Samsung UN55D8000 Review

We started with a Sony 55″ HX909 (or something, their model numbers are beyond non-sensical). The TV worked for about 15 minutes and then failed. Sony offered to send a tech out, but we declined. When it did run, the sony had a great image. We instead opted to have it returned (amazon made this really easy).

Having already bought Sony 3D glasses and IR dongle, I tried another sony, the 55″ NX810. It had a beautiful design and mostly worked. Unfortunately, there were two dark spots on the screen. Other than those two dark spots, the NX810 was a good TV. We did notice a little weirdness with the local dimming causing the whole image to sometimes get noticeably brighter and dimmer when there was a scene that was just on the cusp. The 3D was decent, but 3D video where there was a lot of contrast between something in the foreground and background did bleed through a fair amount.

We called up sony about the dark spots and they had a company that services TVs get in touch with us for a fix under warranty. The company indicated the panel needed to be replaced but the replacement was on backorder. After a week or two, we got a call from Sony offering to replace our TV since the part was on backorder. A few weeks after that, we got a call again from Sony indicating the TV was on backorder and wouldn’t be available for 2 months. We got in touch with Amazon and they coordinated to have the TV returned.

The day HomeDirect came to pick up the NX810, we went to our local BestBuy to check out TVs in person. The new 2011 Samsung 55″ 8000 was our favorite. After all the problems we had with the last two TVs, we decided to purchase at a brick and mortar store so we could easily return the TV when it failed to live up to our expectations. We loaded the Samsung in the back of a corvette (the TV box, like the tv, is relatively small) and drove it home. It wasn’t as nice as Amazon’s service, but we were nervous about getting a third bad TV.

We unpacked the TV and it was awesome. When we bought the TV, we got a starter kit with glasses. Apparently they don’t use IR for the 3D glasses anymore, they’ve moved to bluetooth according to the sales guy in the store. The 3D on the Samsung blew away the 3D on the Sony. All of the ghosting we saw on the Sony was gone. Tangled 3D, Shrek 1 3D and GranTourismo 5 looked great.

I love this TV. it looks great when it’s off. The picture quality looks great when it’s on. To top it off, it works really well with my new Onkyo receiver. I needed an HDMI 1.4a switch to pass through the 3D from the PS3. I couldn’t find any HDMI 1.4a switches, but the Onkyo receivers weren’t too expensive, so I got a TX-NR708 or something like that. The frustrating thing about TVs has always been getting audio from the TV back to the receiver. With HDMI 1.4a, there’s an audio return channel. The same HDMI cable that carries audio and video from my stereo receiver to the television can be used to send audio from the television back to the receiver. I did fail to get this working at first as the audio return channel is only supported on HDMI2 (labeled as ARC on the back of the TV). A quick perusal through the manual clarified this. Since we would never use the TV tuner (live TV, this day in age? Come on, who watches TV without a DVR?), I didn’t think this audio return channel thing would be all that useful but the TV has support for Hulu, Netflix and Pandora built in. Starting up these apps on the TV cause the receiver to automatically switch to audio from the TV. The TV itself will turn the receiver on and off and when the receiver is on, the TV automatically disables the TV speakers and the volume control on the TV remote actually controls the receiver volume. I didn’t have to spend hours figuring out how to set all of this up either, it just worked.

To be fair, the Sony also managed to seamlessly with the receiver, so this seems to be a standard that new TVs have adopted. In my mind, this is a much bigger revolution in entertainment than 3D.

It is nice that the remote has a flip side with a qwerty keyboard. The qwerty side of the remote uses bluetooth instead of IR and must be paired. As noted in some of the other reviews, the pairing is tricky to get working. You will have to hold the remote inches from the TV (for pairing only, and you only need to pair once) and probably try multiple times. I ended up getting my remote in a weird state where I couldn’t pair it. Calling tech support, the phone tree wasn’t deep and I didn’t have to wait on hold. The technician informed me of the trick of holding down the @ and backspace buttons for a few seconds to reset the remote. After that, the pairing worked on the first try. It was disappointing the reset magic wasn’t included in the manual, but Samsung more than made up for it by having a live person for me to talk with that required no hold time.
Keep up the great work Samsung!

Review By Geek guy : I saw this TV come available from one of my tech sites, I bought it the same day.
The TV came in and Wow is all I can say.. Now I have seen the posts on Samsung’s Website and that really did not deter me as I have been buying Samsung TV’s and monitors for years and never once did I have a problem.