Samsung LT-P326W 32 HD-Ready Flat-Screen LCD TV
It was superb, until disaster struck
I bought this Samsung LCD TV from Circuit City in December 2004 and soon upgraded my signal quality (in Massachusetts) to Adelphia HDTV Cable via a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 HD (with DVR). It was a wonderful image and I hooked in every source you could imagine at the highest quality each could offer: HDTV cable via HDMI, DVD via component video, even my computer into the DVI input. As a matter of fact, I custom ordered a bookcase-like, retracting-door wooden cabinet for the TV that surrounded it like a protective shield, while the TV itself was wall-mounted with Samsung's proprietary mounting hardware.    Everything was going great until last week when my three-year-old son accidentally struck the TV with a wooden block, immediately causing a multi-line hairline crack about 5 inches wide and accompanying pixel washout to the right and to the bottom of the crack, all the way to the edges of the screen. [...]    I had purchased a nearly $500 extended warranty from Circuit City called the Cityadvantage Protection Plan, which the salesperson presented as just the ting to get, if I was planning to do the wall-mount installation myself (which I was), implying that it would protect the purchase in case of accidental damage.   Lo and behold calls to the Cityadvantage Protection Plan support line and the CC store where I bought the TV (Burlington) revealed that the salesperson who sold me the TV no longer worked there and that accidental damage was expressly NOT covered by this 'protection plan'. Suffice it to say I will never purchase anything from Circuit City again. Other calls to Samsung and my insurance company also left me without recourse, as the possible repair/replacement of the screen \\"probably costs more than the TV is worth\\".    My advice: If you have small children or anything in the neighborhood of the remotest possibility that an object could possibly strike the screen, don't buy this or any other unprotected lcd tv. I would buy it again, but would place it behind a crystal safety-glass frame over the front. You should know that the soft plastic screen is much more delicate than any conventional glass CRT or TV tube, probably something on the order of 10x less shatter-resistant. If anyone from Samsung reads this I'd like to say that I have faithfully purchased 7 durable Samsung electronics products over the last 10 years and I now feel deceived and betrayed to have been left holding the bag for what I believe is an inherently defective product with an unacceptable level of fragility. I would not be surprised if newer generations of these products include a thick glass screen cover, but not in time to rescue the brand loyalty of 'burned' early-adopters like myself.