Confused? Check out the HDTV Buying Guide!

Jul 27, 2006 VirTriV     Amazing HDTV in its class, i was in market for Panasonic i paid 100 less for thi...

May 28, 2006 coleS     I was sitting on the fence trying to decide on the Panasonic TH-50PX60U or the n...

My Experience: I was sitting on the fence trying to decide on the Panasonic TH-50PX60U or the new Samsung HP-S5053. Picture quality on both sets is almost identical. Both sets have many of the same features including 10,000:1 contrast ratio and dual HDMI inputs. The two areas that the Samsung’s new 5053 have the edge however is “screen burn protection” and “game mode”. Many people have held off on buying plasma because of fear of having an image burned into the screen if a static image is left in pause too long. With the new Samsung 5053, there is no need to worry about this anymore. The screen burn protection offers two ways to protect you from this problem. First, “pixel shift” can be turned on so that the screen moves every few minutes while in a paused mode. Second, if you do have the misfortune of getting a screen burn in, you can select “all white” or a moving test pattern to erase the screen burn. Either way, Samsung has made this annoying problem with plasmas a thing of the past. The game mode is also helpful if you have a gaming console. Enabling this feature will allow your games to look better at the single push of a button. Overall, I would have to say that after carefully examining several plasma TV’s from Panasonic, Hitachi, Phillips, and Pioneer over the last 8 months; the new Samsung 5053 is best in class for picture quality and features with a very competitive price. Another small plus is that the onscreen menu on this set is very intuitive, easy to use, and better looking than a lot of the other plasma TV’s available.

Problems: I have nothing really negative to say about this TV and could not really find any tangible weaknesses. I marked sound as a 4 only because I don’t really use the built in sound since I have a dedicated surround sound system that I use in place of the TV audio. The TV does have a simulated surround sound feature built in for those who do not have a dedicated surround sound system and I’m sure it is probably good; I just haven’t used it yet.