You can walk around a Costco or TV retail store and compare Samsung TVs to similarly featured Toshibas or Sonys and 11 times out of 10, the Samsung will be more expensive, even though the specs will be the exact same on all of the TVs. First of all, the picture just looks better. But we had to find out why. It seems Samsung has a proprietary technology copywritten as to the placement of its side light bulbs, the bulbs that give top notch HD pictures their brighter, but not glare-y, appearance. It seems that no other company is allowed to put their bulbs there.