Samsung UN46C8000 46-Inch 1080p 3D 240 Hz LED HDTV

Review by Corey Fisher for Samsung UN46C8000 46-Inch 1080p 3D 240 Hz LED HDTV
Rating:
This TV is absolutely stunning. I was actually waiting for the C9000 to come out, but that TV’s price is way over the limit. I found out that this TV which is the next step down and actually has the exact same technology as the C9000 minus the touchscreen remote (which can be bought seperately) and the slim profile, not a big deal considering the TV already looks beautiful and is half the price or less then a C9000!

In all honesty, I think this TV has one of the nicest pictures I’ve ever seen. One example is the pin-point dimming, which has garnered a lot of criticsm and skeptisism. I have seen the production TV model live and I must tell you, I think it’s better then local-dimming and I’ll tell you why… Unless there is a new panel that is made to fix the local-dimming “halo affect”, this is currently the only way to get outradgeous contrast levels without that problem. The pin-point dimming on this TV dramatically lowers the dark spots on the screen in certain area’s without a halo affect and actually goes completely pitch black when watching movies with dark screens just like a local-dimming TV. I think this TV actually excels at the dimming part over a local-dimming TV because it creates supurb black levels without any halo affects. That’s a huge deal for me. Next is the color accuracy of this panel, I think the whites and colors on this TV are probably better then I’ve ever seen. Sure Plasma’s can sometimes have better color temperatures, but they will not pop out of the screen with ambience like this TV shows. This TV is sharp looking and beautiful and it displays wonderful 3D and High-definition like never before.

Last, but not least… this tv is LOADED with features, easily making it one of the most feature rich TV’s there is on the market. It’s completely wireless, has 4-hdmi conenctions, has internet applications and streaming capabilities and best yet, it does it well! I have done a lot of research and have compared this TV with it’s newest competitors and this one is it. Don’t just take my word for it, go see it for yourselves and you’ll just see what I am talking about.

Review by Mark J. Fritts for Samsung UN46C8000 46-Inch 1080p 3D 240 Hz LED HDTV
Rating:
Being an electronics buff, I hold a high standard to quality. This Samsung UN46C8000 is amazing. Picture quality is the best I have ever seen. From the quality remote to the stand this television is the set for you. After it was programmed and user preferences were set, the first HD channel was a golf tournament on Golf Channel HD. Truely breath taking!!! My other HD sets are Plasma ranging from 58 to 32 inches. This is the first LED television I have owned. Being one inch thick, weighing in at 55 lbs it was very easy to handle. The picture quality on non 3D broadcast makes it look like a modified 3D. I have never seen anything like it. My wife who could not care the least about technology, was very impressed with the picture quality.

Amazon made the purchasing experience painless with no sales tax and inside delivery. The delivery staff unbox your television, plug it in to make sure it works and are friendly to boot. Last but not least, you will be very impressed. I am very impressed with this next generation of quality. Samsung you definitely got this one right!!!!

Update:

All of the above comments are still true. I have watched my first 3D movie with the glasses and everything worked perfectly. 3D makes movie watching a whole different experience. Only one major problem…Other than the 3D movie that came with the free Samsung glasses, there are no other choices to purchase. 3D Blu-ray technology has not caught up with the 3D televisions. ESPN 3D debuts in June on Directv. The All Star game will be telecast in 3D and the College Football National Championship game will be in 3D. The television had software update available at the Samsung website. It was easy to update. The television was manufactured on March 30, 2010 and the software upgrade was available on April 15. The 3D Blu-ray DVD player also had an update. Not difficult to perform but a little surprised.

Review by S. Chapman for Samsung UN46C8000 46-Inch 1080p 3D 240 Hz LED HDTV
Rating:
If you’ve read many of the professional reviews of the UN46C8000, you know that one of the common criticisms has been ghosting and shadows when displaying 3D source material. With the June 28th firmware release, this problem has been greatly reduced and the 3D is spectacular. The new firmware load also adds a new “3D Optimize” option to the TV’s 3D menu. Selecting this option seems to help minimize ghosting and enhances the 3D effect.

Samsung also seems to have done something to reduce the amount of eye strain caused by wearing the 3D glasses. I can wear them for hours now and not notice any particular problem. Unfortunately, there’s very little 3D material available yet, but DirecTV’s 3D broadcasts are excellent, probably just as good as my one 3D Blu-ray disc.

For other, non-3D material, this TV is simply superb. If you want to get the best out of it, I recommend you read the review at Home Theater magazine’s web site (no, I’m not affiliated with them) and then configure the TV using their recommended settings. Unless you’re already an expert at setting up a TV like this, you will likely get much better results by starting with their suggested settings than you would by starting with the factory defaults.

Also, be sure you upgrade the firmware before you adjust the settings, because upgrading the firmware wipes out your customized configuration. Then write down your settings and save them for the next time you need to do a firmware upgrade.

One other item I wanted to mention is that several web sites, including televisioninfo, have stated that this TV “has a very heavy-handed dynamic contrast ratio” that you can’t turn off. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dynamic Contrast can be adjusted or turned off completely under the Advanced menu. When it’s off, I notice none of the adverse affects on the picture mentioned in some of these reviews.

Review by Johnathan Seagul for Samsung UN46C8000 46-Inch 1080p 3D 240 Hz LED HDTV
Rating:
Greetings from Berlin, Germany!

I just got this TV as well – here it’s called C 8790. I am really impressed. I have to admit that I jumped from a 27” JVC to the 46” C 8790 – so from a 5 year old TV to this brand new gadget. Thus the differences are enormous. The most mentionable fact I.M.O. is that black is just black. From former TVs I know what it means if black is something like a misty dark gray… A few days before I watched a Blueray with my wife and within the film we thought the TVs somehow switched off -’cause the screen suddenly turned completely black – then we recognized that it just was a scene within the film 😉

On sunday I watched Germany football cup final (ah yes – you call it “soccer”). It was broadcasted in Full HD and it was amazing how natural and vivid the picture looked. I really felt as being in the stadium. Due to the fact that I live in the same city as where the match took place I was able to compare the sky (outside the window in the “real” world) to the sky how it looked like in the TV – yeah and didn’t notice any difference.

Considering the 3D feature. I don not care that much about it – I am an early adopter and I know that this in only the beginning and these are the first steps in bringing 3D to TV sets. Nevertheless it’s nice to see what’s possible and to get idea of what will be possible in future. There’s still a lack of real 3D Bluerays, so we’ll have to see. I watched a Star Trek movie with 2D/3D conversion and – yes – it looked three-dimensional and there was some kind of graphical deepness added to the picture. Though this is not comparable to 3D in cinema it’s exciting to have something like that at home. It depends on the input material. Tried this with another movie – did not work. Looking forward to upcoming 3D bluerays.

Mediaplayer! I got this TV connected to a network router. It immediately discovered my Upnp mediaserver (it’s a TwonkyVision which runs on a QNAP NAS). Browsing pctures, music and video was no problem. I needed to do some configuration work on the twonky server to get most of my videos sucessfully displayed and some still don’t show up. But at least my Simpons archive is accessible now directly via TV 😉

The only thing I am still not able to get up and running is the timeshift feature. I’m using an external HDD on USB1 of the TV. The system checked and formated it. I am able to pause the TV (starting timeshift) but when I try to contunue watching after 30-40 seconds the picture freezes and I have to switch the channel to get it all working again. If I try to replay the timeshift from its beginning i got a message similar to “Unsupported mode, please switch the resolution”. I dropped a message to the Samsung support, maybe they know what’s this about. Meanwhile I’ll try this with another external HDD – maybe that will fix it.

But overall I have to say it’s a great TV which absolutely meets my requirements. Happy with that!

*Update*

Timeshift now works for me. My external USB HDD just was too slow to for that feature. Exchanged with another one – works fine 🙂