Picture quality maybe a little to good?!?

I've read everyone's reviews of this TV and done my own bit of research prior to buying one. First off let me say this is by far one of the better TVs on the market, probably one of the best if you're looking for an LCD. It's game system friendly, BIG, and power bill friendly. There's no disputing the picture quality when viewing a true 1080p video. Despite the cost if you're looking for an HD TV that is pretty close to the top of the food chain without spending twice the price or paying high repair bills later down the road, this should be one on your list of models to look at. I've had mine nearly 5 months and have had "0" issues with it and have about 15 game systems hooked into it and numerous other devices. It works flawless with all of them... even the old NES systems. :)

That being said here's a few things you should know. Much of the so called banding issues people talk about on this TV are due to compression on the digital signals from the cable companies. Due to how sharp the picture quality is on this TV and others like it, you end up seeing more then you would on normal NTSC (non-HD) TV. Since people don't know what to call what they're seeing, they assume that these little "remnants or fragments" are banding. Other times when a signal comes in on an HD channel (almost always commercials) that wasn’t filmed in HD (720i or higher) you may see a line or two across the top or bottom of the screen. This is purely an issue with how it's been encoded and broadcast, most likely it's a flaw in how it's not up-sampled to the HD standard sizes correctly. HD TV’s of this quality make everything more noticeable, especially flaws in the filming or broadcast editing.

So if you're not planning on getting HD cable then this is probably not the TV for you as you’ll notice every little thing about the lower quality signals and you won't be happy with what you're seeing. However if you do decide to get HD TV you'll be floored by the stations that do things right and provide you with a true 1080i/p experience. The vivid colors and pictures make you feel as though you could reach in and touch what you're watching.

Things that can hinder the signal quality:
1) Digital cable box - it could be an older model and unable to reproduce a good clean signal at the new 1080i/p standards.

2) The cable company's encoding of the broadcast signal could be to compressed or the original footage may not be filmed at a high enough HD broadcast quality.

3) The equipment at the particular station you're watching (ABC, CBS, WRAL..etc for example) may not be the latest HD resolutions. If they're using 720p format cameras and broadcasting in HD to a TV that can do 1080p then of course it's going to have to be up-sampled which causes the remnants.

4) If you’re watching a DVD in a non-HD format you’ll see remnants where the video has been compressed to fit on the DVD. On a normal non-HD TV you would never see that level detail. It’s still there…it’s just not visible since the TV can’t produce that level of detail.

There are numerous other issues, but for the most part those are the common factors that most consumers have to deal with. Just keep these in mind and realize that the cable companies and television stations are doing a good job at trying to balance their budgets and the changing technologies. Sooner or later they will catch up and the picture quality will improve with each step they take in that direction. In the meanwhile if you want to see what the picture quality on this TV should look like then pick up any kind of device that supports HDMI standard output and produces a true 1080p signal and take a look at the quality. For now that’s probably going to be the only signal type that gives you the full scope of this TVs performance.