Samsung LNS3241D 32-Inch LCD HDTV
Great TV, great bargain, but maybe not the best for picky gamers
Okay first let me say that most everything the other reviewers have said about this TV is true. I too saw this TV on display at Circuit City side by side with other LCD flat panels from Sony, Sharp and others, and looking at them all running the same video the Samsung picture quality was as good as or better than any of them, to my eyes. The only other TV's that were even close were the Sony (didn't look as good as the Samsung, but cost several hundred more), and a higher end Samsung of the same size (a couple hundred more for increased contrast ratio from 3000:1 to 4000:1, I can't say I saw a difference).  <br /> <br />The price was fantastic for this type of TV with the features it has. Circuit City just happened to have one available as an \\"Open Box Deal\\", a customer return or something to that effect. The TV was still in brand spanking new condition, still had the remote, manual, and everything, just no box, and I got it for $200 off their list price, so I payed about $1200. I expected to be paying more like $1500-1800 for a 32\\" LCD HDTV to get a nice picture, so I went home that day very pleased with my purchase. <br /> <br />Well... the TV is great and will probably satisfy 95% of people out there who want to upgrade to HDTV and/or flat panel. I, unfortunately, am one of the other 5%.  <br /> <br />The problem for me is that I primarily bought the TV to play video games on. And I am very picky about the picture when I'm playing games. Little things that might not bother most people can be a real annoyance to me. <br /> <br />Issue #1 - Though much improved over what I was used to seeing with older LCD monitors, and even with Samsung boasting a lightning-fast repsonse time of 8ms (one of the fastest I've seen advertised, only the Aquos is advertised faster that I know of at 6ms), there was still VERY noticeable blurring of finer details when things were moving. I hooked up an Xbox 360 and ran a first person game (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for you gamers), which is a gorgeous and VERY finely detailed game. In an outdoor scene, I immediately noticed that when I would move, all the fine details like all of the individual leaves on trees or blades of grass would go out of focus very noticeably. And then when I would stop moving it would take a split second for everything to get back in focus. Even my wife, who is about 10,000x less picky about things like that and often doesn't notice things I complain about on TV pictures, asked why it was doing that before I even pointed it out to her! A sign to me that it is actually something the average person will notice easily.  <br /> <br />Issue #2 - While this TV does offer a very high contrast ratio (3000:1 claimed) that does look very good in scenes where you have a very bright colorful scene or a mixed light and dark colored scene, I found that it does NOT look good on primarily dark scenes. If the scene is mostly dark with just a small portion of light/colorful/white elements, the lighter elements will appear cloudy or greyish. Perfect example, I popped in Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2, and the first screen is all black with one line of large white text in the center, and the white text should be a bright bright white, instead it was a dingy light grey. Another example from the same game, when you are viewing the car buying screen where the background is mostly black and dark grey, a bright colored car like a yellow or red will appear washed out or greyish instead of vibrant.  <br /> <br />Which seems to be an effect of Issue #3... What it appears to me is that the backlight of the LCD trys to adapt by adjusting brighter for mostly bright scenes and dimming for mostly darker scenes. It is very noticeable when the scene shifts rapidly from dark to light, you will see the scene shift, and then a split second later you will see the whole screen brightness level very suddenly change.  <br /> <br />This 'blinking' along with the fact that a mostly dark screen with colorful elements will show the colors to be washed out and very low contrast looking means that, although you are USUALLY getting a great, high contrast and very vibrant picture, in the end it is a very unconsistently great picture. Add to that the blurring effect and I am very unsatisified with this TV as far as playing games on it. And I have spent HOURS adjusting every possible setting for the picture with no luck of alleviating these issues. <br /> <br />I am left to wonder if maybe this TV isn't maybe defective in some way, hence why it was an \\"Open Box Deal\\" to begin with. BUT, I have done a lot of reading online since buying this TV and found that at least the issue of the blurring seems to be a well known and commonly accepted issue with LCD's. As I said, I just be one of the extreme minority of picky consumers. As far as the blinking issue, the way it happens it seems to be a purposeful design, not some type of defect. <br /> <br />Lastly, I should mention that I am also a fan of older video games (think Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis), and when I hooked a couple of these older systems up to this TV the picture just looked horrible, but I think this is just an effect of running a very low resolution image on such a high resolution TV, which is something you hear people complain about when viewing regular, non digital TV signals on HDTV's as well, so is not really a fault of this particular TV. <br /> <br />Now, with all that having been mentioned, I will say that when I popped in a couple DVD movies, the TV performed beautifully, very nice, sharp, colorful picture. Were I only a movie buff who wanted a nice 'home theater' experience but didn't have space or money for one of the truly large HDTV's, this TV would work perfectly. So for anyone who is just looking for exactly that, watching and movies and regular TV, I would rate the TV a 5 for having a wonderful picture, great features, tons of inputs, and being an excellent value. <br /> <br />But for playing video games,I can only rate the TV a 2. And since I rarely ever even watch TV, and I use my TV probably 80% for video gaming, I am unhappy and will be returning this TV today and getting a large screen Sony Wega CRT TV. The Wega line, by the way, still has what I consider to be the BEST picture available for any type of gaming. I had a 27\\" Wega for five years and absolutely loved it.