Samsung PN51D550 3D Plasma HDTV Review

Motion Performance

Overall, the motion performance of the Samsung PN51D550 is good, but not amazing. Sure, it's as smooth as any decent plasma TV. It doesn't produce the same color trailing or flickering that we see in a lot LCD TVs. However, images with a lot of fine detail lose a lot of detail when they're in motion. Faces get fuzzy. Textures become flat. If forced to choose, we'll take that over color trailing. You probably won't even notice if you're sitting far enough away. More on how we test motion performance.

3:2 Pulldown & 24fps

The Samsung PN51D550 has no problem displaying 24fps content. In order to get the best content, make sure you locate the Film Mode setting in the menu and change the setting from "Auto1" to "Auto2." That should stop most of the artifacting that you get with some 24fps content. More on how we test 3:2 pulldown and 24fps.

Resolution Scaling

The Samsung PN51D550 has a native resolution of 1080p. Anything of a lower resolution has to be upconverted by the TV's internal processing to fit the screen. Overall, the TV is good at this task. First, you want to locate the settings that control the screen fitting. There's a dedicated button on the remote labeled "P Size" that does just this. For 1080p, 1080i, and 720, use the setting called "Screen Fit.' More on how we test resolution scaling.

480p

With 480p content, the TV loses a lot of video (2% from each side and 3% from the top and bottom) due to overscan. That's quite a lot – enough to obscure necessary onscreen text, like your cable menu.

720p

The 720p content showed no overscan issues, but did have a hard time with some high contrast, high frequency patterns that create Moires.