Samsung LN52A850 52” 120Hz, 1080P LCD TV: The Living Review

Upscaling

If you are using the LN52A850 as your everyday TV, of its main uses will be to upscale all of the standard definition 480i signals to fit the larger real-estate a 52” screen provides. To avoid the distortion that comes with stretching a 4:3 image to a 16:9 screen, I decided to keep the aspect ratio unchanged for incoming standard definition signals.


Like many other things about this Samsung TV, the upscaling engine can handle standard definition signals extremely well and is able to significantly improve their overall quality. Granted, there are still some artifacts apparent but nothing like I have seen with other sets in the past which have made SD signal viewing a chore at best.

Viewing Angles

These new generation of LCD TVs are nothing like their predecessors which were known for their horrible viewing angles. As you can see from the composite image above, there is very little contrast or color shift as you move to even the more extreme viewing angles. There is a bit of black level loss but other than that, if you are unfortunate enough to be somehow watching the LN52A850 from the side of the screen at least you will still have something to look at.