Your Guide to the Best Products
Best TV: Samsung PN50B650
Excellent overall performance, unbeatable value
Updated November 29, 2009 
Set Alert
The Samsung PN50B650 50" plasma offers a great combination of picture quality and value. Its our Top Pick because of its overall excellent performance and reasonable price. It has very good blacks and shadow detail, highly accurate color, and very good video processing. Glitches like solarization (aka color banding or false contouring) and moiré are non-existent. At a current street price of around $1,200 it's an unbeatable value. You can spend a lot more and get a slightly better picture, but if you are looking for maximum bang for the buck, just buy the PN50B650.
The Samsung PN50B650 has been very favorably reviewed elsewhere, including receiving an Editor's Choice over at Cnet.
The good (+)
- excellent overall performance
- very good blacks and shadow detail
- accurate, natural color (especially after adjustment)
- excellent video processing
- you'd have to be an obsessive videophile to find fault with this picture
- great value
Shortcomings (-)
- none
How big?
Probably as big as you can afford. Here's why...
There are actually standards for picture size vs. viewing distance. For example the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and THX both recommend a maximum viewing distance of approx 8' for a 50" TV, 9' for a 58" TV, and 10' for a 63" TV. If you want to learn more about viewing distance vs. screen size, click here.
If you watch mostly at night and/or you can control the light in your room during the day, you might consider an HD projector instead of an HDTV. The price is about the same, yet you can achieve an optimally sized picture for a truly immersive experience. To see if an HD projector might be right for you, take a read through our Best Projector write up.
LCD vs. Plasma
LCDs are popular with consumers because they demo well under harsh store lighting conditions. But bring the TV home, and plasma's advantages become clear.
Generally speaking, LCDs struggle to produce deep blacks, have problems with fast motion (the better LCDs try to fix this with a 120hz refresh), and lose a significant amount of picture quality if watched from even slightly off-axis (blacks get milky, colors fade, shadow detail is lost, etc.). Plasmas suffer from none of these problems, so it's really no surprise that they appear at the top of our list.
Of course, there are exceptions. As of this writing, Samsung has the best LCD technology on the market. Their 7 Series LCDs produce blacks that rival the mighty Pioneer Elite plasmas. Further, if there is any ambient light, the Samsung LCDs can actually produce deeper blacks than any plasma . And the Samsung LCDs have very little off-axis variation (but still more than plasma). The only thing that keeps these LCDs off our runner-ups list (or winning outright) is the price.
Plasmas do have a couple of shortcomings that should be noted. First, their screens tend to be more reflective than those of LCD TVs, so reflections can be a problem. However, modern plasmas like the Samsung have antireflective coatings that make them not much worse than LCDs in this regard (no TV looks good with light shining on its screen).
The other problem you may hear about is so-called "image retention" or "burn in." Today's plasmas are far better in this regard, and plasma's wouldn't be the favorite of professional reviewers if this were still a major issue.
Where to Buy
RobsChoice.com recommended vendor (avg rating >=4.0 stars based on >1,000 reviews).
Setup Notes - Recommended Settings for Samsung PN50B650
The following settings are refer to the 50" in the 550 series, but may be applicable to your 650 series TV. The settings are optimal for a dimly lit room and a quality HDMI source.
Picture Menu settings:
- Mode: Movie
- Cell light: 8
- Contrast: 91
- Brightness: 55
- Sharpness: 0
- Color: 48
- Tint: G49 & R51
Detail Submenu settings:
- Black adjust: Off
- Dynamic contrast: Off
- Gamma: -2
- Color space: Auto
- Flesh tone: 0
- Edge enhancement: Off
- xvYCC: Off
White Balance submenu:
- R-Offset: 25
- G-Offset: 25
- B-Offset: 25
- R-Gain: 29
- G-Gain: 25
- B-Gain: 23
Picture Options submenu:
- Color tone: Warm2
- Size: Just Scan
- Digital NR: Auto
Extra Features
At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, virtually all TV manufacturers announced future TVs with "IPTV" capabilities.
What is IPTV? It's the ability to retrieve information from the internet (e.g. movies, news, etc.) and display it on a TV. This is not like surfing the web on your TV, as you are only dealing with simple on-screen menus and a regular remote (i.e. no web browser or web pages, etc.). IPTV opens up a massive array of new possibilities.
Because this is a young technology, it will likely be evolving rapidly for many years. Due to this, it's probably best to put the IPTV capabilities in an easily upgraded external box rather than the TV itself. And in fact, some companies are already doing just that. For example, our pick for Best Blu-ray Player already has cool new IPTV features built right in.
In short, we recommend that you buy a TV for its picture quality, not extra features that will soon be obsolete or are better implemented externally.
