Hands-on Review: Samsung UN55B8000 LED HDTV

PLUS
Great detail in dark and bright areas
Wonderful colour
Super-thin profile and gorgeous cosmetics

MINUS
Very mild hotspotting on dark scenes
Light falloff when viewed from the side

Priced at $4,500, this 55-inch television is part of Samsung's top-of-the-line Luxia 8000 series; there's also a 46-inch model for $3,500. It's drop-dead gorgeous. The ultra-thin cabinet features an updated version of Samsung's Touch of Colour cosmetics. The screen is surrounded in a gloss-black bezel that contains just a hint of burgundy, tapering to a silver-chrome accent at the bottom, and finishing in a clear prism. A rectangular base is provided.

For its super-thin Luxia TVs, Samsung offers an optional narrow-profile wall mount that's only 0.6 inches deep, so that the TV hangs like a picture.

A matching wall-mountable Blu-ray Disc player, the BD-P4600, is available for $450. The stylish, compact unit has built-in networking, and offers full support for advanced Blu-ray features such as BD-Live downloadable content.

Technology: Samsung calls this new television an "LED High-Definition TV." Like conventional LCD TVs, this one has a large array of tiny liquid-crystal shutters that twist open and shut in response to the video signal. Behind the LCD grid is a bright light source. An LCD pixel will twist open to allow light to pass through in bright areas, and twist close to block light in dark areas of the picture.

What the "LED" refers to is the light source. The vast majority of LCD televisions use CCFL (fluorescent tube) backlighting. This Samsung TV, and few other premium LCD televisions, employ light-emitting diodes, and thereby achieve some important benefits.

Samsung says its LED-backlit TVs consume 40% less power than conventional CCFL-backlit LCD televisions of similar size. Also, the new TVs are free of lead, mercury and volatile organic compounds.

Most CCFL-backlit TVs cannot produce the full range of colours present in TV programming. Bright reds can have an orange tinge, for example. LED-backlit LCDs can produce the full range of colours present in analog and digital TV programming - and then some.

Numbers can't fully convey something as sensory as TV image quality, but this TV's specified dynamic contrast ratio (2,000,000:1) gives a hint. That means that its maximum light output is two million times greater than light output when the picture is completely black. The "dynamic" qualifier, by the way, refers to the way light output is measured: first with the picture completely black, and then with it completely white. Native contrast ratio is a more useful specification, as it measures the TV's light output with black areas and white areas on the screen at the same time, and thus describes its ability to produce deep blacks and vivid colours simultaneously. Unfortunately, Samsung does not specify native contrast ratio for its televisions; with this model, I'm sure the specification would be very impressive.

Another new feature is Auto Motion Plus 240Hz to minimize picture blurring. Early LCDs didn't respond quickly enough to changing video signals, resulting in streaking or blurring. But even with improved response time (an ultra-fast 2msec. on this model), perceived blurring can still occur because of the way our eyes perceive LCDs. Standard LCD televisions produce a complete picture 60 times per second (60Hz); the picture stays on the screen for the full duration of the frame, instead of being "strobed" as in plasma and picture tube (CRT) displays. Consequently, motion can look slightly blurry on 60Hz LCDs, even on recent models with very fast response time, because an impression of the first frame remains on the retina after the second frame begins.

On premium LCDs with 120Hz frame-doubling, a extra frames are inserted to reduce retinal blurring. A very few high-end LCD televisions, including this top-of-the-line Samsung, go further, inserting three extra frames between each two in the actual video signal. The goal of 240Hz video processing is to eliminate retinal blurring entirely.

Settings: After going through the straightforward setup process, the TV comes up with the picture set in Standard mode, with the backlight control set at 7, contrast almost maxed at 95 and brightness reduced slightly to 45 (from the midpoint of 50, presumably to deepen blacks). Colour, tint and sharpness are at the midpoint setting (50). In the Advanced Settings menu, colour temperature (Samsung calls this "colour tone") is set to normal (the warm settings are greyed out), and dynamic contrast is set at medium. Watching with the default settings for Standard mode, blacks seemed somewhat crushed, i.e. dark details were lost in dark scenes.

I switched to Movie mode, which among other things allows you to select one of the warm colour-temperature settings; I liked Warm 1 best. You can also make this adjustment with the BD Wise picture-setting option, which is available when the matching BD-P4600 Blu-ray player is connected to the TV. Default settings in Movie mode are 5 for backlight, 95 for contrast and 45 for brightness. Based on test patterns on Avia Guide to Home Theatre, I set backlight to 7 and contrast at 90. In a room with subdued lighting (afternoon, with the blinds closed), some test patterns displayed correctly with brightness set to 50; others required a brightness setting of 70. In actual programming, I settled on a compromise setting of 60. For nighttime viewing, I reduced backlight to 5, and took brightness back a couple of notches. There are tradeoffs with dynamic contrast in the Advanced Settings menu. Setting it to 1 brings out shadow detail without compromising blacks, but sometimes makes whites a little glary.

Evaluation: For movie playback, it made sense to use the BD-P4600 Blu-ray player. It's certainly faster than first- and second-generation players, taking about 20 seconds to power up. Slumdog Millionaire took an agonizing one minute and 40 seconds to load, but that's because it's an appallingly mastered disc. The Day the Earth Stood Still took a more tolerable 30 seconds to load.

Slumdog looked gorgeous. I was amazed by the way the Samsung TV handled high-contrast scenes, both bright scenes with dark shadows, such as the airport scene near the beginning, and dark scenes with bright highlights, such as the studio scenes. The film's vibrant colour palette was beautifully rendered and faces were modeled with three-dimensional clarity.
The dark tonalities of The Day the Earth Stood Still were beautifully conveyed. Once I increased brightness to 58 or so, detail in dark areas (Jennifer Connelly's brunette hair, for example) was excellent. This adjustment lightened black slightly, but the tradeoff was very worthwhile.

Planet Earth on Blu-ray was breathtaking. The big vistas and flybys had fabulous three-dimensionality and clarity. Vibrant colours - underwater coral, close-ups of exotic flowers - were wonderfully lush. Subtleties in dark underwater scenes were excellent; for example, detail in two-metre-long Japanese underwater salamanders in the Fresh Water episode was superb. Overall, this LED-backlit LCD delivered the best combination of dark blacks and shadow detail that I've eve seen.

There was some very mild hotspotting: light leaking through from the backlight against very dark scenes, such as the opening of Planet Earth. And there was some light falloff when the picture was viewed from the side; this became noticeable at about 45 degrees to the left or right. Room reflections are a little more visible than many LCD TVs.

But these are quibbles about a TV that delivered an astoundingly good viewing experience - and not just with Blu-ray Discs. HDTV programming looked great too.

An NHL game looked superb. Even in long shots against the ice, the actual colour of the players' uniforms was clear. For example, the Toronto Maple Leafs' home uniforms looked blue instead of being crushed to black. Motion was completely blur-free; resolution was maintained on players' uniforms as they skated better than any LCD (any flat panel in fact) that I've ever seen.

A high-definition episode of Law & Order also looked wonderful, with perfect modeling of character's faces, great detail and lovely colour. American Idol had superb blacks and dark detail with excellent colour.

Masterpiece Theatre's adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit oozed Victorian atmosphere. Blacks were as good as I've ever seen (even on premium plasmas), and subtle gradations of dark greys and browns were beautifully conveyed.

Throughout my testing, I was impressed by the superb detail and the lovely, natural colour. This is a great TV.

Article Tags:  samsung, UN55B8000, LED, LCD, HDTV, high, definition, TV, television, backlight, backlit, edgelit, colour, Blu, p4600, 240hz,