Samsung UN46D6400 46-Inch 1080p 120Hz 3D LED HDTV (Black)

Excellent edge-lit LED TV, April 1, 2011

By 

J. Chau –

  

After several weeks of using this TV, here are my impressions. Note that I’m using Antenna HD, bluray, and DVD.

Design:

The thin bezel design and glass(stem) stand is gorgeous, it feels like the picture is floating on the stand. The thin bezel really enhances the picture by minimizing reflections. It’s really refreshing to not have a thick glossy bezel shining at you when watching TV; although the bezel itself seems to get mighty hot after several hours of use. The screen is glass and it does have some reflections in daylight.

Picture Quality:

HD picture quality is outstanding while SD ranges from good to OK. The SD quality really depends on your broadcasting source; higher quality SD means good SD picture. Blacks are good, but I believe the processing engine goes a bit overboard and saturates the blacks to a point where details are lost. I haven’t found out how to tone down the blacks, even after shutting off all the processing. Colors seem to really pop out, if it’s too much one can adjust RGB in the menus. I’ve tried very hard to spot any flash lighting or clouding in an all black background but haven’t found any; maybe I got a really good build (your build may vary). This is an edge-lit LCD and there are inherit weaknesses. On a pure black background, you will see very slight uneven lighting on the sides but definitely not noticeable during normal viewing or even darker movies. Motion picture quality is very smooth and artifacts are kept to a minimum; in fact, this is the smoothest picture I’ve ever seen on any HDTV. It’s so smooth, that a wide variety of programming has a 3D-like look to them.

Adjustment Controls:

This TV has quite a few options for tuning the picture. There’s standard, dynamic, natural, and movie modes. Each mode has it’s own saved settings. For my normal viewing, I started with the movie settings while in Standard mode and made a few adjustments to brighten up the screen. Movie mode has a “warm2” color tone that I changed to “standard” since I don’t like warm colors for normal viewing. For movies, I use the movie mode where the colors and brightness are toned down, with relatively few adjustments made. The natural and dynamic modes are horrendous, don’t even go there. There’s some fine adjustments in each mode with backlight, contrast, sharpness, hue, brightness, color, etc.

Connections:

Has HDMI 1.4 connections, which allow Audio Return and single Ethernet connections (with specific high speed compatible HDMI cables and other HDMI 1.4 devices). Has 1 composite connection and 1 component (both use supplied extension plugs). Switching between sources is a tad slow to me, wish it was bit faster.

Sound:

Sound comes from the back panel and these kinds of tvs always sound odd. It’s definitely loud enough, but not as good as a tv with good front speakers. You can use simulated surround sound and it’s not bad at all. The one annoying thing is your sound settings are kept the same as you change your input sources; even after you’ve configured one input source as having movie sound settings. You can use the equalizer to adjust the sound to your liking. I might buy a sound bar to accompany this tv.

Internet apps:

I took a little while to play around with the apps, they’re ok. Just your standard apps, nothing impressive. It does have an app store where you can purchase more apps but I didn’t try that. I found youtube to be a bit odd. I started up youtube and it showed me the annoying orange video on startup; really strange it just loaded up with that video.

Other apps:

The photo viewer is pretty decent, seems a bit slow in rendering the pictures from a USB stick. I’ve also played some AVI and MKV files on the TV and it looks good to me. MKV files do not seem to have subtitle options.

3D:

I am unable to test the 3D at this point in time since I don’t have glasses or 3D bluray, I reckon those buying for 3D will want a 55 incher. There is a 3D button on the remote where you can convert 2D programming to 3D; this is done on the fly using the TV’s processor. If you want to watch 3D, you will need to buy Samsung’s new bluetooth 3D glasses (which are supposed have reduced pricing in May). I also read a rumor that 3D glasses are supposed to tossed in for free later on this month. CNET had very positive things to say about the bluetooth 3D glasses in this 2011 TV; it is one of the best 3D implementations this year.

Remote:

Remote is pretty decent. It has a your standard TV buttons as well as a way to control playback on other sources with fast forward, rewind, stop, play. Remote has a backlight you can activate.

Settings:

Here are some basic calibration settings I used.

0) Standard Mode
1) Backlight: 13
2) Contrast:…

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 Comments (7)

Awesome LED TV!, April 10, 2011

By 

Anthony Gomulka “Tony” (USA) –

  

My family just redid our family room and it was time to throw out our old CRT TV…My parents don’t know anything about tech so they asked me what would be a good TV to buy. I chose this one. I’m happy with it. :D

I got a small nettop with this TV with the intent of using it as a HTPC to stream video from our other HTPC in the basement and surf the web. The picture looks nice! 😀 I fired up a 1080p rip of The Dark Knight with all the lights off and the picture was nice and crisp. One thing I noticed is picture looks unnaturally smooth. I honestly don’t know if its a good thing. I haven’t bothered looking into it, but I want to believe its the motion plus. According to the other review, its something you can just turn off, so no foul. :)I love the ultra thin bezel. Other TVs say they are like 37″ when the actual screen size is only 32″, obviously just an attempt to cut down on production costs. With this TV, there’s none of that. :D

The sound quality is good. Its enough to play any movie at a good volume without distortion in a smaller room. I had XBMC going and I was playing some of my heavy electro, it sounds great, except the fact that the sound lacks the strong bass. But how can I complain? Its a TV. Not a sound system.

As far as the other review pointing out the edge lit “weakness” I have to stand about a foot away from the TV to see a very small amount of light bleeding. I couldn’t even notice it sitting on the couch cruising the web. :)

This TV is great. I love it. I have no complaints. 😀

–Things that might save you some headaches–

You need to turn the sharpness WAAAAAAAAAY down. Yea the other review has it at like 10, thats where mine is too.

For people plugging in a computer into this TV, don’t freak out when the picture over scans the desktop and it gets cut off all around the edges. You need to press menu, go to picture -> picture adjustment, then change the “picture size” from 16:9 to “fit screen”. This is not the only TV I’ve had to change this setting on, but it really bothers me that manufactures don’t have that set as default. Because people will resort to changing the desktop resolution to something lower, than complain about how the picture looks fuzzy. (Sorry mini rant) 😀

We all mounted our TV. The wall mount kit that we bought didn’t have the right length screws for this TV. You need an 8x25mm screw. Had to run to the hardware store to grab some. 🙁 Make sure you have some washers on hand to avoid torquing into the back of the TV. 🙂

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For the money the best 3D 46″ TV you can currently get, April 25, 2011

I purchased this TV two weeks ago and the picture is really awesome. As already mentioned by some other reviewers the edge backlight technology has some drawbacks, which means if you are looking at the full black screen, there are some light blury spots at the edges. However, when watching TV or a movie you will not find these disturbing, because you will not be able to see unless the full screen is black. You can always dim the light intensity and they will nearly disappear. But the powerful light is just a strength of this TV. Even watching with direct sunlight shining on the screen is possible. And the black is the darkest black I’ve ever seen on a TV with LED or LCD.
I did buy the 3D glasses. Got them from Fry’s for $150, the package of 2 including the 3D movies Shrek and Megamind. I guess they also recognized that the full price close to $500 is way overdone. They also reduced the prices for single glasses. And this is really nice. With the bluetooth technology I did not even once experience any outage, it’s just working smoothly. And the 3D effects are stunning. Yes, the TV can also calculate 3D, it works, but is not as good as real 3D directly from disc. The TV calculates the different layers, but objects would appear to be somewhat flat. Nevertheless, with the right movie this is great fun. 46″ is big enough if you can sit about 8ft away from the screen. Otherwise you should go for the bigger size.
I can only recommend this TV. There might be even better ones but only for much more money. But then, why not buy a new one after some years, using the saved money, and getting always the best technology? I am using an Oppo BDP-93 for playing 3D Bluray. It matches perfectly.

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