This 52-inch LCD TV hails from one of Samsung's top-shelf 2008 lines and thus sports many advanced picture technologies and features. It has a 1920 x 1080 resolution and a four-millisecond response time. It uses Samsung's Auto Motion Plus 120Hz technology to reduce motion blur and render smoother movement with film sources. The Super Clear Panel is designed to reject ambient light to help improve contrast and black levels. The attractive Touch of Color design puts a hint of red around the edge of the gloss-black cabi net. The generous connection panel includes four HDMI (with one on the side panel), two component video and one PC input, plus a single RF input to access the internal ATSC, NTSC and Clear-QAM tuners. The HDMI inputs accept both 1080p/60 and 1080p/24. Picture-in-picture functionality is here, with the option for window and side-by-side viewing.

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The LN52A650 ($2,999.99) also offers a nice assortment of features for the digital- and Web-minded user. A side-panel USB port allows you to quickly and easily play MP3s and JPEGs, while the inclusion of an Ethernet port lets the TV access the Internet to display news, weather and stock information as part of its InfoLink function. For $200, you can step up to LN52A750, which adds media streaming via the Ethernet port and HD video playback via the USB port. The step-up model has also its own flash memory, and the u nit comes preloaded with games, recipes, children's content and more.

Samsung includes a lot of video and audio adjustments to fine-tune the TV's performance. In addition to three picture modes, five color-temperature options and digital noise red uction, the LN52A650's menu features white-balance, gamma and flesh tone controls, plus multiple color spaces with the ability to adjust six color points. The Auto Motion Plus 120Hz menu offers multiple settings, each of which affects the image quality differently. The Off mode simply repeats frames to create 120Hz, which many film purists prefer, while the Low through High modes perform varying degrees of frame interpolation to create smoother movem ent with film-based sources. The LN52A650 has six aspect ratios, including a Just Scan mode that displays 1080i/1080p sources with no overscan.

Read about the high points and the low points of the LN52A650 on Page 2.