Samsung PS50A556/557/558/S Owners Thread

[SlingShotUK]

Right, well finally it seems that stock of the 2008 50inch plasma range from Samsung to replace the 2007 PS50P96/97FDX models are being delivered to people. I therefore think it's time for an owners thread so we can all discuss our latest purchase and get to the bottom of any uncertainty in specs etc.

I'll update this thread to link to relevant supporting information and specific posts on the forum that address issues that affect our set as they appear.

Specs
This particular model has three versions: A556, A557 and A558.
The only difference as far as I know is in the colour of the bezel. The A556 has a black one, the A557 has a silver one and the A558 has a titanium one.

Reviews
There are currently no online reviews for this model but the nearest US (and Europe) equivalent is the PN50A550. CNet did a review of this a few months ago. There is some debate as to how closely this matches the A556 etc as it has a contrast ratio of 30000:1 whereas the A556/7/8 has one of 20000:1. AvForums member Flash3D has bought one of these in Holland and it seems to share alot of commonality with the A556 etc (even down to the blur/focus issue discussed below).

CNet review: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...-32887581.html

Related Threads

• My first 12 hours of usage which caused some nasty retention problems (though probably quite normal as I had the settings too high):
  Brand new Plasma - Retention that won't go. Really need advice.
  
  
• Problems with the Sammy's 24hz mode and judder on a PS3 1080p/24hz movie
  PS3 BluRay - 24hz 1080p but judder on new Samsung
  
  
• Potential judder problems on PS3 when running in 720p - but not when played in 1080p (on game GTA 4)
  Judder / stutter when scrolling, spinning Niko's view?

FAQ

• Does this model handle true 24hz playback of 1080p material?
  
  This is far from being clear yet as the above thread will show. However, for now it seems that while the set handles 24hz as an input format it may not be outputting pure 24fps - instead potential employing 3:2 pulldown - as judder is being experienced when using a PS3 and a BluRay DVD with 1080/24hz output. We are still trying to establish what is going on here, although recent tests with the same disk with 24hz output disabled is showing no judder at 60hz.
  
  
• Does this model suffer from the same blurring / focus problem that the series 5 and 6 LCD's suffer from?
  
  Yes it does annoyingly and while the LCD models have had this fixed in a firmware update the plasma's haven't. However, the good news is that Samsung are working on an update that will fix this issue (could be within 3 weeks from 08-June-08).
  Thanks to Doodyspudding for contacting Samsung and Curry's to confirm this.
  
  
• Can I access the 'Service Menu' on this set?
  
  Yes you can, BUT if you do decide to do this please remember the following:
  
  ALL YOUR TV SETTINGS WILL BE RESET WHEN ENTERING SERVICE MODE!
  
  To access the service menu and view your usage in hours do the following:
  
  When off, using the remote control: press info, menu, mute and power
  
  To get out again you'll have to turn the tv off and then on.
  Make sure you don't play with any settings to be safe.. If you adjust something by mistake you could screw up your set.
  
  
• How do I view the total number of hours my set has been on for?
  
  This information is available in the service menu. You can access this using the information above, but please be aware that all your settings will be reset to factory values as soon as you enter service mode.

[Flash3d]

Ahh, there it is
Sling, you could mention this review: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...1.html?tag=pop

It's the us version, but basically the same.

And some us user reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PN50A5.../dp/B0015AD2JK

and finally some pdf (in german) with the specs: http://www.samsung.com/at/products/d...talog_2008.pdf

[SlingShotUK]

Originally Posted by Flash3d

Ahh, there it is
Sling, you could mention this review: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...1.html?tag=pop

It's the us version, but basically the same.

And some us user reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PN50A5.../dp/B0015AD2JK

and finally some pdf (in german) with the specs: http://www.samsung.com/at/products/d...talog_2008.pdf

Aha, yeah. The only reason I'm a little weary of linking to the A550 is that it is a different spec - it has a 30,000 contrast ratio whereas the A556-8 models only have a 20,000 one. Due to this I wonder if other parts of the electronics may be different. Be interesting to find out what is the same though.

[SlingShotUK]

I have just come across something on my set and I'd like to know if anyone else see's this behaviour as well.

I was just trying out GTA 4 on my PS3 and when first loaded it up the PS3 was outputting it in 720p. I checked this output using the info button the set and it showed 1280x700/60hz.

Now, when the game started I noticed that it had more judder than it should when moving around - especially when spinning the view. It felt like the framerate was abit dodgy.. Definetly not the kind of stutter I would expect.

Anyway, I then went back into the PS3 menu and forced it to only support 1080p. I reloaded the game and it loaded up in 1080p without a problem. I then noticed that the judder and stuttering were gone!

Now this raises a worrying question as to the quality of the set's 720p output. Could it have problems outputting 1280x700?

I'd be very interested to hear if anyone else is seeing this in 720p.

[golden void]

I will post a full report of my first evening at home with my PS50A556 sortly. For now I was curious whether people consider the following settings "safe" for breaking it in over the first 200 hours...

Overall Light: 7/10 (I haven't been able to see this setting make any difference yet)
Contrast: 50/100
Brightness: 50/100
Colour: 35/100
Sharpness: 50/100 (can't see any difference when I change this one either)
Dynamic Constrast: Off
Movie mode: Low (no idea what this does, can't see any difference when changing it)
Power Saving: Off (setting this on at any of the levels offered really dimmed the picture to an unsable level)

At these settings everything looks OK to me, though I will be cranking up contrast and brightness once the 200 hours is up. Colour = 35 is where I will keep it. Any higher is simply garish to my eyes. If I had wanted a picture that garish, I would have bought an LCD.

[SlingShotUK]

Originally Posted by golden void

I will post a full report of my first evening at home with my PS50A556 sortly. For now I was curious whether people consider the following settings "safe" for breaking it in over the first 200 hours...

Overall Light: 7/10 (I haven't been able to see this setting make any difference yet)
Contrast: 50/100
Brightness: 50/100
Colour: 35/100
Sharpness: 50/100 (can't see any difference when I change this one either)
Dynamic Constrast: Off
Movie mode: Low (no idea what this does, can't see any difference when changing it)
Power Saving: Off (setting this on at any of the levels offered really dimmed the picture to an unsable level)

At these settings everything looks OK to me, though I will be cranking up contrast and brightness once the 200 hours is up. Colour = 35 is where I will keep it. Any higher is simply garish to my eyes. If I had wanted a picture that garish, I would have bought an LCD.

That's not looking bad at all mate. I think cell lighting is useful in various lighting conditions - i.e if the room is too light or too dark etc.. It is a very subtle setting I think.

Only thing I'd change is sharpness. I have mine set to 8 for freeview and 0 for anything HD. Sharpness is the devils tool especially on high quality sources - it just introduces nasty artifacts into the picture.

I know what you mean about colour. This set has very powerful colour intensity so I keep mine quite low as well.

[golden void]

Apologies for the length...

Two months ago, my beloved Toshiba rear projection home cinema system bit the dust in a thunderstorm. Gutted as I was, the insurance paid out handsomely, and hence I found myself in the market for a large flat screen TV as a replacement. Even though I was losing 10 inches on what I was used to, I decided that a 50 inch full HD was all I could afford with the insurance pay out. Hence I found myself spending about 4 weeks researching which TV to go for

I managed to rule out LCD very quickly. I think anyone who gets a shop to place an LCD and equivalent plasma side by side showing the same HD source would arrive at this conclusion, if they are being objective. I did this a lot with several models. There is simply no comparison to a fussy-eyed viewer like myself. LCD to me looks fake, almost garish. Almost like a computer rendered image of the real world. In fact live action footage on an LCD reminds me a bit of watching Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within. Everything looks “almost real”, but not quite. So plasma it was

Many hours of reading later I decided on Samsung’s 50 inch P96. Seems like I made this choice just as that venerable model hit end of life. Curry’s (where I was forced to shop because the insurance paid out in credit vouchers, more on that later) could not order one for me. The single shop-soiled model they had left, when reduced to a stunning £999, was very tempting, but since I was (sort of) not spending my own money, I resisted and instead went for the next gen Samsung model, the PS50A556. I chose this blind, on the back of the extremely positive reputation and reviews the P96 enjoyed. Yesterday it finally arrived

A word on Curry’s. I had to shop there (in a physical shop not their website) because the insurance payout was in the form of credit vouchers. I wasn’t happy about this, but there was little I could do without risking a lower payment if I insisted on cash. The Sammy came in at £1599. All credit to Curry’s though, when it fell £100 on their website a few days later, they refunded me this amount without batting an eyelid. And their delivery was exactly when promised, and went completely painlessly despite my serious worry about the very steep and narrow stairway that leads up to my living room. They were up the stairs and asking where I wanted it placed in 30 seconds flat! Kudos to Curry’s, their service was awesome. And they didn’t even try to sell me an extra 5 year guarantee either – those I suspect they simply forgot to ask

I have now spent one whole night playing with the TV. Now it must be stressed up front that right now I have no way to watch an HD source on it yet. I plan to buy a Blu Ray player this weekend with the change I had left from my vouchers and the £100 they gave me back. But for now I have only viewed Freeview (courtesy of the built-in box inside the telly) and a couple of DVDs, via my old player (Scart socket and all).

FreeView TV

Tuning in the channels was just like any other FV box…painless and easy: push button, watch progress bar fill up. I actually use a tabletop portable arial with cute little antennas that you can twiddle (1950s style) as my RF source, but it works well enough as I live atop on of the tallest hills in eastern Scotland. Just like my external FV box (now discarded) the Sammy’s didn’t pick up Film 4 during the channel scan. I expected that. Other than that, every channel was FAR better than my old box managed, with an 80% full or better signal bar on all fronts, and no break up that I have seen, though it hasn’t rained yet.

Picture quality scaling up from SD looks awesome to me. At least as good as it did on my Toshiba, and probably better because a rear-projector always has “overall light level” problems. I am however sitting more than the recommend 3 x your screen width distance away from the TV, so perhaps this is to be expected. Up very close (a few feet), I could see the grain. All in all though, I was extremely happy with the FreeView result. Painless, easy and stunning. I then watched the Dave channel for an hour because it has a fixed logo constantly in the top left corner and I wanted to test for retention. I had the TV set to do 4x4 pixel-shifting every 3 minutes. After the hour I could see no trace of the Dave logo whatsoever, and I looked hard. Worth noting that I had already turned the settings down to those I mentioned in the previous post.

DVDs

I now loaded up the DVD player. Being interested in looking for judders, I began with the Fellowship of the Ring. Lots of big pans over large vistas after all. With SD and Scart I saw no judder to speak of. Perhaps once every 10 minutes when the camera panned fast I saw perhaps a one frame stutter, but no more than that, and I was looking hard. I am not even sure if judder should be a problem viewing SD over Scart, but I checked it anyway on the back of SlingShot’s earlier post. To cut a long story short, I watched the entire movie, and ended up totally satisfied with the Sammy’s SD playback capabilities

Next I switched to watching Hallowe’en, a film that is almost entirely set in the dark. The blacks looks great. Deep and rich, despite the low settings that had been forced on me by the 200 hour gentle break in. And believe me, in Hallowe’en there are plenty of different blacks on display. Again, I came away very very happy indeed - especially since I had recently watched Hallowe’en (yep I love that movie) on my dad’s LCD (42’’ Panasonic Vierra), with very unsatisfactory results in both the blacks department and the “looks artificially rendered” factor - almost ruined one of my most beloved movies. Really, the only thing I’ve seen looking good on an LCD was Finding Nemo, which looks awesome when viewed garish, overly bright and shiny.

Next port of call was a Nightmare on Elm Street, mostly because I had just picked up the special edition that day for 3 quid!! It’s another very dark shot movie and again looked dark, rich and deep. It was 3am now though so I lasted about 20 minutes into that before passing out on the couch. And thus my day ended.

If I have one complaint thus far, it is this, I believe I could perceive a very slight delay in sound during DVD playback. As if the visual and audio track would go out of sync every so often, for a few milliseconds. Absolutely minuscule it was, and only now and again. But it did annoy me, on and off, the whole evening, though admittedly I was viewing with an overly critical eye. It was definitely only when watching DVDs; I never noticed this at all on the Freeview channels. Can a TV have a problem like this, or is it more likely my DVD player at fault? It’s certainly never done it before, that I’ve noticed.

Well that’s it. I am in a completely positive mood regarding the new TV right now, though I’ve only seen its SD capabilities. My HD adventure will begin this weekend when I pick up some HD disks, and will possibly give the Xbox or PS3 a spin as well (despite promising the wife I would avoid video games till after the 200 hours break in period). I shall report more then.

[Flash3d]

Nice review void!

Everything i read about this set is very positive, the lip sync issue is something i also had on the ps50q91 samsung and easly fixed by my receivers delay settings.

Also very interested in your hd tests and especially the 24p judder tests .
Seems that the ps550A550 will be more available and viewable in the stores over here in Holland next week.

Then it's time to post my own review

[golden void]

I didn't notice a delay setting anywhere. However the manual with the PS50A556 is incredibly bad. It just states the bloomin obvious with 1 million screen shots. Just diving into the menus yourself and reading the on-screen help is superior!

Oh, one setting I forgot to mention that might be vital....I set the gamma correction to +3. This is probably offsetting the low contrast and brightness - am I being naughty doing this during the first 200 hours?

[SlingShotUK]

Great review GV!

It's worth pointing out though that your test for judder on not related to 24hz output. This is only something that affects BluRay DVD's output at 1080p/24hz mode.

Be great if you could test this when you get your new BluRay player.

Regarding gamma I'm not sure how it'll affect the run in, although it's boosting gamma within the confines of the contrast and brightness settings so may not have an adverse effect.

[SlingShotUK]

I'm interested to know about this lipsync issue.

I've only tried on DVD so far - 24 and played it upscaled on my PS3.. I did kind of feel the lipsync was out..

What causes this?

I need to do some more tests.

[SlingShotUK]

I think I may have a potential problem with my set - specifically in 50hz modes.

I've noticed since getting the set that Freeview has a kind of purple / pink tinge to the colours - it just doesn't look right. I put this down to the set not being calibrated yet and perhaps it being the Freeview reveiver.

However, I've just tried a DVD on my PS3 and it was output in 50hz along with the purple / pink tinge to the colours. This doesn't happen in any 60hz mode!

I need to do some more tests but it doesn't seem right and I wonder if I may have a fault in the set..

If anyone else sees this please let me know.

[golden void]

Any idea why my PIP option is always disabled?

[SlingShotUK]

Originally Posted by golden void

Any idea why my PIP option is always disabled?

I had a look at this last night. It appears that you can only use PIP when on a different source to the one you want to PIP. I.E I was on HDMI 2 which my PS3 is on and could activate PIP for DTV. It's possible to change DTV channels using the menu. You can only view one other source at a time it seems.

[SlingShotUK]

A potential tip for you guys to try. When running something over HDMI - i.e PS3, Xbox, BluRay player etc - look for the option HDMI Black Level in picture options. I turned this on last night while playing GTA 4 on the PS3 and WOW! It makes black levels incredible - really inkey and as a result everything looks vibrant.
I haven't seen black levels this good so far and was taken aback. A game like GTA 4 is full of atmosphere and detail and this adjustment really enhances all that.. One of the built in picture processing options that seems to really offer something valuable.

I'd love to hear what others thing of this..