I had purchased this TV in October of '08 from another vendor. I was researching 720p sets for about month before I purchased. I had planned on using my media center PC with it. I really didn't want a 1080p set because the only true 1080p source these days is blu-ray, which I had no intention of investing in. I was impressed with all aspects of the set since I bought it. Ghosting was present sometimes. I found it really depends on the source of the content that produces more or less ghosting. Yes there are the 120hz HDTVs out there, but from what I have seen they can't get rid of all the ghosting. 120hz sets double the frame rate of content that isn't supposed to be run at such a high frame rate. The result is weird and unnatural looking motion in movies that are only supposed to be running at 24 frames per second, not 120. Ghosting and motion blur are an inherent limitation in LCD technology, LCD owners will have to accept this. I was looking into plasmas to, but all the 720p plasmas I found seemed to have a native resolution of 1024x768, which is not a wide screen resolution. In addition, plasmas are subject to burn-in on the screens, something I didn't wanna have to deal with. Plasma sets are being phased out pretty fast anyway. So I chose this TV, it wasn't too big, wasn't too small, and had everything I required.
Out of the Box, it showed impressive HD picture with off-air HD channels. The setup with auto-program was very easy and straight forward. SD content is very watchable. Hooking my media center PC up to the VGA connection produced a flawless picture. The built-in speakers produced a satisfying full sound. The unit seemed like the perfect 720p set, until I tried to use more than one HDMI device. Apparently, for some very odd reason, only 1 out of the 3 HDMI inputs will utilize the TV's native resolution of 1360x768. As many people know, if you are not running an LCD display at its native resolution, you are not getting its full potential in picture quality and sharpness. The other 2 HDMI inputs default to a resolution of 1280x720, which because its not the native res of the TV, looks blocky and slightly out of focus. So for me, these other 2 HDMI inputs are basically useless. I am going to have to buy an HDMI hub now to accommodate my multiple HDMI devices so they can all utilize the TV's native resolution. If I had known about this flaw, I would have never purchased it. Samsung, if you are listening, is there a purpose behind this design flaw? Buy Samsung LN40A450 40-Inch 720p LCD HDTV!
