Hi xguntherc,
I'm 100% happy with my TV as an ouput device for my system. It's a 40" Samsung LE40A559P FullHD LCD Tv with a native resolution of
1920x1080p@60Hz although it supports many resolutions below this including
1600x1200@60Hz.
It has an amazing contrast ratio of 30000:1 and I have it set to automatically detect the contrast ratio depending on what's being displayed and this works very well, although you do sometimes notice the slight shift in contrast, it makes the details in shadowy and dark enviroments look so good that I don't mind, it's only a slight shift that's barely noticable anyways.
There is no visible backlight bleed, unlike my old LCD Monitor which was terrible around the edges. The blacks are gorgeously black, really deep, regardless of where they are on the screen.
The upscaling from lower resolution content is very good too, most of my video files are SD, e.g. DVD, or TV episodes. and the panel displays them much better than any other TV I've seen, even 720p panels.
You have got to watch some HD content on this panel to really understand how gorgeous it really is! I've watched Aliens V's Predator Requiem, Serenity, The Island and The 6 Star Wars movies as well as playing Crysis, Racedriver GRID, Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 & 2, Need For Speed Carbon, Most Wanted, Pro Street, Oblivion. COD4, Assasins Creed...To name but a few, and they all look absolutely AWESOME!!!!
I use it to play games, watch movies, listen to music, watch TV, view my many photo's, surf the internet and anything else I use my PC for and I've had no problems doing any of these things.
All in all I'm very happy using this panel as my primary display and in fact don't ever want to go back to using a monitor again!
One thing I'd say is that there's a huge difference in picture quality and features in the different brands out there, my friend got a cheap Warfdale set and mine blows it away (His words), my mum got a cheap Akon and it's far, far behind the Samsung in EVERYTHING!
I bought my Samsung 2 months ago now for £690 GBP (Approx $1380 USD) but I have now seen it for £599 ($1198 USD) if you could pick up a Good Condition 2nd hand Samsung Series 5 TV then I'd go for it, Watch out not to buy the 556 Samsung as a few of the more useful features are missing and the picture quality suffers for this.
I hope this helps you in your buying decision although if you do know someone with a recent LCD Panel ask them if you can hook up your PC to it Through HDMI, S-Video isn't suitable for FullHD and is blurry at best. I promise you, you'll be amazed.
JKay6969
