Samsung HP-S5053 50-Inch Plasma HDTV
Very good plasma TV for the money
After shopping for several months I finally took the plunge and purchased this TV from a national chain.  I finally decided plasma over DLP because of the vertical fading effect I saw with all the DLP sets. I took two of my own DVDs in to the store with me and made the staff there hook up a player so I could see both the fast action of The Matrix and the beautiful scenery of Spring, Summmer, Fall, Winter, Spring.  The picture on the Samsung HP-S5053 was the second best of the many plasmas that I examined. The Pioneer had a better picture but was significantly more expensive.  I do not use the built in speakers because I had an existing 5.1 speaker system.  I really like the  minimal black casing since the silver finishes are distracting-at least to my eye. <br />    The menus are extremely intuitive.  I didn't have to read the instructions at all to get anything working within an hour of unpacking my system.  I purchased an upconverting DVD player and an HDMI cable at the same time I purchased this TV.  My old DVDs look great on this TV.  The 10-15 HD channels I get with Cox cable also look incredible.  The one fault I've found is that if I use the HDMI cable from my cable box or DVD player and connect to the TV and then connect the digital audio out of the TV to my receiver I only receive stereo sound even when the original broadcast is 5.1.   I get around this by using composite video cables from the cable box and DVD player to the HPS5053 and also run a digital audio line from each source to the receiver.  The HPS5053 has plenty of inputs to support almost any type of user.