Samsung HP-S5053 50in Plasma HDTV

If you're set on a Samsung 50in TV and this DLP doesn't do it for you, then how about the Samsung HP-S5053 50in plasma HDTV?

It has integrated NTSC and ATSC tuners and has a pixel resolution of 1366 x 768. Like the HL-S5087W DLP HDTV, it has a contrast ratio of 10,000:1. That relativiley high ratio means that blacks are very black and whites a re a brilliant, gleaming white. Brightness measures 1300 cd/m2 and the viewing angle is a fairly standard 175 degrees.As you would expect of a 50in plasma, this Samsung is a hefty beast. It measures 48.3 x 33.3 x 13.4 inches (w x h x d) with its stand.

The HP-S5053 has all the connection options you would expect of a high-end HDTV. These are: 2 HDMI, 2 component, 2 composite, 2 S-Video, digital coaxial, and digital optical. It also has 10W per channel stereo speakers and SRS TruSurround XT virtual surround sound.

Other features of the Samsung HP-S5053 50in plasma HDTV include picture-in-picture, parental control which allows parents to monitor what children are watching by setting rating limits, auto volume, to keep volume consistent when you're changing channels, and multi-lingual on-screen displays.

The Samsung HP-S5053 also features Samsung's DNIe (Digital Natural Image engine which improves contrast, white level, picture detail and removes noise from lower quality inputs. There's a three-line comb filter which reduces edge artefacts and improves transition detail. And the Cinema Smooth 3:2 pull-down which corrects the anomaly created when 24 frames-per-second movies are converted to 30 frames per second for DVD.

This 50in plasma isn't the best you'll ever see in terms of pure image quality. But it's very good and something of a bargain at its current price.

One thing to be aware of if you're considering this Samsung 50in plasma HDTV is plasma burn-in. This is a phenomenon that affects all plasma TVs and is caused by the ever-present logos used by some TV channels and by some video games. If you intend to use your TV to play games on your Xbox, PlayStation or Wii regularly you should probably avoid a plasma altogether. Burn-in causes the logo or image in question to be permanently 'burned-in' to the screen and show up as a ghostly image.