Best Buy HDTVs Reviews

Samsung UN55B8500

Let’s get straight to the point. This is the local dimming LED television we have all been waiting for. It is the best television available today. Yes, it’s even better than the famed Pioneer Kuro 151. I owned a Kuro 151 for over a year and I can tell you with 100% certainty that this television outperforms it in every regard. The black level on this 8500 is literally twice as dark as the Pioneer Kuro. The black level on this television is so dark, endless, and infinite that you can’t even imagine it. The black level is so dark that the entire television disappears if you are viewing it in a completely darkened room and the scene goes completely dim before switching to the next scene. I’m not exaggerating. You literally can’t see the television at all anymore when the scene goes completely dim. It’s like the black of being in a completely pitch black cave. I’m not sure it should even be called a black level on this television because it’s not a level of black. When I say that, I mean there is no possible way you could measure it. It is legitimately pitch black. It’s as dark as you can possibly imagine. If you want to have a little fun, go to CNET and read their review of the Sony XBR8. In the review, they discuss how the XBR8 is capable of achieving a darker black level than the Kuro during certain scenes. Now go and read their review for the 8500. In the review, they discuss how the 8500 achieves a much darker level of black than the XBR8 and how the black level performance is vastly superior to the XBR8. However they also try to say that the 8500 achieves the second darkest level of black — after the Kuro — they have ever seen. Well, you can’t talk about how the XBR8 can get darker than the Kuro, then discuss how the 8500 achieves a much darker black level than the XBR8, but then try to say that the 8500 has only the second darkest black level you’ve ever seen. CNET, this makes you come across as hypocritical idiots. It also clearly brings out your bias for plasma, especially Pioneer Plasma. I owned the Kuro 151, and I am now the owner of the 8500. If you compared the black level of these two televisions side by side, it wouldn’t even be close. A Plasma simply cannot go 100% literal black. The individual plasma cells can go completely dim, but they still have an electric current flowing through them, and they still have to use a black filter to keep from showing the light of the current in them. The Pioneer Kuro can go very dark and achieves an amazing inky black, but a local dimming LED — when done correctly — can completely shut out every single bit of light to any given area of the panel. This results in a black level that is so dark it cannot be measured. It is the only way to achieve legitimate black. Let’s discuss a few other performance aspects of this television. Words cannot describe the colors on this television. The color accuracy is absolutely flawless. The 240Hz with LED motion plus resoloves all 1080 moving lines. This is one of the only televisions ever made that can resolove all 1080 moving lines. This television exhibits no blooming whatsoever. The extreme contrast ratio makes the glossy screen a non issue. The only way you will ever notice the glossy screen is if you are viewing a really dark film in a brightly sunlit room. If you are viewing bright content such as sporting events in a room that is full of sunlight with a window directly facing the television, you would not see any reflection whatsoever. The glossy screen and ultra clear panel also help this television preserve an identical level of black regardless of room lighting conditions. I also own the XBR8 and while the matte screen is great for a room with a window facing the television, the matte screen does not allow the television to preserve the exact same level of black. It definitely still achieves an incredible level of black, but I just wanted to mention this for anybody who is considering matte vs. glossy. This television is simply the best. I hope this helps. Thank you.

Reviewed by : Andrew B. Leetham “Blue-Ray-Man”,   Feb 16, 2010

Samsung UN46B6000

I work in the AV industry and tried to assist my dad in purchasing a TV. When we found out my first TV choice was delayed for an unknown amount of time he didn’t want to wait and got this B6000 (instead of the 8000) on Amazon. Here are some issues I’ve seen with the TV.
1. Motion blur
I’ve noticed ridiculous motion blur or ghosting with this TV. I was quite appalled by it. I’ve adjusted settings fruitlessly (there isn’t that much to adjust) to no avail. This is all coming in on the satellite feed and while it is a 120hz TV I noticed the incoming signal always says 1920×1080 60hz. I can’t get it to change from there. In the end it may just be the satellite box (Dish DVR). Perhaps someone else can confirm this in the comments.
2. LED Edge-lit
I would stay away from edge-lit TVs for now. If you’re wall mounting and you MUST have an ultra thin TV then go for it. But if you want excellent screen uniformity then you’ll want to avoid it.
3. Controls
The amount of picture adjustment controls seems very limited.
4. GLOSSY SCREEN!
I don’t know why manufacturers are making TV’s with glossy screen. I can only guess that it costs significantly less to make than a matte screen. You can see every bit of light reflecting in this screen. If you like to have a light on while you’re watching TV, make sure the light is right above/behind the TV or it’s behind you and you’re sitting off to the side. Otherwise you’ll be plenty annoyed on any dark/semi-dark scene. On the bright scenes you don’t really notice it.

On a more positive note:
Through Blu-Ray it looks very amazing. In fact, perhaps too good. Several movies I’ve watched on Blu-Ray actually are so crisp and sharp that it looks like a movie set instead of a real life scene. That ruins it a tiny bit for me. The best example would be Dark Knight.

The motion blur has made me think poorly of this TV. I do hope it’s just something to do with Dish’s DVR box. But if it only does 60hz on all boxes, why bother? My brother has a slightly older model Samsung 120hz 52″ that looks great over Brighthouse. Again, if anyone has Dish w/ this TV please put a comment on whether there is motion blur for you.

Reviewed by : Ari,   Feb 14, 2010

Samsung UN55B7000

Many folks still wonder about the newer LED/LCD vs. Plasma.
I was one of them. After months of research, I picked the 58″ B650 Plasma.
It is always tough to audition in a store, but we felt it beat out the big LCD’s.
Well – read on.
Had it 3 weeks, waiting for it to ‘break in’, which it did (the phosphors have to age and become uniform – took about 50 hours of viewing to achieve.)
Was able over time to get a great pic (in dynamic mode), but it never quite
looked as great as our Samsung 40″ B630 upstairs.
Then I measured the power consumption after we noticed the heat coming off the screen. Uh – 550W average, with peaks up to 700W in certain brght movie scenes!
My wife and I play the set quite a bit, and some quick math told us the heat and cost was just too much a price to pay for something that will hang on the wall for years to come. Back to the stores for more auditioning.

After another few weeks of looking we bought the 55″ UN55B7000 LED/LCD.
Almost the same size – but 1/4 the power after reading up on it.
Out of the box, this set looked as good or better than the plasma.
Black levels as good – color balance even better – My test BluRay that has a number of tough to get right grey/black scenes is Terminator Salvation. Looked better on the 7000.I use that, and UP, which really tests the color saturation.
And this is in the default movie mode, which comes up when I use my Samsung BluRay player.
With minimal tweaking in Standard Mode, I got it looking even better.
No heat. Long term cost way down over the plasma.

SUMMARY – I was able to own both in my own home and do my own tweaking and comparing, and all things considered – The LED/LCD 7000 beat out the 58B650 plasma.
Hope this provides some input for others that are trying to decide.
Consider all the factors – the heat and power as well as the picture.

Reviewed by : PhillyBill “PhillyBill”,   Jan 27, 2010

Samsung UN46B8500

PICTURE

In terms of video quality, this TV is awesome. I can’t imagine how the picture could be much better.

There are some minor picture quality issues with off-angle viewing (as the CNET review states), but I think CNET exaggerates the severity — it’s only noticeable to me if I’m far off center.

I haven’t yet noticed any blooming effects.

Setting the “judder reduction” to 10 introduces some distortion at times, but a setting of 6 smoothes out motion well without noticeable distortion. However, this varies a bit with different source material. When viewing video files via DLNA that have a lower frame rate, the judder reduction setting can sometimes make things worse. But this is easy to turn off/on by source.

The color level seemed slightly off initially, even with CNET’s recommended settings. For example, sometimes a blue sky would look slightly purple (i.e., too much red). But this was easily adjusted in the picture settings.

AUDIO

Unfortunately, digital audio output from the TV does not pass through multi-channel audio from HDMI inputs. You need to run extra digital audio cables from your DVD player and other components to your AV receiver if you’d like Dolby Digital or DTS sound.

ENERGY

I measured the electricity usage at 110-115 watts (energy saving mode at “auto”, volume off, picture adjusted per CNET recommendation). Setting energy saving mode to auto doesn’t seem to hurt the picture quality at all.

This is very energy efficient — it uses less power than my old 32″ CRT TV. I’m amazed at how little heat I can feel coming from the back of the set.

REMOTE

If you have a universal learning remote, it will not be able to learn from the RF remote that comes with this TV (i.e., since standard remotes are IR rather than RF). However, I called Samsung and they sent me a compatible IR remote, free of charge. With that remote, I was able to program my universal learning remote. Ask for remote BN59-00851A.

BUILD QUALITY

One small build quality issue that I encountered: the plastic at the base of my TV extended a bit too far, making it impossible to fit it into the stand. I had to carve away some of the plastic in the slots of the stand just to get it to fit, which made me a bit uneasy. But other than that, the build quality is fine.

MEDIA FEATURES

Viewing video files via DLNA works well, for the file types that are supported. Although I’ve encountered many files that the TV doesn’t play for one reason or another (see below), the ones that it does play work well. I regularly stream 1080p video files from my PC, and the picture looks perfect (with wired Ethernet).

The TV has a variety of Internet and media features. But unfortunately there are lots of quality issues such as:

1. When playing video files through USB, DLNA, or Internet features, most TV controls are disabled. While you can adjust basic picture settings, you can’t choose 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. In playing NTSC video (i.e., any video that came from standard def TV, DVD, home movies) from USB or DLNA, the aspect ratio is *always wrong*: 16:9 video is always squeezed too thin and 4:3 video is always stretched too fat.

2. The TV does not decode DTS audio for video files played through USB or DLNA. While I wouldn’t necessarily expect this of a TV, I would have hoped that it would just pass through the audio stream to the digital audio output for an AV receiver to decode. It does pass through Dolby Digital from video files (but not from HDMI) to the digital audio output, but it does not pass DTS. Many HD video files have DTS, but unfortunately I can’t play any of these on this TV.

3. There is no fast forward, rewind, or chapter advance when playing video clips or movies. This is true of playing YouTube videos as well. Although there is a “skip” feature where you can jump in increments (e.g., 10 seconds), this is only available for some video files (most don’t support this, in my experience).

4. As the CNET review stated, the Yahoo widgets are extremely slow to start. Note that this has nothing to do with your Internet speed, since I have a 25 Mbit Internet service with wired Ethernet to the TV and it’s still painfully slow. I have an HD TiVo with a lot of the same features as the Yahoo widgets, and that is far more enjoyable to use. But the one area where the Yahoo widgets outperformed TiVo was YouTube — the Yahoo YouTube widget can play HD video clips as HD but TiVo plays them as SD.

5. For some reason, the DLNA file management user interface is a bit different from the USB file management UI. You can work with hierarchical folders with the USB capability, but not DLNA. All video files from your PC are presented as a flat (large) horizontal list, and it’s awkward to navigate if you have more than a few files. Both the USB and DLNA UIs are kind of clunky, but DLNA is worse than the USB.

I assume that these problems exist with all Samsung TVs with the Media 2.0 feature. Perhaps these problems will be fixed in a future software update (I have the 11/09 version). If so, I’ll post an update. But I would have preferred a (cheaper) TV that didn’t have any of these features to a (more expensive) TV that provided these features poorly. I’ll probably end up getting a Popcorn Hour or similar device for these features, rather than using the features built into the TV.

Reveiwed by : Terrance McCartney,   Nov 19, 2009