Measuring a massive 55" from corner to corner, and weighing 90 pounds on the scales, the Samsung LE55A956 is a huge TV that's right at the top of Samsung's line right now.

As such, it has all of the connections that you'd expect so you can connect it up to consoles, camcorders, USB keys and all the rest.



A TV this big needs two remote controls.  The first is a tiny pebble of a thing that can only turn the television on and off and change the channel or volume, but it will be a stylish addition to your coffee table.  The other is a classic Samsung remote, with huge, backlit buttons.  It's easy to see why you might want to keep it out of the way.


Mixture

As for the television itself, it's fair to say that the A596 is a mixture between the A796 and the A856.  It has the excellent display of the former, thanks to the continued use of LED backlighting, and the interactive multimedia features of the latter.

Logically enough, the lab test results are very close to those of the A796, and better in places.  The blacks are very dark, at around 0.1 cd/m², and turning the brightness right up gives whites at a maximum of 270 cd/m², great for rooms with a lot of natural light.  Even at this very bright setting, black is a deep 0.2 cd/m².

The upshot of this is that the ANSI contrast ratio is around 1350:1 and 1400:1, a very good result.

It's possible to beat even this score by activating the dynamic backlighting, but we advise against this for the same reasons we cited in our test of the A796.

The DeltaE score, which measures the average discrepancy between the ideal colors and those actually shown on screen was a remarkable 3.3.  Our subjective impressions backed up this empirical finding and colors of all shades looked very natural.

This is only true, however, in Film mode, a preset with the best configuration--the TV's native color space definitely needs adjusting before it's suitable for use.

Once again, we also have to advise against using Samsung's two other modes, Standard and Intense, which push color and contrast settings too far to give an artificial image.

Upscaling

With a High Defintion source, the results are astonishingly good, and they're not too bad in Standard Definition, either.  With such a big screen, the problems of upscaling a Standard Definition source like a DVD or non-HD television pictures become very obvious.  If you're a DVD buff, you'd be better off with a dedicated Blu-ray player, which will be able to upscale to 1080p far better than the TV can by itself:


Naturally, Samsung also includes the Motion Plus 100 Hz system to interpolate frames into video to give more fluid movements.  The effects are wonderful, as long as you leave it on its lowest setting.

Turning it up any higher leads to visual artifacts around rapidly moving objects.  Another strong point of the Motion Plus system at 100 Hz is that it distinctly reduces the amount of ghosting, and it did as well at this at whatever setting we had Motion Plus at.

Viewing angles are a little narrow, and if you're too close to the screen blacks can rapidly end up looking gray-blue instead.  If you're about three meters away from the screen, though, you can line about five people up in a row before the people at the edges stop getting a good view.

Sound still trails behind

Finally, the speakers on the A956 do produce some bass notes, which is a welcome addition for TVs, but it really isn't in a lot of detail.  All told, the sound signal is quite muddled.

Both technically and qualitatively, the speakers are a long way behind the excellence produced by the screen itself.  It's a fault common to so many