Samsung plasma

[kernst]

Is the PN50B450B1D a 1080P TV, and with this TV will a Blu Ray DVD player significantly outperform my current 1080P upscaling DVD player and be worth purchasing at this time?

[MrBoylan]

Is the PN50B450B1D a 1080P TV, and with this TV will a Blu Ray DVD player significantly outperform my current 1080P upscaling DVD player and be worth purchasing at this time?

The B450 plasmas are not 1080p. The native panel resolution is 1366x768 pixels which means they are a bit higher resolution than a 720p TV. But I believe that the B450 PDP does accept a 1080p input from a compatible source (e.g., a Blu-ray player) - it scales the source to match its native resolution.

As for whether a Blu-ray would be noticeably better on that TV than an upconverted DVD, I would say yes. Some upconverting DVDs are really not that great at upconversion, and some are appreciably better. But even the best upconverting DVD player can't match the detail, color saturation and overall quality of a Blu-ray Disc player playing a native Blu-ray Disc. There's practically 6 times the amount of detail in a Blu-ray vs. a DVD. You won't see every last bit of detail on your TV since it is not native 1080p, but a Blu-ray should still look excellent on that set.

Also, that TV set actually has 3D capabilities. It came out in 2008 but Samsung built 3D into a few DLP and plasma sets that model year, before the Blu-ray 3D standard was adopted. It uses the less-popular "checkerboard" 3D format, which is really only available on the Panasonic Blu-ray 3D players, such as the DMP-BDT100, DMP-BDT300 and DMP-BDT350. The only problem is that it requires a separate emitter in addition to special active 3D glasses and these are actually not that easy to find any more.

-CB

[samiboy]

Samsung Plasma, definitely worth it!! The picture quality could not be any better plus it accepts every format of videos and all through usb!! I love mine!