Chris-K

Discovered this quite by chance once I connected a Philips upscaling region-free DVD player to the TV and put a PAL DVD in it. It output the disc at 1080i50 and the TV displayed it no problem. It's also capable of 576p and 1080p50.

Because of this discovery, I picked up a code-free and region-free Pioneer Blu-ray Disc player on eBay ;-)

I hope this is of use to some people here, as this is one of the top-selling TVs on the US market.

PhantomStranger

Typically Panasonic and Sony have blocked 50 Hz video on their American models. Most Samsung and LG models play all video content. I know Sony does it to prevent exportation of American models to foreign markets where the same item is often priced higher.

Alan Smithee

My parents have a Samsung (2009 model) and it cannot display any PAL content. I gave them my spare Toshiba HD-A20 HD-DVD player with region-free firmware which makes it output PAL as the default, and thus they get no picture signal from it until they play an HD or NTSC disc in it. That was why I didn't consider a Samsung when I got my current TV (a Sharp) but good to know their new models are supporting it.

I thought that US Sony TVs were PAL-compatible, I did consider getting one of theirs but decided against it, mainly because Sony has done many things that have angered me, their equipment in general is unreliable and I got a bigger Sharp TV for less than what I would've paid for a smaller Sony. (Not entirely happy with the Sharp either, mainly because of 3D crosstalk and an undefeatable 'feature' that dims the backlight when the picture goes black or close to it. My next TV will probably be another brand because of that.)

Will probably be a long time before I get another TV but I'd likely just bring in my Oppo player to the store with a PAL disc and make sure it works on whatever one I'm thinking of buying before making the purchase, unless I found a definitive answer beforehand.

mythmaker18

With all due respect, perhaps you mis-spoke and meant to say Samsung rather than Sony? Like Alan, it has been my personal experience (through my own real-world testing, as well as the reports of others on A/V forums) that most (if not all) Sony LCD sets are compatible with 50hz content through HDMI and Component connections (though not through composite), while Samsung is generally 100% in-compatible across all inputs, just like Panasonic.

I've certainly never encountered (or heard of) any evidence of a 50hz compatible Samsung TV in the US retail market before this thread appeared, only grey-market imports.

I wonder if rather than a policy shift, this might just be a case where Samsung didn't OEM this particular model, but re-badged someone else's TV, and either forgot (or didn't bother) to restrict 50hz signals?

For what it's worth, Sharp is the only one of the "name brands" (i.e. not cheap companies like Vizio) that I've encountered which are 50hz compatible on the composite connections. A real boon to those of us out there with multi-system VCRs.

mythmaker18

That's exactly what I did when I went TV shopping! None of the stores seemed to mind (though an HH Gregg sales manager was skeptical about their TVs being able to play display PAL content until the sales staff saw me do it right there in front of their eyes!).

PhantomStranger

That is news to me, every experience I've had with Sony's American displays is they don't handle 50Hz video at all. It's a much trickier situation these days because the Japanese manufacturers will get their LCD panels from different companies, so a Sony may not actually be a Sony and a Samsung may not be a Samsung.

mythmaker18

When was the last time you checked a Sony? As you say, they don't make their own panels anymore. When i was looking at TVs (late 2010), their large panels (42" and bigger) were OEMed by Sharp, I was told.