Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
- 720p HD Resolution
- Wide Color Enhancer
- 3 HDMI Inputs
- 6ms response time
Samsung 32″ 720p LCD HDTV Experience television in a way you never thought possible with the Samsung LN32A450 32″ 720p LCD HDTV! The 1366 x 768 resolution supports up to 720p to bring color and detail to the next level. The 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio ensures the viewer’s cinematic experience will be an immersive one. Samsung’s Digital Natural Image engine enhances both detail and contrast while keeping unnecessary graininess at bay. The SRS TruSurround XT audio enhancement system lets you experience sound the way it was intended. The Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp immlunates the vast array of colors to give the image even greater brilliance. Get ready to enter a new digital age with this impressive HDTV from Samsung! Specifications 32″ LCD
Rating: 
(out of 392 reviews)
List Price: $ 699.99
Price:
Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
- Full-HD video playback and navigation – up to 1080p
- Stream Netflix and other online media
- Play almost any type of media file
- Access media anywhere on your home network
- Supports DVD Navigation
Play media from your home network and the Internet on your big screen TV. Plus, enjoy access to your Netflix unlimited membership and other premium content. Don’t confine your movies, music, and photos to your small computer screen. Experience them as big as life on your TV in Full-HD 1080p with WD TV Live Plus HD media player.
Rating: 
(out of 40 reviews)
List Price: $ 149.99
Price: $ 119.00
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10 comments
Steven V. Viscido
August 2, 2010
Review by Steven V. Viscido for Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
Rating:
Pros: Outstanding, crisp HD picture; excllent color contrast; solid response time
Cons: Slight pixelation with poor quality SD signal
“After doing a huge amount of research, I finally settled on this set. I was actually interested in the slightly lower-priced Toshiba Regza, but every store in my area was out. While shopping around, I noticed that this Samsung in particular seemed to have a top-notch picture. Finally I decided to take the plunge 3 days ago, and I have not been disappointed at all. In the past I have had several issues with LCD TVs, which is why I had been hesitating up to now. I know these issues are on many people’s minds, and so I will address each one:
.
Motion Response
—–
First, and most important, is response time with fast motion. I am driven absolutely nuts if the TV can’t “hold” the motion (that is, if the image smears, or fractures, when high speed elements are zooming across the screen). The element you are looking for in an LCD monitor that tells you about this is “response time”, and you want something 8ms or below. I believe this TV is 6ms (the specs say this on Sammy’s website, but several stores have it listed as 8ms). In any case, this TV “holds” the motion of even fast images extremely well. In the store, it held motion best of all comparably priced models, including the Sony Bravias around $1k, and the Sharps around the same price. When I got it home, I tested it out with Star Wars ep. 1 and the battle sequence from Narnia. Both looked outstanding using a regular DVD player with HDMI upconvert to 720p. You will not see ghosting issues with high def images.
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Color and contrast
————
Color fidelity and contrast are also important to me, and LCDs have been known to have issues producing deep blacks and bright whites. This is not a problem for this set. It produces excellent color, and did so right out of the box with the factory pre-sets. I have not had to fiddle with it at all. I did try switching to “Cinema” mode, which has some nice characteristics, but even without that, everything looked amazing.
.
Standard Def rendition
———-
Another major issue with LCDTVs and monitors is that anything not displayed at the native resolution tends to look blurred or “fractured”. I was very concerned about this because I have lots of old DVDs of shows like Seinfeld and the Simpsons, which I know were never broadcast in HD. Also many TV stations have not yet made the switch (though most have). Here the TV was about as good as I have seen, though it is not perfect. The good news is that upconverted SD sources like the Seinfeld DVDs look excellent — every bit as good as on a regular TV, if not better. The bad news is that your VHS tapes are going to look blurry and pixelated on a set like this. I don’t have a lot of VHS tapes left, and so this isn’t a huge deal. Regular SD sources with this set vary in quality. For example, the SD version of Animal Planet had a special on the other night that almost looked HD. At the same time, flip channels to CNN, and it looks terrible. I suspect this is the broadcast quality and NOT the set… otherwise all channels would look awful in SD. So when you get a nice SD source being broadcast, it looks fine.
.
I would highly recommend this set. After connecting my HD cable box today and watching things like CSI:Miami, Vegas, and Miss Congeniality, all in widescreen HD, I can say that I am totally blown away by this set’s HD performance. I don’t think you’ll be able to find a better HD TV set for the price.”
Ed Hill
August 2, 2010
Review by Ed Hill for Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
Rating:
Good image quality watching local HDTV stations, DVD movies and video games. This 32″ LCD HDTV has 3 HDMI inputs, S video, composite video in, component video in and optical audio out.
The HDTV is easy to set up, with an automated feature that finds all the HDTV channels on air or your local cable. The black levels and contrast are quite good. This screen features 720P progressive scan.
The remote and menu software are well designed, so that you don’t have to go too deep into the menu to adjust settings. The prices in Atlanta area ranged from $800 at Fryes Electronics to $712 at HH Gregg. Prices online appear to range from $700 to $1000.
Since the Samsung 400 series was launched in March 2008 this is quite a range of prices. The Samsung 4 series is intended as Samsung’s value line, compared to the more upmarket Samsung 5 series. However, this monitor seems to have better picture quality than some of the other 32″ LCD TV’s we reviewed in the $800-900 range. This price and quality makes the Samsung 4 series a good value for the dollar.
F. Wassermann
August 2, 2010
Review by F. Wassermann for Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
Rating:
Bought this model a few days ago from H&H Gregg for $807 “on sale.” Not clear why they would be discounting a model that just came out this month by $92 off list price when last year’s model was still selling for more than that, since the new model boasts better technical specs in several important respects.
Bought Samsung because many reviews indicated Samsung was worth the extra money in picture quality over cheaper 32″ models. The picture is excellent. The documentation is good as far as it goes. However, there are a myriad of picture controls that are probably great for the afficianado, but bewildering to any neophyte. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t give you any real insight into when you would want to deviate significantly from the default settings. You just have to keep experiementing until you find what you like. There are several “automatic” settings that supposedly make adjustments to the picture based on the input source and material, but frankly I couldn’t tell whether and how this was working.
Likewise, there is a special feature that is supposed to enhance picture quality to the highest level (precisely how is a little unclear), but that feature may be toggled on or off, and is available in only the “dynamic” mode, not the “regular” or “movie” mode. Again, why this is so is not in any way explained in the manual.
Nevertheless, the picture if excellent under most conditions and probably just a little tweaking of the default settings is sufficient most of the time. I did notice a little shadowing in the action scenes from a PBS drama. There was also some weird flickering in an HD broadcast of an NHL hockey game, perhaps because the white ice is on the screen so much of the time. This did not occur in any of the other sporting events – NCAA basketball, golf, NASCAR etc – all of which looked awesome.
On this model, the speakers are hidden below the picture and the sound quality is a bit weak. But then for any sound that matters much to you, output can be sent to your external speaker system.
Set up was easy. The set looks great, so much sharper than the clunky CRT set that it replaced. Only problem was that the first effort to automatically detect local over the air HD stations failed to find a couple, which turned up on a second try. The “Favorite” channel designation feature is a nice way to focus on the few stations you may want to consistently view.
Croft
August 2, 2010
Review by Croft for Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
Rating:
First of all I’d like to say that Amazon provides absolutely spectacular service.
I ordered this TV late on Thursday night and was already watching it on Monday. Amazing Amazon! The delivery company that they’ve used was CEVA, and I’d like to say “thank you” for the stellar and courteous service.
This TV is truly a gem. Number and variety of connections is very versatile and conveniently located. PC connection and USB port is a cherry on top. Picture is magnificent right out of the box, gorgeous deep blacks. Color accuracy is commanding, as well as video processing.
I was also pleasantly surprised by its performance on Standard Definition channels.
Remote control is feature rich and among other things has a hot key for 4 available aspect ratios.
I am very impressed with the speakers (which you can hardly see) that produce very respectable and clear sound.
Initial setup is a breeze, no need for late night TV Manual reading, just turn the TV on and follow simple screens.
TV and the tabletop mount come separately. Putting it together takes under 10 minutes, you’ll need a long thin philips screwdriver and 4 provided screws. The single leg mount is very slick and easily swivels side to side.
For wall mounting – the back of the TV is a standard VESA 200x200mm, so it is compatible with a vast majority of mounts.
So far I am very impressed and would recommend both the product and the seller (Amazon) to anyone.
Thank you!
amanooensis
August 2, 2010
Review by amanooensis for Samsung LN32A450 32-Inch 720p LCD HDTV
Rating:
The Samsung LN32A450 delivers on its promises of brightness, color depth and accuracy, wide viewing angles, flexible connection options, and more. When you read the manual, and look through the setup screens, you’ll find an amazing range of adjustments to the picture quality, operation, and features that should suit any application or personal taste.
I chose this model instead of the entry-level LN32A330, which has lower contrast and speed specs, and fewer connection options, but costs nearly as much (at the current Amazon price, anyway). What a great decision this has turned out to be.
I’ll get to the viewing experience, but I have to comment on the Amazon “white glove” delivery via CEVA logistics, because I felt it was a big unknown factor when I ordered. Well, it was relatively painless to schedule — and like other reviewers, the package moved much faster than originally predicted. On the appointed day, the delivery guy came to our home, carried the box inside, unpacked it and set it up. He’d have done all the work of hooking it up, if I had let him. Wow.
Speaking of hooking it up, I am very glad to have 3 HDMI inputs, since I’ve already got two of them in use and may want expansion options in the future. It has a full range of connection options on the side of the set, as well as the main bank of connectors on the back panel. I’ve already found the side connectors handy for plugging in a camcorder, etc.
You can connect legacy devices via regular RCA or S-video jacks, or even by the coax connector (whose main purpose would be for a cable box or over-the-air antenna). Other reviewers here have discussed the over-air reception of regular or HDTV; I haven’t tried it yet.
I have an upconverting DVD player that puts out 720p from a conventional DVD, and when hooked up to this set, with a widescreen movie, the result is fantastic. Watching HD channels on cable TV is good — I’m still getting over the “Wow” effect after upgrading from an old TV, so I’m slowly becoming pickier. But not about the TV.
My concern now is whether the cable signal is really giving me everything the set can handle. There are motion artifacts on cable TV shows that I do *not* see from DVDs, for example, which is why I blame the signal source, and not this set.
I have to say, the built-in speakers are pretty wimpy compared to our old TV, but it’s not enough of a factor, for my purposes, to take off points for that. I generally watch movies through the stereo, and for regular TV shows the internal speakers are adequate. The set can feed other devices through audio-out connectors, including external amplifiers and speakers. This is just one more example of the amazing connectivity of this set.
Thanks to Amazon’s 30-day price guarantee, I’m pretty sure that I could not have bought this elsewhere for less money, and certainly not with the level of confidence and customer support that I get here.
One last issue that is often overlooked. This TV comes with a one-year warranty on everything, not just parts. On the 32-inch model, the service is *in your home*, not carry-in. And if you use the right credit card, you can double that warranty to two full years. Many/most competing TV sets do not offer that kind of confidence in their products.
O. Prusak
August 2, 2010
Review by O. Prusak for Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
Rating:
I just got the WD TV Live Plus and I have to say that I’ve finally found the perfect media streamer (for now).
I’ve had the WD TV Live (not plus version) for about 5 months and it’s served me well, streaming up just about every type of movie file that I’ve ever encountered. When I purchased the non-plus version, the only two features that I really wanted that it was missing was NetFlix support and full DVD menu support.
Yes, I am a bummered that my existing non-plus version can’t support NetFlix, but I very well knew that what I purchased it.
Please Note: Most of the non-plus version marketing material says that it doesn’t support full DVD menu navigation, but WD just came out with a firmware update that DOES add DVD menu support – Kuddos to WD for listening to their customers and giving them what they want.
Regarding the NetFlix support, the PLUS version has a different chip inside of it that is required for NetFlix support (something about copy protection). The non-plus version does not have the required chip in order to support NetFlix so if you read some rants about WD trying to !@#$% their customers, it’s probably non-plus owners who feel cheated that they have to buy a new product to get NetFlix support.
I understand their frustration, but the truth of the matter is that there is nothing WD can do in order to get the non-plus to support NetFlix.
On the other hand, they *have* just added DVD menu support to the non-plus version, so anyone who says that they stop supporting the older products doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
To the point of the review, the NetFlix supports both queue playing (when you already have stuff added to your play now queue) AND browsing.
This is my first NetFlix player (other than my PC) so I can’t really compare it to other NetFlix players. I know the Xbox also supports browsing, but I think that most other stand alone players do not support browsing.
The activation process was surprisingly easy (I just went to the NetFlix site and entered a code the Plus gave me).
Regarding HD content, I’m not 100% sure if the Plus supports this, but last night I was viewing some 30 rock episodes and it looked *really* good, better than viewing a DVD.
When starting to view a NetFlix video, it took about 15-20 seconds from when I clicked on play to when the video started playing. I don’t know if this is good or bad. No streaming issues once it started playing. My device is connected directly to my router.
I also played around with the new MediaFly feature. Never heard of it before. Basically it aggregates some audio and video podcasts by topic. I saw some CNN and NPR content which is cool.
Overall I’d say this is the best media streamer ->currently
M. Saetia
August 2, 2010
Review by M. Saetia for Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
Rating:
I’ve had the WDTV Live Plus for 4 days now, and have watched a few movies on it. So far it’s played every filetype I’ve tried to play, except one movie file where the audio was not playing (probably a file error). I networked my computer relatively easily – had to make some setting changes on the computer and that was it. Netflix works well, Youtube plays well.
The gripes I have are:
1. The user interface is kind of lame and unoriginal. I really debated whether to go with this, wait for the PopBox, or build my own HTPC so I could load up XBMC and the beautiful interface it offers, but in the end my impatience and wallet spoke the loudest. Plus I’d rather not hassle with the extra work – plug and play was too attractive a feature. With that said, there still should be some way of customizing the UI – changing colors, etc.
2. I don’t like how it does not remember where you left off in video files that you stop playing. It does ask you if you want to start where you left off if you have not turned the device off, but if you have, then it thinks everything is new and that you’ve never watched any file before. Pretty stupid.
3. The file preview functionality is not really a preview. When you highlight a file it just starts playing in the little window box. You could watch the entire video just in that box if you so inclined.
4. Last but not least, if you pause a video and the device goes to sleep…when you unpause it seems to take forever to play again. And when it does, everything plays in a sped up pace. This one might be user error but it’s happened a few times enough for me to be skeptical of the device.
In the end, if you’re looking for a simple media streamer that plays pretty much all of the files you will (likely) ever need it to play, I don’t see why this wouldn’t be a top choice considering the price. With that said, there probably are better options if you’re willing to invest more time and money.
R. Fuller
August 2, 2010
Review by R. Fuller for Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
Rating:
I purchased the WD Live Plus HD Media Player to watch movies from my Windows Home server. I got tired of all the DVD’s and no where to store them so I built a WHS from an old computer and ordered the WD Live plus. I ran a CAT5 cable to my LCD, hooked up the WD Live Plus and it automatically connected to my WHS. I was up and running in as little as 5 minutes streaming a video on the big screen. The 1st movie played flawlessly until I started to watch the 2nd movie. Towards the middle of the movie, WD Live started to freeze up. At first I thought it was my server so I rebooted the WHS and was back up and running again. Started to watch the movie and froze again. Now I’m getting very upset. Now I powered off/on the WD Live Plus and same issue. Some movies played with no issues and some movies just locked up. Now I’m getting upset with this media Player. I checked WD’s website and could not find any solution to the device freezing so I ordered the “Asus O! Player” unit to replace my piece of crap WD live Plus. I was already to mail it back and connect the Asus O! Player but something told me to check the WD support website one more time before I mail back WD Live Plus HD Media Player.
I found this on their site:
“When playing a movie over a Network location on a WD TV Live HD Media Player, the video may slow down
Problem:
When playing a high bitrate movie from a Network location (computer or NAS), after a period of time, the video may slow down and jitter.
Cause:
Samba (the method the WD TV Live uses to read a network location) cannot play back high bitrate movies.
Solution:
If this problem is encountered there are two solutions:
1. Try playing the content from the Media Server selection on the WD TV Live HD Media Player. This may require installation of a Media Server on your computer. Windows Media Player 11 has a built in Media Server. There are other alternatives such as TwonkyMedia, and TVersity which may also work for these videos.
2. Copy the high bitrate content to a USB drive, attach the USB drive to the WD TV Live HD Media Player and play the content from the local drive”.
I said Hmmm, “playing a high bitrate movie from a Network location”, well this was my problem. I went to TVersity and they explained how the software transcodes any video depending on your network speed and devices for proper streaming settings. So I installed the software on my WHS. During the installation it prompted to install the additional AC3 codec. So I installed it on my server. After installation completed, I configured TVersity to use my Video folder on the WHS and behold video was streaming to my LCD with no issues. Actually I believe the video quality is slighter better now than it was before.
So I’ll take that back about calling the WD player crap. Now I can say I’m very happy with WD Live Plus and will give it a 4 star rating now. TVersity is excellent software for streaming videos and will help any media player handle video streaming. Oh did it mention that it’s free! So go ahead and purchase the WD Live Plus HD Media Player and install TVersity on either your WHS or desktop/laptop and the 2 together they’ll make a perfect couple.
Enjoy.
Tommy Dee
August 2, 2010
Review by Tommy Dee for Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
Rating:
I have a WD Live, but upgraded to get Netflix, the only difference between the live and the live plus is the netflix option, Western Digital are always updating products and firmware, it is no more different than for example Microsoft updating Windows all the time, I had a small problem with my live recently regarding video files, Western Digital Customer Service/Tech Support were 100% both in emailing me and calling me, to resolve the problem, in the end we tried the advance RMA and my replacement was shipped 2 day Air and I did not need to return the original, until I was happy with the replacement, now that is great customer service and for $26.95 you can get the WD extra warrinty when you register the live, giving 3 years warrinty in total, so I say WD is a great Company, has great products and stands behind their customer’s
A. Rincon
August 2, 2010
Review by A. Rincon for Western Digital TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN
Rating:
I bought the WD TV Live Plus last week from Amazon. I’m upgrading from the WD TV HD 1st gen.
I was pretty happy with the WD TV HD, but it was missing two big features i wanted: netflix support and DVD menu support. the Live+ adds both these features, so it was time to upgrade.
My overall assessment:
I love this machine. For $119, you get a lot of functionality. Yes, there are still many features that it would be nice if it supported, but it does deliver on what it promises that it can do.
I have it connected to the network with a slinglink turbo, that can run as high as 85mbps. This setup is working very well so far. I have mainly used it with a 1Tb USB drive connected directly to it.
The Pros:
- Great video and picture quality (same as WDTV gen 1)
- Compared to the old WDTV, the machine is a lot faster. The UI has also been enahnced to make it more useful.
- Netflix support is pretty well integrated.
- DVD menu support also works.
- Getting music, pictures and videos from my Win XP MC machine worked pretty well using the network share.
- I also was able to use Windows Media Player 11 sharing to share to the WDTV. This made it a lot easier to create and play music playlists.
- I haven’t had any playback glitches at all, in either local storage or network shares. (i only have a couple of formats, DVD folders, and H.264 (MOV).
- HD videos look great. (didn’t try Blu-ray rips).
-small, quiet.
-easy to set up and use.
Cons:
- Picture playlist didn’t seem to work. But I didn’t try to figure out if I was just doing it wrong or maybe it isn’t supported.
- In network shares, your views are limited to folder views. (you can use playlists to get around this problem with music)
- The couple of HD movies I tried on netflix didn’t look very good. But I probably didn’t get the HD version of the movie since I didn’t meet netflix’s minimum 5MB download speed limit for HD. The non-HD looked pretty good.
- The DVD navigation could be a little better. You need to go INSIDE the VIDEO_TS folder and press play on the first file there to enable the DVD menu support. I had to read WDTV message boards to figure that out.
Feature requests:
- be smarter about the folder structure to know what is a DVD folder, and show the folder as a playable file, instead of a folder. (to improve ease of use)
- this also applies to doing a search. If the DVD folder files don’t have the name of the movie, they won’t be found when doing a search. I usually put the DVD folder inside a folder with the movie name (is there another way to do this and have it find the movie when you do a search?)
- an SDK for developers to make apps for it.
- For network shares, have more view options, like being able to view all the pictures found on that shared device. or by date, etc. Similar to what you get from a local dive.
- add a 5 second rewind and 30 second forward remote option.
- a way to filter which folders are listed in the folders view from a network share. I don’t want to have to re-arrange the way i organize my pictures in my PC. Some of the folders in the My Pictures folder are not needed for WDTV. I would like to have a way to tell the WDTV to ignore specific folders.
I am recommending this device to friends and family.