I bought this tv to replace a LCD that had bad off angle views and weak shadow details. The room is bright during the day and I often watch tv with a light on unless we're watching a movie. The THX Bright Room mode is nearly perfect out of the box. I lowered contrast and brightness a bit and turned up color a few ticks. Watching shows like Game of Thrones was breath taking and bright movies like The Fall with all that light and vibrant colors was mesmerizing. And what amazed me even more is the way the image got even better after about 2 days and again after about 2 weeks.
For those who are agonizing over whether to buy the ST50 or GT50, here is my advice- if you have a light controlled room, will most likely only use one mode and will you're willing to have it calibrated to attain the best possible picture - then buy the ST50. If you want a dark room mode, a bright room mode and you're not so sure that you want to spend money on professional calibration, then buy the GT50 and never wonder if you made the right choice. The GT50 offers 2 THX modes that are awesome right out of the box and the Custom mode has professional color settings that can be adjusted easily and will offer a reference picture if professionally calibrated.
When the GT50 is fed a very good signal such as HD or blu-ray the image is natural, bright, has great color and contrast and the shadow details are the best I have ever seen. I was watching a notably dark movie and could see the detail in the corduroy of a man's black jacket. Wow! Hair has never looked so good on tv. As with any other display, GIGO- bad signals look bad. If you never owned a big screen tv then you should know that it makes all the bad stuff much more obvious and offensive. You should also know that just because a station is HD it doesn't mean that the old stuff is upgraded and will look like blu-ray or even HD for that matter. I think it's a shame that some of HBO and AMC can still be so bad even with newer programming. Shame on them. If you think any of this is the TVs fault then pop in a blu-ray and see what your tv can really do with a good signal and then you'll know who the true offender is. If you are using a set top box from your cable provider or satellite service be sure that you have the newest HD model available and that the settings are right for HD.
This tv offers a dual core processor which improves app response and may help with future apps too. I'll take a dual core over single core any day, considering that tablets now have quad core, why would anyone interested in using apps or the internet even consider a single core processor? BTW, wireless was very easy to setup and updating happens without a hitch.
There's not a tv out there that is perfect and certainly this tv has a few flaws too. However, my rating is based on what's available, not dreams. The GT50 does have dithering (inherent to plasma tech), DSE (dirty screen effect), does not offer the same tools (isf) for picture adjustment that some manufacturers do and the web browser does not support Flash Player- only HTML 5. IMO, the dithering isn't too bad and is often subtle when it does show up, but can be bad with lower quality signals. If you have a lot of dithering (or sparkles) try lowering your brightness setting. I've only seen DSE once during a subway shooting scene that was dark and is improved when using a less bright mode.
I only hear buzzing if my ear is 2" or less from the white part of the screen. Plasmas shouldn't buzz very much more than this. The tv does not have brightness pops or floating blacks either.
This tv is well worth the investment. If you're coming from LCD and really want to love a plasma check this one out in THX Bright Room. ;)
