Samsung has got UK’s 3D ball rolling in a very solid fashion with its UE40C7000. For those keeping track of the 3D TV arena, it would obvious that the TV market is not really brimming at the moment. But looks like Samsung is undisturbed by this fact, which is evident from their wide range of 3D HDTV models on their shelves, even as they sit at the high-end of their product catalogue. We just hope that its more glamorous and larger sibling, the UE46C8000 3D TV would launch the brand into a similar type of stratosphere taken by Panasonic’s 3D debutant, the Panasonic TX-P50VT20.  The UE46C8000, which is a part of the C8000 series, is just a rung below the priciest C9000 TVs. Make no mistake, it has an absolutely stunning design. In the following review, let us find out if its sleek display can look amazing even when it is switched on as well as off.

Design:

Slim Beauty:

As we have just mentioned, the Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV is a beauty. Its screen is enclosed in a thin silver brushed aluminium finished border. This border is in turn surrounded by an even thinner translucent acrylic border, which at the bottom sports the touch sensitive zones. The entire display itself is unfathomably thin, measuring just 2cm at its deepest point. This incredible sleekness has been achieved by locating the light sources, that is, the LEDs around the edges of the panel and also by scattering this luminance across the whole screen with light guide plates. Silver TVs have not really been in fashion since around 2005, and we will bet that there are enough consumers in the current market who will be more than happy to see the style making a come-back. Having said that, after 5 long years of seeing just black, we did find the bezel to be slightly distracting at first. To prevent the set from falling over, it is supplied with quite a large four-legged silver stand.

Remote Make-over:

Even the remote control seems to have gone through a make-over to match the TV design. Similar to the TV itself, it has been styled in brushed titanium with a glossy silver trim. All of the buttons have been hidden below the face, hence, even though they provide a little bit of feedback when they are pressed, operating takes a little bit of getting used to, as you can no longer run your fingers over the surface of the remote to find your way around. At least, it is not to the same degree as you were able to do before. The remote control does include a few raised lines and also a tactile dot for this purpose. We do appreciate the fact that, like some of Samsung’s other remotes, the UE46C8000’s control features backlighting which can be enabled by pressing a dedicated button at the top-right.

3D Glasses:

The Samsung UE46C8000 LED 3D TV supplies a pair of their active shutter glasses (SSG-2100SB), which arrives in a nifty triangle shaped box. In contrast to Panasonic’s idea of packing their 3D glasses in a sturdy-looking plastic case, guess Samsung decided to take a more trendy route and have packed the glasses in a soft pouch. These 3D glasses seem to be more comfortable to be put on than Panasonic’s glasses, which put pressure on top of the nose. Samsung’s active shutter glasses transfer most of the weight to around the ears, and are hence more comfortable, especially over long periods of time.

Disappointingly, unlike the Panasonic VT20, Samsung do not ship the 3D glasses together with the display, whilst Panasonic has given away 2 pairs with their 3D set. Now, this is pretty stingy, given that the UE46C8000 is usually selling for at least as much as Panasonic’s display. However, it is not all bad news with the glasses, as Samsung is doing a deal though where you would get two pairs is SSG-2100AB 3D glasses and a Monsters Vs Aliens 3D Blu-Ray disc free if you purchase the Samsung UE46C8000 along with a Samsung BD-C6900 3D Blu-ray player.

Slots and Connectivity:

Now, let us move on to connectivity. With the HDMI cables having the provision to be plugged directly into one of the telly’s four inputs, the remaining connectors like the SCART cables have to be plugged to the breakout adaptor cables as this LED LCD TV is extremely slick, which can then be plugged into the telly. This is also the case when it comes to the RF aerial input. Though this is not very inconvenient, it is just that it is a little unsightly; but of course, you are never going to look at the back of the TV or the sides either. Much to our expectations, all four HDMIs are 3D-compatible v1.4 standards, but then both the Ethernet and USB ports warrant additional attention owing to their multipurpose natures. The USBs come in handy with recording premium video, which includes HD from the digital tuners of the telly to a variety of USB HDD, as well as more predictably playing back a wide variety of video, music and photo multimedia files, and making the TV Wi-Fi via an optional dongle.

With the supplied breakout cables, the UE46C8000 46-inch 3D Television effectively consists of 2 SCART connections, a composite video and stereo audio input, a component video input, an Ethernet jack, a PC “VGA” input and an Optical audio output. Since the physical inputs are not located on the TV itself, we wonder if Samsung would be able to let users customise the connectivity options of their ultra-thin TVs in the future. For example, providing an alternative for swapping the SCART connectors out making way for some additional set of Component video connections will be appreciable, particularly with gamers.

User-interface and Set-up:

This Samsung C8000 LED 3D TV utilizes their very own user interface that looks and feels good. Details get stored in the per-input format akin to the LE40C650 LCD TV. As far as the display settings are concerned, we would have appreciated if Samsung had incorporated a “Copy all” function such that Colour settings and Greyscale input can be copied to all inputs and some minor adjustments made here and there as against writing down all our settings and re-entering them manually.

Samsung has also gone quite big with its picture adjustment options on the UE46C8000. Akin to their line-up of other high-end Samsung displays, the C8000 also features the Greyscale controls, a basic Gamma Control and a full-fledged 3D Colour Management System. In other words, almost everything we need to fine-tune the display and get the best possible picture from it. The most impressive highlight is with the fine-tuning point of view; having noise reduction routines, offset and gain adjustments for red, green and blue colour elements, a 10 point white balance adjustment, and even has an option for activating a local dimming too that is capable of activating separately different sections of the edge LED lighting. Well, we don’t really fancy this option, as it occasionally produces some evident squares of backlight irregularity. Then again, we would suggest that you give this option a try to see if you encounter the same squaring problem that we faced. The most disappointing stuff in the set-up of the UE46C8000 include its colour management tools that do not go a touch further and Samsung also has not followed the lead of its Korean rival LG in looking for endorsement from the Imaging Science Foundation.

Additionally, there are also a couple of other controls tucked away far inside the menus; however, a few of which we haven’t stumbled across before. The first of these is LED Motion Plus, which has three different settings, as well as a fourth “Off” switch. This control provides with options for black frame insertion and backlight scanning, which is supposed to enhance the alleged motion clarity by offsetting the conventional sample-and-hold results of LCD panels.  There is also the Motion Plus menu. This is Samsung’s 200hz system, and it is our favourite out of all manufacturer’s attempts to improve LCD motion clarity. This takes care of setting the De-judder and De-blur controls in parallel thereby enhancing motion clarity without giving films the dreaded “soap-opera effect”. Finally, Smart LED combines a variety of processing features in an effort to improve contrast. The controls for the 3D mode are housed in the main Picture menu, and are easy enough to get to.

Features:

The looks of the C8000 is backed up furthermore with an awesome set of specs and features outside of the 3D headliner. With the UE46C8000?s compatibility to almost all  new 3D formats being its prevailing feature, it also packs an alleged 3D HyperReal Engine that claims to deliver enhanced performance benefits over its rivals.

LED LCD:

The fact that the Samsung UE46C8000 sports a 1920 x 1080p LCD panel does not come in as a surprise. This panel is illuminated by the LEDs that are placed above and below the screen. As you can see, this type of placement is quite different from the usual set up of placing the light source behind the panel. This compliments the extremely thin chassis design that Samsung has been trying very hard to push lately. Of course, the UE46C8000 is 3D capable LCD based TV. As you can imagine, Samsung had to work quite hard with the C8000 in order to get its LED LCD technology up to handle some extremely fast frame rates that are associated with its HD 3D sources. To begin with, it sports a 200Hz display; thanks to the scanning backlight Samsung could have easily announced it as a 400Hz model, had it felt comfortable in following the same optimistic labelling system taken up by two of its major rival brands.

Crystal Address Technology:

Samsung also had to use its brains to develop a faster crystal address technology, which helps the screen to respond fast enough to keep up with the active shutter 3D system. It has also introduced blank frame technology to its 3D transmission system to try and make the display and glasses sync as effectively as possible.

Samsung’s Internet@TV:

The Ethernet port can be plugged in to a PC that is DLNA-enabled, access interactive services like future Freeview HD together with hooking up online with Internet@TV feature of Samsung.  Internet@TV consists of YouTube, Twitter, rovi TV listings, Picasa the online photo album, Skype; provided an external camera is included in addition to a whole host of interesting and ultimate third party ‘Widget’ apps, remarkably from AccuWeather, the History Channel, and Getty Images.

There are even a few games on there, though anyone who has spent any time on an Xbox or PS3 will find these games laughably unfulfilling. Again, the online efforts of Samsung kind of looks to be lagging behind when compared to Philips and Sony for the moment, but then there is always the option of a constant update and Samsung is not the kind that would prefer being last in the line. So we guess a plethora of additional services can be expected in the coming months. Also, it has to be added that this C8000 packs the AllShare software that comes in handy if your are looking at getting your telly hooked up with your mobile or for that matter any portable devices that provides multimedia options.

Performance:

Colour:

As far as the performance is concerned, it is mostly terrific as with its 55” sibling. For instance, the colours radiate with startling intensity and strikes cross-screen consistency, to an extent that you might feel that it should not be really possible with an edge-LED technology. In addition to this, the consistency of lighting has been retained surprisingly well during the very dark scenes, with very faintest signs of the sort of pools of inconsistent brightness that stands out so much on 2009’s 55” Samsung LED models. You will be able to make the patches appear if you have chosen to leave the brightness or backlight settings too high. However, keep in mind that this also damages the contrast and general naturalism of the picture. Hence, just hope that you will not be tempted to do so.

Standard Definition:

While colours look intense on top of being credible, these are accompanied with believable tones of subtlety blending with small tonal differences. The picture is quite bright too, yet unusually the UE46C8000’s aggressive approach to pictures does not lead to the exaggeration of video noise. In fact, we would even say that its standard definition performance is probably the best we had ever seen. The TV is able to achieve this because, its up-scaling process adds heaps of detail making the images look sharp and at the same time being shrewd enough in detecting the source noise and trying to eliminate it.

High Definition:

It does not come in as a surprise that the Samsung UE46C8000 3D LCD TV is best with its HD performance. The HD images look blistering sharp, which is a fact that really rams home too, just how accomplished the motion handling circuitry is. Practically, you will not find any judder at all, if you make use of the motion processing carefully and LCD’s common motion blur issue is also more or less totally eradicated. These are factors that have a significant impact on the 3D playback too, helping it look crisp and fluid without giving a processed or unnatural feel.

3D:

The striking bright and colourful picture performance of the Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV does not stop with the standard definition and high definition pictures, it is great at 3D too. Some markedly less brightness is lost when you are wearing the active shutter 3D glasses than in the case of Panasonic’s 3D pictures. You get a great sense of vibrancy and depth to the tellys efforts at HD 3D. We should also mention here that the onboard 2D to 3D processor does an excellent task of converting regular 2D sources into 3D, than you can imagine. However, we cannot imagine many consumers using this feature too often, especially as the converted 3D pictures are simply no match for the real HD 3D deal. We feel that it may just tide a few folks over until more 3D sources come, in case they are seeking for an instant return on their hefty investment.

Crosstalk Noise:

While reviewing its 55” sibling, we tumbled across some significant issues with crosstalk noise while watching 3D, and this is sadly true in the case of UE46C8000 too. The crosstalk disturbance becomes apparent by ghosting around objects, with the object’s field depth affecting the extent to which the crosstalk noise is apparent. In some of the recent 3D movies, almost all of the fast moving scenes suffer very apparently with crosstalk, especially those in the distance. Similar signs of extreme ghosting, if anything less, get evident elsewhere too, that includes the Sky’s 3D channel and with same console games too. In fact, the crosstalk noise in the game makes your eyes feel tired after just a half an hour or so of playing. Lastly, with the upsets of 3D is the picture clarity that only reaches its best after the TV has warmed up for just an hour or so after switching it on. When we reviewed the Samsung UE55C8000 3D TV last year (Samsung UE55C8000 3D TV Review), it was the first 3D TV we had reviewed, so we were not quite sure on how much the crosstalk would be inherent to all the 3D TVs. But, now that we have reviewed Panasonic’s P50VT20 3D TV, we are sure that while this Panasonic model does not completely eradicate the crosstalk, it certainly suffers much lesser with it than any of the Samsung 3D models we have seen.

Viewing angle and Black level response:

Couple of other more general issues includes the viewing angle of the UE46C8000, which is rather limited and its black level response is less convincing than on Samsung’s previous edge LED generation. This might be a consequence of Samsung emphasising brightness more to compensate for the brightness that was lost while viewing 3D.

Gaming:

Gaming is a decent experience on the Samsung UE46C8000 Television. In the normal mode, the input lag is such that it makes games totally unplayable; well thanks to the “Game mode” the figure is brought down to a drastic 32ms. It sure is not an amazing figure, but is definitely a standard figure for an LCD display pleases majority of the users. As a good number of impending 3D games are prone to utilise the “Side by Side” method, we tried obtaining some input lag figures in this mode; which measured at 41ms. Note that both these numbers were calculated by sending 1080p/60 to the display and the input measurements for the 720p were on the higher side. Ensure that you set the video output of your console to 1080p.

Sound:

Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV’s acoustics are slightly better than on the company’s previous edge LED models. It has slightly more volume and punch. However, perhaps inevitably for such a slim TV, it still does not sound anything special, thanks to the lack of bass and rather under-powered mid-range. Actually, it sounds kind of less exciting when compared to the UE55C8000; which is probably owing to the fact, as you can imagine, the telly having 5W less power per channel as against its big brother. While the 46C8000 represents a vast improvement over Samsung’s previous flat TV generation when it comes to sonic ability, it is still short of bass and fails to deliver an expansive sound stage during action scenes.

Energy Consumption:

Samsung has followed suit with majority of the LCD manufacturers in the current market in promoting the so-called energy saving benefits with LED backlighting. Honestly, we don’t really find much of difference between a LED and a CCFL display. The UE46C8000 packs an Eco Solution control too, that is supposed to bring about some energy saving attribute via the display by moderating the display’s overall brightness based on the ambient light. But since this causes the image’s brightness to fluctuate your are better off leaving it alone. The same goes for the Dynamic Contrast control which if left on will adjust the brightness and contrast settings from scene to scene and thus cause the energy consumption to fluctuate. Again, the screen automatically turns Off with lack of signal, which we presume is another attempt at enhancing energy efficiency together with try to boost the contrast ratio figures. The energy consumption is less that 1W in the standby mode. By and large, the energy consumption looks to be on the higher side in comparison to few other LCD displays with LED lighting.

Warranty:

Samsung offers its UE46C8000 3D TV one year warranty for parts and labour.

Verdict:

The Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV stands unbeaten as a piece of hi-tech design in addition to being a stellar 2D performer. Guess the above two factors alone should suffice in making this Samsung UE46C8000 a crucial purchase for many. While colour vibrancy and brightness of 3D content sure does look impressive, one cannot deny the fact that Panasonic P50VT20 3D TV is also capable of the same in addition to massive reduction in crosstalk noise. This just strengthens the fact that anybody looking for some serious 3D, Panasonic is a model of choice. As a 2D TV, the C8000 is fairly decent. Even though, it features an excellent greyscale performance post calibration together with standard-def video processing, the package seems to still have a few glitches, to name a few – poor scaling in 3D mode, auto-dimming, issues with angle viewing and non-uniformity. A few of these look to be specific to the ultra-slim LED LCD of Samsung’s. While videophiles might not really be tolerable to such deficiencies just for the sake of chopping the chasis down to a few centimetres, the style-conscious spectators might beg to differ here. Viewers willing to compromise on the quality of picture in order to have an extremely thin chassis together with gaining access to the 3D world are likely to be in for a treat with this Samsung UE46C8000. That said, the price tag sure looks high given its overall performance.

Check Latest Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV Prices in our 3D TV Prices section.

Samsung UE46C8000 3D TV – Technical Specification Table

Just a few weeks ago, the GT20 series of 3D plasma TV were unveiled at the IFA in Berlin. These are proposed to offer more reasonable entry-level alternative to those who just cannot afford the huge costly models out there. Though it is aimed at the affordable price point, the P42GT20 includes much of the same technology as the higher end VT20 and hence, provides us with a chance to see if Panasonic has corrected some of the issues that rose in our review of the TX-P50VT20 3D TV. Furthermore, measuring a bare 42 inches this set is supposedly the smallest 3D display released until date by Panasonic, so it is all the more intriguing to sit back and watch how extensive a 3D experience can this set deliver in comparison to the 65” VT20. So let us put on the 3D glasses and dim the lights, it is time to watch a 3D blockbuster.

Akin to majority of the features in the VT20 3D plasmas, this GT20 includes 600Hz subfield drive, ‘Smooth Film’ 24p for 3D, THX, 2D to 3D conversion and High Contrast Filter. There are three key differences between the GT20 TV and the VT20 series. The first one being the fact that it features a slightly less advanced filter, the second being the fact that it has no subwoofer and finally, it does not come with any 3D glasses in the box. The TV’s design is a tad different too, then again you might have to observe pretty close in order to spot the differences, like for example a subtle difference in the bezel and the VT20 is a tad slimmer too.

Design:

Build:

When compared to its high end sibling, the Panasonic TX-P42GT20B 3D TV has decided to preserve the glossy gun metal finish, which forms a part of the whole 2010 line up of Panasonic displays, but guess the manufacturer has decided to ditch the sliver trim that is seen in the expensive VT20 series. Now, this is not that bad as it makes the TV look slim, clean and hence quite appealing too. Overall, the chassis looks sleek and convincingly light in comparison to rest of the displays with a bezel that is 8cm wide at the bottom and 5cm wide at the top. Coming to the set’s rear is an elegant black metal that adds to the build while the whole of the display is perched on a matching oval rostrum with a silver embellishment which proves to be of solid support despite appearing fairly small.

Remote control:

The remote control that comes with the TX-P42GT20B 3D TV is pretty much the same black plastic model that Panasonic had included with the VT20 but it seems more in keeping with the P42GT20’s position as a baseline model than it did when included with a flagship product. Though the remote might not be winning any design awards, it at least fulfils its main purpose and has been laid out well. Overall, the remote is quite intuitive and comfortable to handle.

Connectivity:

All the Panasonic displays for 2010 have come with an extensive selection of inputs and the P42GT20 is no exception. When it comes to connectivity, the GT20 has four HDMI 1.4a ports with three positioned on the rear of the panel and one towards the side. HDMI 2 is the connection on the P42GT20 which allows the new audio return signal as part of the 1.4 specifications. This means that you can feed the TV direct from a Blu-ray player and then feed the audio back from the set to your AV receiver that is HDMI v1.4 equipped. In the rear, you get to see 2 SCART connectors, a VGA PC slot, a pair of component RCA plugs and last but not least an Ethernet connection. You also get to find the audio outputs and inputs utilizing the optical audio output and RCA plugs. While the satellite socket takes care of the FreeSat HD feed, a standard RF socket takes care of the FreeView HD.

Buttons and Slots:

Done with the rear, in the side panel, there are two USB inputs, a composite video input, a common interface card slot, and other audio inputs together with a 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD card slot. Furthermore, there is a new firmware added which supposedly recognises the AVCHD 3D files from the latest 3D camcorder of Panasonic’s. All existing VT20 series also are given access to this firmware if in case you have purchased one of these and wish for an update. As usual with the slim HD TVs, in the right side panel, you will find the main power switch and basic volume and channel buttons.

User Interface:

Set up:

Panasonic has not changed the menu systems and the P42GT20 uses exactly the same menu systems as all the previous TVs and as such the set up is quite fast and painless. Once connection is established to the aerial for the P42GT20B Full HD 3D Television, tuning in FreeView is just a matter of a few minutes and the resulting EPG is colourful, large and easy to read. However we have a minor quibble; unlike with EPGs on other TVs there is no thumbnail image of the channel you are currently on and, in fact, there is not even any audio. If you intend to make use of the VIERA CAST functionality, which is Panasonic’s Internet TV functionality, all you have to do is have your router connected to the display using either the LAN cable or a Wi-Fi dongle (in case of wireless connections). In contrast to the VT20, the P42GT20 does not pack the Wi-Fi dongle, but irrespective of that setting up the internet connection seems to be a literal cakewalk.

Main menu:

Similar to the EPG, the main menu system is colourful, vibrant, easy to read and quick to navigate. It offers three choices, titled Picture, Sound and Set Up. In the Set Up there are the usual controls namely the Network Set, DivX VOD and Timer together with a control named Advanced (ISFccc) that gives you access to the Professional1/Professional2 picture modes. Deep inside the Set Up menu, you will find an option called Other Settings and here, there are three functions that could have been included within the Picture menu. A control has been offered for to set up the frame interpolation function that Panasonic prefers calling Intelligent Frame Creation, but then if the image received is 24p then the function changes by default to the 24p Smooth Film mode. Additionally, there is also a Resolution Enhancer control together with a control that sets the 16:9 Overscan. The latter is particularly important for the reason that only if you set it to “Off” will you manage to obtain accurate pixel mapping devoid of scaling thus benefiting from Hi-def full resolution.

Sound Menu:

The Sound menu in Panasonic TX-P42GT20B 42″ 3D Television offers 3 different modes including Speech, Music and User, with the User mode allowing you to customise the audio set up with the help of an equalizer. There are also more of the usual controls such as Bass, Treble and Balance as well as a setting for the distance between the speakers and the wall. Sound is yet another aspect wherein the TX- P42GT20 varies from the VT20 with the former having only 2 x 10W speakers without any subwoofer. The resulting sound on the 3D TV is somewhat lacking compared to its higher end stablemate, it still seemed reasonable, especially when compared to some of the ultra thin models.

Picture Menu:

In the Picture menu, you will find a series of Viewing Modes which range from the eye blistering Dynamic to THX preset that seems to be offering very good out of the box performance.

There are also two ISF modes known as Professional1 and Professional2 which allow access to additional Advanced Settings and can be locked. The basic idea being the ISFccc modes offer an expert calibrator with the tools that accurately sets the colour gamut and greyscale and then lock these settings so that they cannot be accidentally changed. The logic behind two Professional modes is for the calibrator to craft Day and Night settings, with each of them being optimised to view programmes in different viewing scenarios. The P42GT20 includes all the usual picture controls including a Contrast control for adjusting the luminance of the video signal, a Brightness control for adjusting the black level, a Colour control and a Sharpness control. The Contrast Automatic Tracking System has been designed to adjust the Contrast setting from scene to scene in order to boost the contrast ratio numbers but this can cause fluctuations in the image and is best left off. Finally there is a P-NR Noise Reduction function that is designed to reduce compression artifacts.

With selecting the Professional1/Professional2 modes, you will be directed to the Advance Settings menu wherein there are menus for Colour Management, White Balance and Gamma. While the White Balance Menu allows for a 2-point calibration of the greyscale, the Gamma Menu gives you the choice of various gamma curves and the Colour Management menu allows you to adjust Saturation and Hue of the 3 primaries.

3D functions Menu:

Finally there are menus for setting up the 3D functions on the Panasonic P42GT20. Upon using a 3D Blu-ray player, the GT20B switches by default to 3D mode and this defaults to the Normal picture mode and this is important as light output is critical to get the 3D effect to work correctly. In case you choose to use other sources for 3D content like the Sony PS3 or Sky+HD box, then you might have to select the appropriate options manually. Even as you can choose other picture modes that includes the Cinema instead of the THX preset, the perfect option would the Normal picture mode owing to its enhanced brightness. You will also need to choose the correct 3D format, and your choices include Auto, Side by Side and Top and Bottom. Other settings that are on offer include the Picture Sequence that swaps the right and left eyes together with an Edge Smoother which brings about some smoothing to images. Also hidden somewhere deep in the Setup menu beneath Other Settings you might find a control named 3D 24p Film Display that allows for increasing the refresh rate on 3D material that is 24p from 24 to 48 frames per an eye.

Features:

As we had mentioned in the introduction, the Panasonic TX-P42GT20B 42-inch Plasma Screen 3D TV shares most of the features that are on the VT20 and in some cases even adds some new ones. The TV has both Freesat HD and Freeview HD tuners as well as full HD 3D capability, including Panasonic’s new 2D to 3D conversion technology. The GT20B also shares the ISF controls and THX certification akin to the VT20, but differs in the area of Infinite Black filter. Unlike the VT20 which uses the Pro version, the P42GT20 utilises  a cheaper and inferior contrast filter that in turn affects the display’s black levels and contrast.

Intelligent Frame Creation:

The P42GT20 sports Intelligent Frame Creation that utilizes frame interpolation that compensates the picture frame rate by default, thus removing judder and turning images clear and smooth. If you choose to watch Blu-rays that have been encoded at 24fps, the 24p Playback function of the GT20 enhances frame rates to a more suitable 96Hz, which is nothing but the multiple of 24. Additionally, there is this 24p Smooth Film function, which also manages to do something similar, but with the inclusion of frame interpolation.

600Hz:

The P42GT20 includes the 600Hz capability has caused some dilemma as it seems to be marketed like the 100Hz or 200Hz processing features that are found on LCDs, but it is actually nothing of that sort. In fact, it refers to how the sub-pixels that make up the plasma image and it all comes down to the frame rate and how many sub fields are used to make up one frame. These sub-pixels do not directly affect motion, they make up the picture that is drawn on screen within each frame. In contrast to LCD displays, plasmas are free of motion blur thus the inclusion of this 600Hz claim is nothing more than marketing blurb.

Gaming:

We also found that the TX-P42GT20B Full HD Plasma 3D TV is also being aimed firmly in the direction of gamers. With a whole load of 3D TVs on the Panasonic stand being hooked up to the 3D Nvidia Vision PCs, the manufacturer is probably of the opinion that they can conveniently attract gamers who are keen on riding the 3D wave with the 42-inch size with the kind of games being available on the PS3.

2D to 3D conversion:

With the VT20 being released earlier in the year, Panasonic was of the opinion that in contrast to its rivals they would not advocate the 2D to 3D conversion feature as they thought it was just another marketing gimmick that produced awful 3D. Nevertheless, we find Panasonic’s attitude against this feature similar to treating some stepchild as they have managed to have hidden this feature somewhere in the 3D menu and haven’t really made any mention of the same in any of their advertising literature. It looks more as if it has been included more to tick a couple of boxes rather than to offer more of the true high end features. We are not being harsh here, because, frankly, as witty as 2D to 3D conversion is, it is just nowhere near as beautiful as true 3D content and in most cases it is just purely uncomfortable to watch and a pain on your eyes. It does not come in as a surprise that Panasonic is just displaying the GT20 showcasing suitable 3D images on the shelves, with absolutely no signs of the 2D to 3D conversion in the scene.

3D Glasses:

There appears to have been some confusion with regards to whether or not the P42GT20 would come with any active shutter 3D glasses included. Panasonic initially said at the show that this TV would not be shipping with free 3D glasses, but Panasonic UK later revealed that the fortunate UK buyers will be treated to 2 free pairs of 3D specs after all. Again, in the official specification table it was mentioned that “3D eyewear not included”, you got to check it out yourselves with your dealer.

You might find wearing the 3D glasses to be a painful experience even at the best of times, and we do not really see the appeal unless you are watching something that has been shot and presented with 3D in mind like the Avatar or The Legend of the Guardians. Together with the P42GT20, Panasonic had also unveiled their all new 3D glasses with active shutter at the IFA and evidently looks like the manufacturer had finally decided to listen to user feedbacks. The make-over design has completely covered sides thus preventing reflections, which had been plaguing the original design for a while now with the nose bridge being fixed as against being detachable, thus preventing them from falling. This new design also comes in a number of different sizes like small, medium and large which will allow you to choose the one that suits your head best. Unfortunately the glasses included with the P42GT20 are the original design and therefore suffer from all the limitations that we had just mentioned.

Compatibility:

Finally, the GT20B has decided to include DLNA compatibility that aides in streaming music, photos and videos, together with VIERA Link, DivX HD, VIERA Image Viewer and Dolby Digital Plus decoding. Yet another area where GT20 looks to be specified better in comparison to the VT20 as the SD card reader has received an upgraded that is now compatible with 3D images originating from Panasonic’s 3D digital cameras and 3D camcorders.

Performance:

3D Picture Quality:

Moving on to performance, from what we could tell the TX-P42GT20 is a great addition to Panasonic’s 3D TV range. Motion clarity is impeccable with cross talk (where the two images that are required to produce a 3D picture bleed into one another) being kept at a bare minimum, while blacks retain their classic depth. Full 1080p images on 3D Blu-rays look stunning once you ignore the obvious colour shift and dip in brightness, then again this is a drawback of the technology and has nothing to do with the display.

2D Picture Quality:

Overall the 2D performance of the Panasonic TX-P42GT20B Plasma 3D TV is actually very good, especially when correctly calibrated. It has accuate grayscale, accurate colour performance which allows the P42GT20 to produce some very natural and life-like images and excellent black levels too. You might realize that viewing actual content to be fairly good, particularly the 24p Blu-rays seem to look fabulous with a great eye for detail and accuracy that are free of judder. Well the same goes with Freeview HD that did not fail to impress us with a few equally inspiring images, aside from a ringing noise every now and then triggered by the 50Hz issues.

Gaming performance:

As we mentioned earlier, we suspect that the P42GT20 is aimed primarily at the gaming market because not only is 3D gaming the area that is most likely to drive 3D sales but due to the slightly artificial nature of gaming it is also the most enjoyable. If you sit nearer to the screen when playing games, it will help create a more immersive experience on the smaller screen. We found that the games that move on a slow pace appeared better in 3D owing to the fact that the brain does not have time to register depth information when the images are moving too fast. We also feel that games that used additional depth provided by 3D in an imaginative way are also much rewarding. With more and more 3D games hitting the market, it is just matter of time before game developers realize this fact.

Warranty:

Panasonic offers one year warranty of parts and labour for its TX-P42GT20B Full HD 3D TV.

Verdict:

The plasma TVs of Panasonic have improved massively even in the last few years, and all the technical improvements have been crammed into the GT20. With the sales figure of the VT20 series being extremely good, it is really hard to tell if this success was because it is an high-end set or if people were just keen on possessing a 3D TV. This doubt exists as the GT20 series is a step down from the ultra top end, however, if it still sells as well it will be confirmed that people really do care about 3D. We think it is a combination of both factors. For instance, if you can afford to set yourself back £2,000 on a new TV, you will certainly want the option of 3D even if you do not anticipate using it much.

In a gist, we are quite not sure as to the validity of 3D on a 42” screen. In order to truly appreciate the depth and beauty of 3D, you might have your field of vision filled as much as possible. While we were pleasantly impressed by the 3D pictures on the GT20, but we could not help feeling that it is just a bit too tiny. We reckon 50” is probably the smallest you would want to go if you really care about 3D, but even so, there are talks that several of the main TV manufacturers are already working on 32” 3D TVs, so what do we know? May be it will work. Obviously, the TX-P42GT20B sure does look to be impressive in the conventional 2D mode too. It is on sale now for around £1,500. Well, though it might not look to be an impressive number now, we do expect the price to take a fall in the days to come!

Panasonic TX-P42GT20B 3D TV – Technical Specification Table

Overview:

Pros:

• Great black levels
• Great viewing angles
• More uniformity on screen
• The Cheapest 3D television in the market
• As good as its rivals

Cons:

• Not as slim as other models
• Crosstalk issues

Review:

LED TVs are so yesterday, the latest craze is in the 3D televisions. Yes, you got that right -  3D TVs. Can watching get any more realistic? We do not think so. We were all pretty excited when Samsung announced in early 2010 about a host range of products in their line up for the year because the list included the Samsung LE40C750, the “cheapest” 3D Television ever!  The only product of the 7 series, the LE40C750 is also the only CFL LCD capable of displaying pictures in 3D.  The television also features many gimmicks found in higher end LED TVs such as the Ultra Clear panel. The TV can access a home network as well stream digital media content from a DLNA compliant server. The Internet@TV portal is another tempting feature.   In several ways, the television is similar to the only 2D LE40C750 but with all the minor issues sorted out. Does this make the LE40C750 a high quality and affordable television? Yes it does. How good is it? Read the review to find out.

Design:

Identical to the C650:

When it comes to styling, the Samsung LE40C750 is identical to its counterpart in the C650 series. It has a slim line frame surrounded by a rather thick bezel making the television look large. The bezel is framed by a Perspex edge on the all sides beyond the frame. The Back panel of the television is made out of light metal instead of plastic making it a better built television. While the C650 features a more conventional stand, the LE40C750 has a pretty cool chrome plated four legged stand just like the UE46C8000.  The stand is capable of swivelling from left and right on top of the stand. There are a couple of touch panels present on the bezel that allow basic operations such as switching in between channels and changing the volume.

Ultra Clear Panel:

The Ultra Clear Panel that complements the glossy finish is now a trademark amongst all Samsung televisions. Samsung claims that it is due to its deep black features. Glossy screens are susceptible to glare when used in a brightly lit room. The resultant reflections of bright objects from dark content on television can get very distracting. The Ultra Clear Panel on the Samsung LE40C750 40-inch Widescreen 3D Television comes with an extremely effective anti glare coating that helps in preserving blacks even under strong lighting.

Remote:

The Samsung LE40B650 Full HD 3D LCD TV sports a remote with sufficiently large buttons and a matte black coating instead of the finger print prone glossy finish.  Apart from the usual bunch of keys, there are a couple of new buttons so that you can take advantage of the television.  There is a separate button for accessing Yahoo! widgets. The source and p. size buttons control input selection and controls aspect ratio respectively. Another feature is the backlighting function that allows users to use the remote even in dark conditions and this can be toggled on and off as required.

Connections:

The LE40C750 40″ television has ports on the rear and the rear side panels.  There are the four standard HDMI inputs as well as 2 SCART terminals, one component video input, a VGA input, composite video inputs, an Ethernet connector and 2 USB ports. The HDMI accepts inputs of 1080p/60 and 1080p/24 signals. The Ethernet connector lets you hook on to a home network as well access Samsung’s internet offerings.  The television lacks an RS 232 port or an IR port that would have allowed integrating into an advanced control system. An interesting feature included is Connect Share that allows one to play video files and display pictures by connecting them to the television using the connection cord. It works for music too!

User Interface:

The LE40C750’s on screen menu content is nothing surprising. The setup menu allows video adjustments beginning with four picture modes and four colour temperature presets along with RGB gain, offset controls and a 10 point white balance. There are the highly customisable Grey scale and Colour calibration options as well as control over 3D video. There is also an advanced colour management system to decide the colour points according to your needs. There are also options for flesh tone, MPEG noise reduction and edge enhancement.   There is no LED Backlight Blinking option on the C750 as it uses traditional CFL backlight. The Motion Plus 240HZ menu includes options such as off, clear, smooth, standard and a custom mode as well – similar to what we have seen in older Samsung televisions. The 3D menu includes setup tools using which one can select a 3D input mode, enable 3D to 2D conversion, 3D Depth and make adjustments to 3D viewpoint.

There are 5 preset SRS TheatreSound modes as well as a five band equalizer that allows extensive tweaking of various frequencies within each mode. There is an Auto Volume function that reduces the volume disparities in between TV shows and commercials. The television is one of the very few models to feature an  eco-menu” with an Energy Saving mode included to lower backlight as well as an Eco Sensor that adjusts the picture to suit the room’s ambient lighting. The TV can be tweaked to turn itself off when it does not receive signals for a while.

Features:

3D:

Viewing 3D has been restricted to theatres till recently. And so the idea of watching 3D at home is bound to attract a lot of attention and customers too.  The Samsung LE40C750 television is not only capable of displaying 3D imagery but also is capable of transforming 2D content to 3D. Sounds pretty amazing right? It sure is.  How good is at 3D? We will deal with that in a short while.

Full 1080p:

Full HD 1080p means twice the detail and resolution of a regular HD TV. Because the TV is capable of delivering Full HD 1080p, one can expect marvellously rich colour and high levels of detail.

240Hz Clear Motion Rate:

The television features Automatic 240Hz processing that promises better and clearer motion clarity. It is the 240Hz refresh rate that is the main improvement over the cheaper C650 series. A feature found on the higher end UNB7000 LED TV series, it implies that the images on the television panel will be built up twice as fast as on a normal HD TV. The refresh rate is brought about by interpolating frames between real content to a ‘smooth’ movement while viewing fast motion sequences. There are several presets to choose from such as clear, standard, smooth and custom. There is also an option to turn off the processing if you find the processed content too smooth to be natural. While the faster refresh results means improved motion resolution, the difference between 120Hz and 240Hz is not perceivable by the human eyes.

FreeView HD:

The LE40C750 Full HD 3D Ready LCD Television features an integrated FreeView HD tuner, an improved version of the digital FreeView that produces high definition content at no cost or contract.  At the time of writing this review, not all areas within the United Kingdom receive FreeView in HD. However, the more popular it becomes, the more accessible it will be.

Internet@TV:

The Internet Widgets is another feature that deserves attention. One can choose applications for the television that allows for streaming of videos, playing games and viewing pictures. Some of the pretty popular apps include YouTube, Monopoly, FaceBook, Twitter and Pandora. The Youtube option was pretty decent whereas the Yahoo Finance and Weather widgets were non worthy. Pandora and Netflix would be useful to people who are into movies. While they seem interesting, they are a bit hard to manage and would not appeal to a lot of people.

The ability to record:

The Samsung LE40C750 3D Television features PVR that allows to record your favourite shows on television by just plugging in a USB memory stick or external hard drive and selecting the time and date of the show to be recorded.

Performance:

Black Levels:

While LCD TVs are not capable of delivering blacks as deep as LED TVs., we were impressed by the Samsung LE40C750’s performance. Its black level after calibrating was found to be an astounding 0.03 cd/m2. The television shares its Super PVA LCD technology with vendors such as Sony but the other implementations are not as deep as the Samsung model.
Implementation difference perhaps?

Motion Processing:

The Korean major was the first company that allowed users to adjust the De-blur and De-judder variables of the MCFI system. This allowed users to enjoy higher motion resolution without making it look too unnatural. While other competitors followed suit, Samsung still has the lead. However, the Motion Plus on the LE40C750 is not perfect yet. There are occasional motion irregularities for as long as 10 seconds sometimes and the problem was most pronounced in news channels that feature the headline tickers at the bottom of the screen.  While enabling the Motion Plus feature solved the problem, we expected a better performance without distorting the material. We had similar issues with 24p film playback on a Blu-ray disc. There were frames that were being skipped resulting in juddery playback.

3D Material:

When we put on the 3D glasses, we were astounded to see that the 3D image was rather similar to the 2D one. Sure, there was the extra dimension effect, but the colour cast caused by incorrect grayscale tracking was absent. In the movie mode, the C750 appeared to be near perfect for 3D viewing. However, after extensive calibrating we were able to obtain very good grayscale tracking quality out of the television. It was better than the Panasonic VT20 and is roughly as good as Samsung’s own UE46C8000.

Crosstalk issues:

Like all 3D televisions, the Samsung has problems of Crosstalk. For those of you who do not know what it is, it is artifact where the brighter objects are surrounded by ghostly images on the left and right side. Caused by low motion resolution, it has been a problem that has plagued the quality of 3D viewing. Because of noticeable crosstalk, the Panasonic Plasma TV despite not being perfect is still the best 3D television.  If you happen to have sound knowledge on videos or want to use 3D viewing on a regular basis, you will find crosstalk very annoying.  But if you would want to use it occasionally, it should be okay because of the picture depth it can offer.

The Other issues with 3D:

The Samsung LE40C750 is a 60Hz centric television which means any 50Hz content would suffer from motion stutter. Motion Plus was not really successful in curtailing the judder. Similarly, even 24p content had similar issues. The Panasonic VT20 3D Plasma (check Panasonic Viera TX-P50VT20 3D TV Review for more details) has been the only television to overcome this issue thanks to its ability to reproduce 24Hz input as a multiple of the input frame rate resulting in smoother motion.  The other major issue we had was the quality of scaling. When the 3D content being viewed used Side by Side technique ( the left and right images are crammed into a 2D image and are scaled to form a 3D image), pixilation was pronounced.  These problems are an issue if you live in Europe and happen to be interested in 3D broadcasting from Sky as their broadcasts will share these traits.

Standard Definition:

Like all the other models from the Samsung range, the Samsung LE40C750 does an impressive job in processing standard definition video. The picture quality of SD sources is simply mind blowing. One aspect we loved is the way the television configures the Sharpness setting for SD. It prevents users from adding excessive ringing to the picture thus hiding a lot of artefacts in the source. Even Scaling was equally good; there was no loss of details.

High Definition:

We were pretty happy with the HD performance of the LE40C750 2D/3D television considering how the problem of hidden noise reduction feature caused the film to be grainier in earlier models seems less noticeable. The overall quality of the picture was pretty good. The 24p content played back smoothly after calibrating the Motion Plus option. To get the best of your television, use the custom mode and set Blur reduction to 10 and Judder Reduction to 0.

Gaming:

The Samsung LE40C750has a high input lag of 41ms making it frustrating to play games that require lightning quick reflexes. However slower games were a lot fun on the television. Let us just hope the input lag comes down for future models as there are very few televisions that cater to gamers. With the game mode and Motion Plus turned off, there was a lag of 104ms. We tried playing a couple of games in 3D using the PlayStation 3. We noticed that the games are better looking in 2D and feel more fluid than 3D because of higher resolution and frame rate. No fault of the television of course. But playing games in 3D is a great experience.

Audio:

The powerful dual 10 w speakers are capable of blaring loud volumes. Even at 30 percent of the highest volume, it was very loud. While the sound was loud, the quality of volume was weaker than the background noise resulting in a hollow tinny effect. While the volume levels were impressive, the audio presentation could have been better.

Energy consumption:

The LE40C750 continues to pioneer Samsung’s legacy of being eco friendly. Apart from using no mercury, the television features Energy saving modes that reduce brightness levels without affecting picture quality.

Warranty:a

The Samsung LE40C7540 comes with a warranty of one year and can be extended to up to 5 years by shelling out extra.

Verdict:

The Samsung LE40C750 has its set of strengths and weakness when compared to the other televisions. There is the nasty crosstalk problem on the display which by far is the only weakness we have noticed. All other aspects of great picture quality were better on the television than most of its rivals in spite of being similarly sized and about half the price. The reason for it being cheap is because it uses the older CCFL backlighting instead of the more expensive LED backlighting. If you do not care about a slim chassis like the ones C8000 and C9000 have, you could have a go at the television. Even if you watch only 2D, we still recommend it.

Check other Samsung 3D TVs Reviews in this website.

Samsung LE40C750 40-inch 3D TV – Technical Specification Details

As all of us are aware the January’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) held in Las Vegas witnessed the unveiling of real and not the archetype 3D HDTVs with Samsung’s booth showcasing an array of 3D models, that included various LED LCD flat panels together with added 3D plasma sets. The first of the LED 3D models had just hit the telly market besides 3D Blu-ray playback feature that obviously requires a Blu-ray player that is 3D compatible. Looks like Samsung has hurled in a massive bonus in the form of an incorporated 2D to 3D conversion functionality that is user selectable, which allows consumers to watch anything in 3D. As you can imagine, this key feature might place Samsung to lead the 3D HDTV race.

In the following review, we will see about the Samsung 8000 Series UE55C8000 55″ TV, which is 3D ready, and when we say 3D Ready, we are talking about a telly that is competent enough in handling both – the new active Full HD alternate frame Blu-ray 3D setup and the side by side passive 3D format, which currently, which is currently being broadcasted via the Sky HD boxes to users with the complete Sky World Package. We are not talking about the old offset 3D images that have been broadcasted in the past. Guess such sort of blurry average 3D images can work with any TV and all that was required was just a pair of cheap, so-called cardboard 3D glasses, not to forget that funny green and red lens. 3D for home circa 2010 is much more of a sophisticated affair that is driven by a desire to make it High Definition and, more importantly, something that is actually good, rather than just a gimmick that is guaranteed to give you a massive head ache in two seconds flat.

Design:

Thin, Thinner and Thinnest:

To look at, the Samsung UE55C8000 55-inch 3D Television was simply drop dead gorgeous; seriously. Just when everybody were thinking that the design department of Samsung might be running out of steam, they shift tack and just blow us away all over again. The shift turned the TV to the conventional dark and gently coloured crystal finishing with curvaceous lines dumped for a radically atypical silver-y metallic finish perfectly rounded off by a silver transparent glass protruding for about half a centimetre from the extremities of the television. A huge 4-legged silver stand prevents the display from falling over. Silver TVs had been a thing in the past say sometime around 2005, and guess there must be quite a number of consumers happy to witness this design return.

That said, the bezel seems kind of distracting as the eyes have gotten used to the blacks for a long time now. Note that, there is also the rather key fact that the TV sticks out just 26.5mm at the rear. The sight of this gorgeous 3D TV is certainly one to behold with a vast 55-inch metal-wrapped profile, which is possibly slicker than the typical wall clock. Size does matter, huh!. Handy then, that Samsung had decided to make the monster 55” TV. Trust us, we are not sure after watching this TV, you can live with anything less than this.

Remote Control:

The remote, too, has undergone a makeover to match the TV’s design. Akin to the telly, the remote also has been styled in brushed titanium with a shiny hoary trim. With majority of the buttons buried under the face, there is very minimal feedback on pressing and takes a little getting used and you cannot really run your fingers over the surface of the remote to find your way around, at least, not to the same degree as before the remote does include some raised lines and a tactile dot for this purpose. We did appreciate that, like some of Samsung’s other remotes, the UE55C8000’s remote control features backlighting which can be enabled by pressing the dedicated button at the top-right.

Connectivity:

The Samsung UE55C8000 Full HD LED 3D TV is so slim that it has caused the company a few connection troubles. Thus, Samsung has decided to place all connections in sideways orientation which allows the TV to be hung on the wall without any issues. There is just not enough depth in the TV to support SCARTs, standard RF jack, Ethernet port, D-Sub PC Jack or even the RCA connectors that are used by normal composite and component video inputs. Probably this is why Samsung has decided to include adaptors that are smaller terminalled for all of these connections. The TV screams size zero with even four of its HDMIs and two USB ports looking extremely cramped. The HDMIs looks to be more fascinating than ever with all of them being v1.4 compatible, which looks to be the new standard intended to handle 3D signals, that carries all signal info required for 3D TVs to aptly recognise the kind of 3D fare they are receiving. The USBs used are quite noteworthy too as one of them will be able to take an HDD drive and either can be used to add a USB WiFi dongle if you want to spend a few extra pounds on securing one.

Features:

User Interface:

The Samsung 8000 series UE55C8000 3D LED TV has scores of multimedia features at its disposable, about which we will discuss in detail in future. Said that, it is a great relief to find that Samsung refined its onscreen menu well to cope up with the multimedia load, with all the multimedia options accessed through an attractive and intuitive circular pseudo 3D menu structure.

USB Recording:

You will be able to record programs via the Freeview HD tuner (that is in-built in the C8000) to a USB drive too. Though these drives come with a minimum memory of 4GB, guess you can use a 2GB stick too. Since the recordings are of the direct DVB-T2 tuner stream, guess you will not have to encounter any loss of picture quality in the process of recording. Handy is it not? However, we found that the recordings sounded fractionally hissier, which is an artifact of playback engine. The USB recording feature seems to be reasonably flexible with about 60% of the stupidly large collection of USB sticks we had massed over the decade working perfect. When compared to the new USB recording TVs from Panasonic, they only seem to work reliably with a particular pair of Buffalo HDD drives. The only very predictable limitation of the USB recording system is that, you can only playback the recordings you make of the same TV that you used to create them. You will not be able to pass episodes for programs within your friends. It is not worth anything too as the Samsung’s Time Shift mode only operates for a maximum of 90 minutes.

Multimedia Capabilities:

As we might expect from a cutting edge 3D TV in 2010, the Samsung UE55C8000 55″ 3D Ready LED Television is equipped with some pretty major league multimedia credentials. The TV has the capability to hook up with a DLNA-compatible PC for the sake of live streaming, together with the USB ports. The tell also supports a whole host of video and audio codecs which goes on to include DivX HC, MPEG4, JPEG, XviD, H.264 BP/MP/HP, AC3, AAC, WMV v9, MP3 and DTS core. Going deeper, the multimedia action of Samsung comes courtesy of the AllShare system of Samsung that allows you to join hands of the 3D TV with mobile phones and other network capable devices. With this feature, you will be able to view call arrivals, SMS messages and even the schedules that are set on your phone.

Internet@TV:

If you think we are done with the multimedia credentials of the UE55C8000, you cannot be more wrong. This magnificia from Samsung supports the company’s Widget Driven Internet@TV online platform. The presentation of this system has been really improved from that of last year’s service. But, to be honest, we felt that the available content was much more limited than what we had hoped for. Highlights of the feature include the inevitable YouTube, plus rovi TV listings, Twitter, the Picasa online photo album site, and perhaps best of all, Skype – provided you add an external camera.

Apps Online:

Samsung has also developed the ‘Apps’ online feature that was just trailing on last year’s TVs, with the Apps already available from the likes of AccuWeather, the History Channel and Getty Images. Additionally, there is also a small group of very basic games. We were disappointed with the fact how shallow the apps were, and we would not envisage ourselves using more than a couple of them on any remotely regular basis.

Said that, keep in mind that though the multimedia content of 55C8000 3D LED TV has a few black spots, its multimedia content is completely open to changes and expansion in months to come; given the updatable structure of the TV. To conclude with this lengthy multimedia section, we found it a bit of a shame that Samsung was not able to built WiFi into a £3,000 TV as standard or even include a USB dongle for free. But, on the other hand, if you can afford three grand on a telly, you will also tip of the dongle accessory.

LED Technology:

Oops, we went so deep into the multimedia capabilities of the UE55C8000 that we almost missed on its main picture related features. The very first thing that we have to say is that, this UE55C8000 3D TV from Samsung uses edge 3D lighting which is a first for the company, and it trails the LG 42LE7900 by way of utilising a kind of local dimming, wherein fragments of the edge lights can be blurred singly to other segments. We were not really impressed with this system on the LG set, so bad that most people prefer to leave the feature turned off. But, we are going to reserve the judgement on this model for now.

LED Motion Plus and White Balance Tool:

Yet another picture related feature that is new to Samsung’s range of 3D TVs is the LED Motion Plus trait that eliminates lag from scenes that are fast moving, together with an incredibly technical tool – 10p white balance that allows you to control the white balance in 10 point intervals by adjusting the red, green and blue brightness levels. This can be done using the TV’s movie mode. There are other handy features too that go on to include colour elements and colour space adjustment, flesh tone adjustment, gamma adjustment, gain/offset tuning for the green, red and blue colour elements and here is the best of all, the skill to only moderate the strength of the 200Hz engine, but also to what degree it applies its judder reduction and specific blur algorithms. There are heaps more to discuss about the picture features, but it is high time we move on to the main 3D capability of the Samsung UE55C8000.

3D Functionality:

The remote control is gorgeous too. Now why did we say that? Oh yea, it carries a dedicated 3D button, which when depressed pulls up a range of 3D options, depending on what source you are watching. For instance, upon pressing the 3D button whilst you are watching a movie in the normal 2D source, it automatically swaps to the 2D to 3D conversion mode. Again with having Sky’s side-by-side 3D images playing in the screen, there is a side-by-side option available, which is noticeably denoted via a simple icon beside an alternative top and bottom 3D mode. When 3D Blu ray is played into the UE55C8000 from Samsung’s Blu ray player, the telly swaps into the excat active shutter playback mode by default. In fact, it outputs all 3D source received utilising the active shutter system, it obviously has to right, failing which the images wouldn’t work with Samsung’s active shutter glasses.

3D Glass:

The Active Shutter 3D glasses look kind of flimsy and also lets too much of ambient lighting from the surroundings to peek in, resulting in reflections on the lens causing considerable detractions in the 3D experience; Exactly the reason why we would recommend keeping your room as dark as possible when you decided watching 3D content. Yet another reason would be, with watching 3D content in a well-lit room you actually find the experience diminishing owing to the visually weird relationship between the actual 3D surrounding of your room and the 3D image reeling in the telly. The glasses sure do seem more comfy to be worn in comparison to Panasonic’s, which supposedly places pressure on the nose bridge. Whereas Samsung’s glasses kind of transfer this weight around the ears, which is comfy particularly with wearing it for extended hours. None of the Active Shutter glasses are included as standard with the UE55C8000. This is absolute disappointment given that the rivals Panasonic and LG have declared that at least one set of glasses will be included with their 3D TVs. But Samsung has said that you will be able to order a pair for free somehow after you have bought the TV.

200Hz Engine:

The 200Hz engine is clean too, provided it is run on the ‘Clear’ setting only, thus bringing down any blur or judder that is quite common among LCD TVs. Also the UE55C8000’s motion talents come in fairly handy in making the 3D images look clean, clear and punchy. Samsung also continues to make huge improvements with its standard definition upscaling engine. If there were serious weaknesses in Samsung’s upscaling engine, they would stand out like a sore thumb on the UE55C8000’s colossal screen. In fact, the standard def pictures are pretty sharp, clean and colour-rich to a decent extent in comparison to other king-sized tellys. Really, the only significant annoyance we found with the UE55C8000’s non-3D pictures concerns its viewing angle. For watching it from even as little as 35 degrees off axis can lead to a significant drop-off in black level response, and a marked increase in the screen’s backlight inconsistency.

Performance:

Picture quality:

Moving on to the part of picture quality, we will start with the black level response. Crucially, there is very little sign of backlight inconsistency that we note on the previous sample of the much cheaper Samsung UE467000. This sure does seem to be good news and is very welcome when it concerns 3D, because watching the 2D distraction right on the ‘surface’ of 3D images can be fairly distracting. Some of the reason for the UE55C8000’s superior backlight uniformity has to do with its move to only having LED lights along the top and bottom edges of the screen. It was actually wise to have not placed them on the sides else there would have been the common issue of excessive brightness in the pictures’ corners, which is the crossover path for the LED light.

Nonetheless, the picture brightness is just spectacular, which is just remarkable considering the screen only uses the top and bottom LED lights. The colours are formidably intense too, even as there are some few monotone peak reds, it still manages to look enormously subtle in blend and natural in tone. Provided you avoid the set’s noise reduction systems as much as possible, you will also be seriously impressed by how sharp its pictures look when showing HD. Again, this sharpness is retained even with action-packed scenes, to the latest 200Hz processing of Samsung. Focusing finally on the UE55C8000’s audio, it is definitely an improvement on the pretty feeble efforts of Samsung’s 2009 LCD/LED models. Though it is still only adequate rather than truly exciting.

Blu-ray Playback:

Starting with the Blu ray playback, using the blu ray disc in the new Full HD format, the early impressions of 3D are not completely positive. On the positive side, the impact of the 3D effect is immediate and profound. It is kind of startling to see the flat image that our eyes are used to with 2D Blu ray version of the movie suddenly gain enormous depth together with generating a gist of layering, which greatly modifies the way that you generally relate to an image. In fact, the change is so profound that, initially your brain and eyes struggle to process the 3rd dimension of the image leaving your eyes strained as it constantly keep shifting around images searching for an object or try drawing distance to settle down. Eventually though, you start to relax and settle.

The key about the new 3D experience in 2010 is that, an extensive depth of field in combined with images that are still blatantly Full HD. This blend of true HD sharpness and depth turns the picture to more of a spectacle adding a more dynamic feel to it. We would not go so far as to say that 3D in the movie made us totally immersed in what we were watching. But, yes we could imagine greater immersion happening with applying 3D to a more realistic movie content. What we are going to say might sound bizarre, as it is the most cutting edge TV that we have seen for years; the Samsung UE55C8000 has to warm up before it looks its best with 3D sources. We found the crosstalk issues markedly reduce with the telly being on for an hour or so. With retraining your approach towards 3D viewing, you kind of get out of the crosstalk issue; somehow the eye learns to ignore the ghosting trait of the picture. That said, there comes a point in time where you are left with a feeling that you are better off watching watching the movie in the normal HD pristine 2D version only.

Sky 3D Performance:

The crosstalk interference is also evident in the Sky’s 3D footage. However, it is not quite as obvious or common as it is with the Blu-ry disc. In fact, the 3D TV delivered the all round most startling and impressive performance while testing with Sky’s 3D and a football match. This might be for a number of reasons; applying 3D to sports footage will actually enhance the comprehension of the game. For instance, with the football you can tell immediately if the ball is headed for the goal or just going wide; something that is not always obvious while watching it in 2D. If someone crosses the ball, you can tell straight away where it is going to end up, and even which players are more likely to get on the end of it. With tennis, you get a remarkably enhanced sense of both the pace and spin of the ball. With golf, you get a much better appreciation of the shots the golfers are facing, and the direction the ball is travelling in.

2D to 3D conversion:

While the 2D to 3D conversion of Samsung UE55C8000 does not deliver as much crosstalk trouble or as many serious perspective errors as we would have expected, it also produces a very shallow sense of 3D a sort of ‘3D Lite’. There is also an increase in the image’s flatness together with poor quality, all of which is common with average definition channels on both Sky HD and Freeview HD platforms. In our personal opinion, we feel the C8000’s 2D to 3D conversion feature kind of dilutes the 3D experience and you might want to save the “innate type” of 3D experience for a true 3D content.

Verdict:

Our experience with the Samsung UE55C8000 3D TV was very enjoyable. The only major issue with the TV was the crosstalk issue. We would be totally convinced to say that the 3D is going to become as big as its own competition HD. The TV holds up very well against other LED and LCD TVs and Panasonic’s imminent 3D plasma models provide the toughest challenge. Also keep in mind that the UE55C8000 is also stunningly attractive and feature heavy non 3D footage star. So, if you can afford the three grand, it is a very impressive TV, even if you only decide to make use of its 3D talents every now and then.

Check other Samsung 3D TV Reviews, Panasonic 3D TV Reviews in this website.

Samsung UE55C8000 55″ 3D LED TV – Technical Specification Table