Samsung PN50C430 Plasma Television Review-

Another fine plasma television entry, ahead of the Super Bowl, comes our way today in the form of the Samsung PN50C430, a big, if not all that great, plasma television. It will prove a strange juxtaposition of concepts, but the strangeness will not distract from the overall quality of the system.

The Samsung PN50C30 is a fifty inch 720p plasma television that offers a Wide Color Enhancer mode, ConnectShare Movie to get content off cameras to display directly onto the television, a game mode to reduce blurring in high-speed situations, Anynet Plus systems, two ten watt speakers augmented by SRS TruSurround HD, two HDMI ports, a USB port, a component video input, a composite video input, two audio inputs, a headphone jack, and a digital audio output.

You can see right off that there’s not a lot to this one, especially not in the way of features. And it does show through in the picture, which isn’t all that great. It’s only 720p, after all, which is still pretty good but not as great as many you’ll see. The sound is a bit better, though; ten watt speakers are hardly special but augmented by the SRS TruSurround HD system certainly gives them a note of backup. There’s not much room here for extra components, though, which is a downright shame. Sure, it plays equally well with old and new components, but it doesn’t play particularly well with either old or new hardware.

But considering that Amazon wants $604.99 for one of these, you can forgive a whole lot of issues with this. You can forgive a whole lot of anything for that kind of price tag, and if your home theater is a bit on the minimalist side (or has a good receiver to back it), then you should be able to do all right with a huge picture and not many components.

The Samsung PN50C430 isn’t the best television you’ll find out there, but it’s certainly one of the best values out there, and if you go this route, you’ll want to keep your home theater relatively simple, but you should get along pretty well.