great tv

I am very happy with this samsung tv purchasing it for my bedroom its a much better fit in my small bedroom than my previous bulky 27" tube tv. My only real complaint is the volume can be a little soft at times but that is not really a major issue for a bedroom tv. Still very highly recommended.More detail ...

Better than 2009's Samsung edge lit LED LCD's...just not enough to eliminate a few issues/flaws

I've owned this television for a few weeks now and I've been putting it through a battery of tests using a variety of different sources and room lighting conditions. To get right to the point I am returning it -- it will be picked up this week -- and waiting for either the UNC8000 precision dimming edge lit led set or perhaps either the XBR-HX900 or XBR-LX900 from Sony. The C7000 is a good TV. It compares favorably -- if not signficantly so -- to any of the edge lit led lcd's that Samsung released in 2009. However it doesn't hold a candle to the UNB8500 that was released late in 2009. It is also outperformed by Vizio's latest (552) the Sony XBR 8 and even LG's LH 90 gives it a run for it's money and outperforms it in a few important areas. Essentially the performance of the C7000 is either matched or exceeded by multiple televisions that cost significantly less. If you are not a videophile and do not concentrate on picture performance in a completely darkened room I'm sure this television will suit you just fine. However if you are a videophile and/or picture performance in a completely darkened room and accurate reproduction of theater film viewing is very important to you this television is not for you. This TV exhibits many of the same problems that plagued Samsung's 2009 series of edge lit led's -- namely a lot of light shining through from the corners top and bottom and sides of the picture while viewing in a darkened room -- and does not perform the way you would hope for a television that costs this much. Samsung did improve upon the fluctuating back light problems of last years edge lit led's. This television does not have a fluctuating back light problem at all. However I must come back to the issue of light shining through from the edges of the screen. It's a big concern for anybody who wants to reproduce a natural theater experience and view films the way they were meant to be seen. You simply cannot recreate that experience with this television. When you view a film -- or any other content -- in a completely darkened room it is impossible not to notice the light shining in from the edges. That is a huge problem for a lot of us. I will say that when you are viewing a film in a bright room this television is an outstanding performer. It is also an excellent performer for viewing sporting events animated features and other lively bright content in a brightly lit room. Of course most of us do not wish to pay $3300 to only be completely happy with our televisions when we are watching them in a brightly lit room. The light shining in from the edges also creates the potential to create a lot of problems with 3D viewing once we have sufficient 3D content available. Imagine trying to immerse yourself in a 3D viewing experience and not be able to focus on the 3D atmosphere due to the fact that there is light shining into the viewing area. I just don't see it working. It seems that it would be a major obstacle in viewing 3D content. Imagine going to see Avatar in 3D or IMAX 3D and having light shining into all of the edges of the film. There's just no way that it wouldn't distract you and take away from your viewing experience. I foresee this being a huge problem for 3D viewing once we have the content. I will discuss some of the positives of this television because I don't want anyone to think it's a bad television. I would have really given it 2.5 starts out of 5 but Amazon doesn't allow for a half star so I went with 3 because the positives probably do outweigh the negatives on this TV. The color accuracy is what we have all came to expect from Samsung which is to say it's flawless. The black level is outstanding -- if not up to par with the local dimming led sets such as the 8500 and the XBR8 or the Pioneer Kuro 151 plasma -- and does not have the fluctuating backlight problem. The black level is definitely better than last years edge lit led sets. The video processing and motion resolution is beyond reproach. It appears that this particular feature is probably comparable the 8500 which is the only lcd in history to be able to resolve all 1080 moving lines. It will be interesting to see if this television can do that once the reviews come out and the video processing has been tested. This television handles 24fps content perfectly and reproduces the proper cadence of film based content. It is definitely a good television it just has some major flaws and is outperformed by a few sets that cost over $1000 less. The potential for 3D viewing problems definitely exists and Samsung needs to find a way to cure the problem of having light shine in from the edges of the screen.More detail ...

I got two lemons

I've purchased two of these TVs from Amazon.com and I've had to return them both due to problems. Maybe I was just unlucky but I will not be purchasing another Samsung TV. Thankfully Amazon's service department was fantastic through the entire ordeal.



For the first TV within the first few hours of use I noticed that the left side of the screen was darker than the right side and that it was also flickering occasionally. I called Samsung tech support and I was very unhappy with their service. First when they asked for the model # of the TV they asked me to confirm it several times because this particular model was not in their system. I realize this is a new model but not having any record whatsoever of my particular TV model was not confidence inspiring. After walking through a series of troubleshooting steps they tried to prematurely pin the source of the problem on my cable box. Samsung support said the dark left side of the screen was caused by my cable box and this was before we tried the "test image" under the "diagnostic" section of the TV menu which also showed the problem clearly demonstrating that the problem was in the TV itself and not related to anything connected to it. After they finally acknowledged that there was a problem in the TV they arranged for a local repair shop to contact me. They said it would be 24-48 hours before I was contacted. No thanks. This brand new TV was going back. I'm not waiting for days for service contact and further days or weeks for a 'repair' of a brand new $1400 TV.



Amazon's service folks were great we worked it out so that a new TV would be delivered and the old defective TV would be picked up all in one go.



The second TV also had a problem. The TV 'creaked' or 'popped' or 'clicked' about every 3-5 minutes when the TV was on and would continue this for several hours after turned off. I'm not sure if it was the plastic body making noise due to heat or something electronic inside the TV but it was far too loud and happened far too often to be acceptable. At best it was distracting when watching TV and at worst it was indicative that something was wrong inside the TV (try googling: "samsung TV clicking"). I did confirm that this was definitely the TV by removing and unplugging all other components and noting that the behavior still did continue.



So again I contacted Amazon's service folks to arrange a return. This time I did not order a replacement. There was no charge to me on any of the shipping in either direction since the TV was considered defective.



For the short while I had this TV here are some of the things I noticed about it:



1.The 120MHz Auto Motion Plus option defaults to "standard". This makes the picture look real "too real" almost (I've seen people describe this as the "soap opera effect"). This might be OK for sports but I preferred this option to be off for normal movie / TV show watching. Try disabling this feature first if you think the picture looks "strange".



2.The TV has an ambient light sensor which lowers the brightness of the picture automatically when the ambient light is low (e.g. in a living room with lights off). I found that the TV picture got way too dark when the lights were turned off in the room. After some investigation I discovered that you can set the amount of dimming that occurs when this option kicks in. This is under the "Eco Sensor" option. It defaulted to maximum dimming which made the picture totally unsuitable for viewing (shadows and darker parts of the image were completely blacked out). I adjusted this so that it did dim just not as much and then it was OK. So if you find that your TV is too dark when the room is dark but OK when the room is well lit then check this option.



3.The TV appeared to be inconsistent in holding it's settings after losing power. For example every time the power went out or the TV was unplugged I had to manually re-set the options I've described above (Auto Motion Plus and Eco Option dimming level). Oddly sometimes the TV would retain it's settings. Not sure if I got a lemon or what but this was very frustrating as it would take a few minutes to reset these things manually with the remote.



[*** This was user-error not a problem with the TV - see "UPDATE (Jun 2 2010)" at the bottom of this review ***]



4.I was not particularly pleased with the quality of the stand. It looked nice but for the two TVs I had I found that neither was level when sitting on the stand. The first one tilted to the left and the second one tilted to the right (just to be clear - both were on the exact same level surface so I'm sure the problem was the TV stand itself). The TV stand is not adjustable so there's no real way to deal with this.



5.Otherwise this is a good looking TV it is ultra-thin and very sleek. Unfortunately for me the quality was not up to par.



UPDATE (May 1 2010): Against my better judgment I decided to give Samsung one more chance because I definitely like the look of their TVs over the other brands. So I did purchase a third Samsung TV (again from Amazon.com) but I got the "traditional" LCD model that is not LED backlit (Samsung LN46C630) rather than this same LED model (Samsung UN46C6300). So far here is what I think about the traditional LCD model replacing the LED version that I initially purchased:



- I've had no problem with the display or with the TV clicking/creaking/popping.



- I'd be hard pressed to see any noticeable degradation in picture quality in going from the LED backlit LCD to the regular LCD model. The only think I can notice is that black screens are "light" as is common for traditional LCD screens. Unless you are a videophile this makes no practical difference when watching everyday TV movies etc. This is still a 1080p HDTV and let me assure you the image quality still looks fantastic.



- The only real noticeable disadvantage I can find to the traditional LCD vs the LED model is that it is thicker (the LED model was ultra-thin). Having said that the thicker body of the traditional LCD model feels much sturdier and more solid than the LED model. The LED model creaked and popped when moving it around and this one does not. Obviously the thinner LED would look better on the way (with a low-profile mount) but this LCD version still looks nice.



- I know the traditional LCD consumes more power than the LED but given the significantly cheaper price I can live with that and I doubt the difference is significant enough to make any real dent in the energy bill.



- The menu system / firmware appears to be identical between the two models.



- I had to adjust the Auto Motion Plus and Eco Sensor options for this TV just like I did for the LED model (see above).



- This model like my LED model came with the "Contrast" setting maxed out to '100' by default. I needed to town this down.



- The stand is different and mounts to the TV in a different way than the LED model. My new traditional LCD model is perfectly level unlike the two LED models I had.



- Oh yeah the traditional LCD model is about $400-500 cheaper than the LED model.



I'd strongly suggest that anyone looking at the Samsung UN46C6300 LED model strongly consider the less expensive Samsung LN46C630 traditional LCD model. For roughly $500 less I've got a better built TV and I can live without the ultra-slim frame.



UPDATE (Jun 2 2010): I'd like to clarify that the #3 issue I reported above about the TV not holding it's settings after losing power is incorrect. I have just discovered that each source input (i.e. each HDMI input) has it's own unique settings. I was not aware of this originally. I think what originally happened is that I set HDMI input #1 (Cable box) to put the contrast down to 50 and then was still seeing a contrast setting of 100 but on the HDMI input #2 (BD player). The only explanation I had for this was loss of power and I think I was wrong. So in summary there was probably no problem with this particular aspect of the TV and it's up to the user to town down the contrast / auto motion plus / etc features for *every* source input that they use. As mentioned above I now have the LN46C630 model with a similar menu/firmware system and it holds its settings just fine through power-outages. I hope this is helpful to other users.More detail ...

Great value if you can ignore its flaws.

Considering the technologies packed into this tv its one of the better value among its class if you can live with some of its flaws.



Positives: Very very good picture quality after calibration. Blu-rays look especially stunning. Deep black and very good black details.



Neutral: Slow tuner changing analog and digital channels takes at least a couple of seconds. Average input lag. Using Guitar Hero 3 lag calibration tool I was able to get 48 milisec in Game mode and between 90 - 130 milisec in other modes.



Negative: Flashlighting. My tv came with 2 large spots the size of my palm each. Reducing the backlight helps somewhat but they're clearly visible during dark scenes such as the cave scenes of Iron Man blu-ray.



Some recent Sharp panels had banding issues. This Genx panel supposedly corrected this problem. However I'm disappointed to find out that it is still present at least on my tv.

I have an inch wide faint verticle band on the left side of the screen. I didn't detect this initially until watching the oil field burning scene in Baraka. Subsequently I noticed it came up during watching the US open and Master and Commander. I can conclusively confirm that the banding is there with my tv when displaying a solid green jpeg. Again this banding is quite faint and very hard to detect but once I did it's very hard for me to ignore.

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Startling clarity detail and color

Had my Samsung UN55B8000 TV a couple of weeks now. It has more than lived up to the hype. Hooked it up and put on a blu-ray disk. Even the delivery guy's jaw dropped and he's delivered/set up hundreds of TVs.



TV is only inch and half thick and only weighs 60 pounds or so.



In fact it is sometimes almost too good. When viewing people on HD you can see every little mole scar wrinkle stray hair makeup five o'clock shadow makeup line etc. I'm sitting here watching the news and I can clearly see tiny pieces of lint on the guy's black suit. I'm guessing the talking heads of tomorrow are all going to have to have much better complexions.



If you like to tweak your TV this one provides a lot of different controls. There are already some websites that will give you what they consider good tweaks to maximize the pic. You can also look for the B7000 tweaks. Looks pretty darn fantastic right out of the box so if you aren't a techie don't worry about it.



Sounds..not particularly good or bad but I don't want TV speakers taking up space anyway. If you are going to spend this kind of money for a TV you should be using your stereo system.



Some reviewers were complaining about the number of inputs. Again how many is enough. I run my PS3 XBOX360 IPOD and the Dish box through my Denon and so I only use one HDMI.



You can plug it into the internet. No set-up just plug it in. First thing it did was download 12 updates to itself. Have no idea what they did but ...didn't cause any problems. It automatically loads up some of Yahoo's widgets. Fun to try but...not something I have really gone back and used much. Also has some built in content...recipes artwork etc. that I haven't bothered to look at.



You can plug in USB drives and view content directly off the drive.



I long ago got rid of my roof antenna. I bought a little Turk indoor antenna and plugged that in so I can pop over into over-the-air signals and watch TV. It will automatically search and find the on-air channels. It even downloads some kind of TV guide from the internet for the channels it finds.



I also wanted to see if there was any signal degradation from Dish. I haven't noticed the HD degradation with Dish that I had with Comcast. The way Comcast packed the HD signals you could see a real difference between OTA and the packed pics.



Samsung also provides software which allows you to use your PC as a server. Then you can display your pics music etc on the TV. Took a little playing around but was easy compared to some of the others I've tried to use.



I've played games with both my PS3 and the XBOX360. No problems. No pixelating. Did not bother to change TV over to game mode. I haven't fooled around with the 240Hz function. I just leave it on standard.



I'm sure there are other features I haven't tried. With the ability to update itself over the internet I have no doubt they will teach it even more amazing tricks.



I've set up my Harmony 880 Pro to control all my devices including the IPOD. IPOD menu/info will display (through my Denon) on the TV.



All of the above features are great but the main thing is... the picture is just absolutely mind-blowing wonderful.



So fantastic TV. I am VERY happy with it. Obviously I highly recommend it.



((Now I'm watching Wall-E in HD and it is pretty amazing.))





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