Football fans have a habit of referring to 'sleeping giants'; teams like Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, who have a proud history, but continue to fall way short of what is expected of them. You could almost use the same words to describe Samsung - a massive Korean company that keeps underachieving - were it not for the fact that in its motherland, Japan and the US, it's a Manchester United.

It's only over here that Samsung traditionally slips behind the Sonys and Panasonics. However, with plasma and LCD, it has been given another crack at the UK. It didn't exactly set the terrances buzzing with its first efforts, but it showcased some fabulous products at this year's consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Let's hope they come over here!

Snappy dresser

Samsung's latest plasma, the PS42P4A, is dressed to impress in an opulent glossy black screen surround, offset perfectly by a cute silver frame.

Equally impressive are the sockets, which include two progressive scan-capable component video inputs, three Scarts, a standard VGA jack and a DVI jack for PC use. Topping a good features list is Samsung's new DNIe processing, boasting improved motion, rich colours and 'amplified' contrast.

The PS42P4A's pictures look very good - thanks in no small measure to DNIe. With it switched on, images are wonderfully stable and rich, full of contrast and field depth and impressively free of the fizzing problem that still afflicts so many plasma screens.

The black-level response is particularly noteworthy. Unlike on previous Samsung plasmas, it's achieved without the unnatural colours. Jurassic Park's scary night scenes are super-sharp, and look as good as they are from the best performers in this test.

Look closer

There's a likeable amount of fine detail in the DNIe picture. Not quite so much as with Philips' Pixel Plus 2 and Sony's new Wega Engine processing, perhaps, but certainly enough to add authentic textures to what you're watching. What's more, DNIe goes about its business without any undue nasty digital side effects - and it adapts itself admirably in this regard to suit the quality gaps between different sources.

However, longer term viewing reveals that there are one or two fundamental problems that DNIe can't overcome. These occur more or less exclusively with tuner or Sky digibox sources, and consist of glowing blockiness over certain colour tones, slight colour leakage where bright colours sit side by side, dotty trails behind fast horizontal motion, especially on skin, and banding over some background colour gradations.

The net result of these factors can be quite distracting. Perhaps these problems would be overcome if only you could buy a Sky or Freeview box with component video outs, but we'll never know. The speakers supplied with the set are more consistent, handling pretty much everything we threw at them - from the T-Rex stamping to more subtle scenes, like the vibrating glass - with confidence, precision, power and surprising amounts of frequency response. They're okay if you can't be bothered to hook up a surround sound system, but only as a temporary measure.

The PS42P4A is a mixed bag. With high-def and good quality DVD sources it's an absolute stormer - a real movie fan's TV. However, weaker sources, like digital satellite signals expose performance issues. This might not be a major problem if the set had HDMI or (pure) DVI inputs, as your TV viewing would have been saved when Sky's high-def package arrived next year. But unfortunately, although high-def ready, the Samsung only has component inputs.