Samsung LN52A630 Notes for Unpacking, Deciding and Set-Up

We have owned this TV for about two months now, and are delighted with the product.

A TIP BEFORE UNPACKING
I wanted to pass along one tip for a new purchaser. When I saw the size of this box in my kitchen, I thought it was going to be quite the challenge to unpack and get the set into the family room. Upon close inspection of the carton, I found small cartoon stencils depicting two plastic clips on the sides of the box at the bottom. After cutting the plastic banding, when you pull these two plastic tabs out, the entire box will lift off its base. With my wife steadying the TV, I was able to lift off the cardboard packaging and set it aside. This made the TV very easy for two people to lift out of the box bases and carry, with appropriate care. In my opinion, the TV came with very cleaver packaging. Maybe this tip wont help you decide to buy, but it should make the set up easier than attacking the box from the top with a box cutter.

PICTURE QUALITY
As for performance of the TV, we were upgrading from a 19-inch standard TV, so the results are (of course) amazing. When I was comparing TV's at the local Big Box, the picture quality looked virtually the same across all makes of TV's (when fed the same signal, High Def or Conventional). All looked excellent when fed a High Def signal, and pretty mediocre when fed a conventional signal. I know some people hold strong opinions about differences between brands, but my expereince was that they all looked pretty much the same, and way better than what I was used to.

SO, HOW DID WE PICK THIS ONE?
In the end, the matte finish, consumer rating and price were the deciders. The "touch of red" is very, very subtle; more marketing than material in my opinion. All of the Samsungs have a glass border around the perimeter of the TV. My wife liked that the width of the glass border around the TV is narrower on the A630 than the A650 Samsung LN52A650 52-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color. It is a point of personal preference, but the lines on the 630 looked cleaner than the on 650. The 750 model Samsung LN52A750 52-Inch 1080p DLNA LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color comes with "content": recipes, video clips and maybe other stuff. We decided that "content" was not what we needed when buying a television.

We have two windows in the room with the TV, plus ceiling lighting on dimmers. When the model A630 TV is on, there is no reflected light on the picture screen. To be honest, I can't say if the A650 would be any worse with reflected light, since I did not try it in the same room. I tend to doubt there would be much reflection on the glossy screen either because the brightness of the screen is so strong it would probably overcome the reflected light.

SYSTEM
As we were starting from nothing, we bought the Samsung blu-ray player and two HDMI cables and the TV in a package deal from Amazon. We also bought a Yamaha RX-V663BL receiver Yamaha RX-V663BL 665 Watt 7.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver and Harmon Kardon HKTS-15 5.1 speaker system Harman Kardon HKTS-15 5.1 Channel Speaker System from Amazon at the same time. I selected the speakers and receiver/amplifier unseen on the strength of the reviews I read here and elsewhere (Consumer Reports). We decided on a Dolby 5.1 speaker system and a 7.1 amplifier because we learned that while the best sound available over the HD broadcast channels is 5.1, the blu-ray dvd's could put out 7.1 sound on the HDMI cable. We wanted to have the amplifier/receiver decode the 7.1 signal and pass it directly to the speakers. With this configuration, we would only need the one HDMI cable up to the TV from the components, a cleaner look on the wall. Our room set-up allows for four satellites (plus the center channel and sub-woofer). Adding two more satellites in our room would be challenging the room layout. We use HDMI cables to connect from the cable company's dvr box to the amplifier, the blu-ray player to the receiver, and the receiver to the TV.

SETUP NOTES
I encountered two problems on installation: First, the amplifier kept shutting down at moderate volume. I traced the problem to my attachment of speaker wire strands at one of the satellite speakers. Then the amplifier would complete its calibration normally. We now have "shake the walls" quality sound. The second installation challenge was with the Samsung blu-ray player which could not recognize or play a blu-ray disc until I upgraded the firmware following the directions from Samsung's web site. The only DV we have tried is the Planet Earth DVD (blu-ray). It is completely awesome on this setup, really sensational.

I know that some reviewers recommend calibration of the TV to maximize the picture quality (even using third-party professionals who come to your house). We have not done this, nor have we tried to follow the directions in the user manual to improve the picture. We have not found reason to try to improve on the quality we saw right out of the box. The colors seem natural and bright, and the sharpness of the picture seems better than we could see with our eyes!

Thank you to everyone who wrote reviews before me. We are delighted with our purchase and appreciate your assistance.