HD channels to watch before I go to the regular channels. But even the 720p channels are pretty good. I did calibrate the TV with the internet’s help (before you spend the money on a professional or calibration CD try doing a search for samsung ln52a750 calibration…you’ll find a lot of instruction on this). Haven’t tried blu-ray yet, but upconverted DVD looks awesome.

Sound – people have said the sound isn’t so great..i think it’s not bad. I hooked up an HDMI from my cable box to the TV and the sound hasn’t been disappointing. If you have a sound system this shouldn’t be a concern (the TV has an optical audio out…so you can hook up everything to the TV and output the sound to your sound system). If you don’t have a sound system..i don’t think you’ll be upset by the quality (just my opinion).

Appearance – this is a very nice looking set. It looks great in my apartment. As for the TOC, it does not bother me or any of my friends that have seen it. I don’t even think I would have noticed it if it wasn’t mentioned in reviews often. The TV does produce a glare, but next time you go to a local electronics store to look at TVs notice that most of them have a glare! Once the TV is on and you’re watching anything, the glare becomes a non-issue.

USB port – pretty cool. I hooked my USB up to this which contained some JPEGs. The pictures looked great. This is just a cool concept…the fact that you can drag some pics onto a jump drive and look at them on your 52 inch TV. Also, you can buy the wireless infolink USB which you plug into the port and get wireless news and weather.

Interactive Content – this is completely not necessary, but pretty cool. The TV comes preloaded with a lot of artwork, recipes, and stuff for kids. You just click on a but on the remote and can chose one of the categories you’d like to see. I can see that the artwork feature would be nice if you were having a party and wanted some background music and pictures. But this is a little extra.

Games – I have the Wii hooked up to the unit and it looks great. The max resolution for the wii is 480p so don’t expect HD viewing, but it’s just fun to play on such a large screen with a great picture.

TV as Computer monitor – realitvely good quality. very easy to hook up my laptop to the TV with approriate cable. This was an important issue for me as I can know watch Netflix movies from my laptop on the TV. The quality is pretty good (will not be near HD..but nice to know that you have this option)

Remote – this is probably the worst thing about the TV. The setup is not user friendly. The wheel that many have mentioned does not always work well. But it’s such a small thing. I don’t really use the remote except to turn the tv on and off and change the source. The interactive content is accesible by the remote as well.

Compared to Samsung LN52A650 – the 750 does not swivel, whereas the 650. I’ve seen the picture quality on both and they are similar. I did however like the look of the 750 much better (just has a nicer appearance, it’s width is slightly bigger because of a thicker frame). Otherwise the two are almost the same…so it’s up to your preference.

Ordering – try to order this TV from Amazon (check the line that says Sold by…). the reason for this is free shipping and no tax (unless you’re shipping to NY). Plus the shipping is via CEVA. I did pick up the TV from the warehouse. But the guys there help me load the TV into the truck and were professional. Can’t really comment on the in-home service.

This Is A Very Nice LCD TV
By Khanh C., June 15, 2008

I’ve been using this TV for a little over two weeks now, so I feel confident that I know enough to post a review of this product. First off, the IQ of this TV is absolutely beautiful. The color is rich and deep. It has more picture adjustment features than you could ever think of. I don’t mess around with the picture setting because the picture quality is perfect to me. This TV also has a wireless feature that you can use to access files (movie, music, etc) from your PC, when you buy a separate wireless adapter from SAMSUNG that plugs into the USB port located on the side. You can access files from a USB memory stick if you like. I have my Sony Play Station 3 hooked up to this TV. I use the PS3 to view movies (blue ray movies look awesome), pictures (huge 52″ picture frame on the wall), music (all my music collection on disk), and browsing the internet (I can buy games online if I want). The PS3 and this TV make an awesome match. Oh and the sound is very good, I must admit. It won’t match my $4000 audiophile music system in term of sound quality, but I don’t have much space inside my bedroom. The red thing around the TV is….I just don’t care since it is just a marketing gimmick.

Now the things that I don’t like. First, the remote could of been better. The rotating ring is an absolute joke. I cannot browse through the TV menus without problems when using this rotating ring. Sometimes, things that look innovative (like this rotating ring) turn out to be just a worthless gimmick. Samsung needs to get rid of this or make it better. There should be a sleep button on the remote. You can access the sleep timer, but you have to go through several steps. This is stupid on Samsung’s part. Where’s the picture mode (stretch, zoom, 16:9. etc) button? Again, you have to go through several steps to access this feature. The “source” button should be redesigned. All you should do when changing the input source is pressing the “source” button to cycle through all the input source. No need to press the “source” button to get to the input source that you want, then have to press the exit to get out of the display. Little things like this that Samsung completely failed to realize. Samsung should of chosen a better material for the bezel around the TV. It is too soft and easy to scratch (you will scratch it I guarantee). It also attract dust like crazy. The panel somehow is much better at not atracting dust.

-I found another thing about the remote that I don’t like. The Samsung engineer apparenty screwed up on programming the “exit” and “return” button. Certain menu item on the screen tell me to press the “exit” button to get out of that particular menu, but it turns out that I have to press the “return” button to get out. The “exit” button should let you get out of the menu, and the “return” button to let you get out of the submenu. Anyway, I am more than happy to use my Onkyo universal remote instead of this one and just forget about that “exit” button.

-I know that this is a Samsung TV review, but the more I use my Sony Playstation 3, the more I am amazed about this TV set. You know that you can view the media files from your PC (set upi as the media file server) when you buy a separate wireless adapter that plugs into the USB port located on the side of the TV? This feature is called DLNA. Well, why should you if you have a Playstation 3 or a XBox 360 connected to the TV? The sight of that wireless thing sticking out on the side of your TV would be an eye sore. Instead, you can set up a media server on your PC and have the PS3 or Xbox receive all those files and display them on your beautiful TV. My PS3 only has 40 GB of disk space; my PC has over 2 TB of disk space. I don’t have to store everything on my PS3. I can use the PS3 to retrieve all those files wirelessly from my PC and display them on my Samsung TV. If you have several DLNA-supported TVs in your house, then you can set up one PC media file server to feed your TVs anywhere inside your house. This DLNA is truely a great feature. I just wish that Sony and Samsung advertise this feature more.

Other than those silly little things (OK they are annoying), I like this TV a lot. The picture IQ is simply marvelous. This TV deserves 4.5 stars.