Samsung UN46C8000 Review

Some people are in the lucky position to receive high-end stuff from high-end companies for review. I’m not one of them. Luckily a family member felt it was time for 3D and brought home the new Samsung C8000. I managed to get a good look at it.

It was a Thursday morning when the mailman rang the door and entered with a big package labeled Samsung. The feeling of excitement was hard to suppress. I opened the box and saw the TV its stand and a lot of cables. The instruction manual was huge and contained instructions in a lot of languages, I only used it for installing the stand though. Real men don’t need user manuals! Read: geeks like me.

Design

I had a good look at it after installing the stand and carefully placing it on the furniture. The first thing I noticed was the silver metal border around the screen, a risky move considering the all-black trend of the last couple of years. But I really like it. It makes the television look more premium and makes it stand out from the pack. The very edge of the television isn’t silver but see through plastic.

From the side it’s very thin. Under an inch thick, that’s about as thin as it gets for sure.

The screen is held by a 4-legged stand, which looks great. At first I wasn’t sure but it grew on me. And the obvious benefits of the stands are the great stability of the TV and the unique design. The all silver looks will disappoint some users though; I’ve heard stories of people going for the C7700 just for the black borders around the screen.

Overall the Samsung C8700 is one of the prettiest TVs on the market. Its all silver design and 4-legged stand makes it stand out from the pack. The backlit Samsung logo is also a very nice touch. Less successful is the branding on the lower left corner. And it should be noted that the design isn’t for everyone.

Connectivity & specs

The high-end Samsung C8700 allows you to connect virtually any device, like you’d expect from a TV in this price class. It has 4 HDMI 1.4 ports, the new standard which allows maximum 3D visuals. Further more in comes with: PC audio in, RF in, Cl+ slot, 2x USB, 2x scart, optical audio, Ethernet, headphone and 2 components. That’s really nice connectivity right there.
All the connections are angled, so you can put the Samsung on the wall without worrying about cables sticking out. I should also mention that most of the connections require a special ‘extension’ cable, which is provided in the box.

It also packs some serious specs. It has 200hz, a new hyper 3D engine, Internet, DLNA, PVR and a marketed contrast radio no television will ever accomplish. Further more it’s a LCD edge-lit LED, which means that the light comes from the side. It has local dimming in 12 zones, meaning that the TV can control the light at 12 parts of the screen to achieve better blacks. All these specs will come back further in the review; so don’t worry if you don’t know what any of them mean. For your convenience, here’s the full spec list provided by Samsung.

Remote

The Samsung C8700, C7700 and C9000 televisions are the first to carry a special new remote. It’s thinner silver remote with backlit keys. The traditional rubber keys have been replaced for flat keys, which give you no point of reference for blind use. Also new are a few buttons, most noticeably the 3D button.
I really like the new remote. It looks amazing. The silver fits the TV well and I found the key allocation logically.

Features

I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to these things. I always try to use every feature that a gadget has in store for me. Samsung has included a lot in the new C8700, including Internet apps and media play.
They have also provided a new menu graphic for the different features. It displays an icon of the feature on the edge of a wheel which you can turn using your remote. Television keeps playing even after activating the menu, a nice touch.
The new Samsung application store allows you to download apps for the television. Offering differs per country but it should include the likes of Twitter, FaceBook and weather. Downloading went with ease and using the apps was a mixed experience. The limited processing capabilities of the TV should be mentioned; don’t expect iPad like experiences. Navigation wasn’t always smooth and some of the apps were completely useless. Still it’s a nice upgrade from last year’s leds. But the slightly improved sluggish feel still makes me want to avoid all of it.

Media play means that you can insert an USB device and play its content. This may not sound like a big deal but it is. Samsung claims to support virtually every format, and in a way they’re right. The feature has improved this year. The user interface first lets you choose between Movies, Music or Photos. Browsing the USB disk follows after your selection; luckily this is easy and fast. Sub maps are handled perfectly and I was able to navigate with serious speed.
So does it really play every format out there? Yes and no. I threw a lot at it, including media that the PS3 can’t play. AVI, MPEG, MP4 were all played with ease. MKVs weren’t a problem either, even the big 15+ gig ones. I had one instance where it declined to play my audio format because it was not supported – DTS I think. I was in cloud 9 until I came across a little problem. Do you know those small HD cameras? They sometimes record in a file called .MTS, also known as AVCHD. The Samsung C8700 didn’t want in and couldn’t even see the files appear in the browsing window. A small hiccup in an otherwise perfect playback score, guess I’ve to use the PS3 for AVCHD files.

Calibrating

Everyone who’s serious about televisions can tell you that proper calibration is critical. To accomplish this I calibrated the television for a few different scenarios and ultimately chose a compromise. Because I don’t want to switch settings each time I change to gaming, SD or HD movies. The menu is very easy to use. I pressed display options and found myself confronted by a few sliders controlling: sharpness, contrast, backlight, colors etc. I could also change the local dimming settings (smart LED) and the way the television tries to remove grain.
After about 2 hours, I found a good compromise in settings, displaying both SD and HD very well. I had turned the sharpness down a notch to remove unwanted artifacts around objects, most noticeably in SD signals. Contrast was upped a bit but not too much otherwise it removes shadow details. Colors were set up high and backlight was set to maximum with the eco sensor enabled.

The new eco sensor is Samsung’s response to Sony’s system. Basically it reads the environment and changes settings accordingly. It can lower brightness based on ambient light, turn the TV off when there’s no signal and a few other less interesting things.

The sound settings give basic control, not nearly as extensive as the image setting capabilities. It allowed me to change the sound to the optimal settings for: movies, music and speech. And of course it has the surround mock-up setting, which I like. Last but not least the C8700 can normalize volume differences between channels. This can work but I kept it off because I never experience this problem much.

Normally you’d be done now but there’s one more setting to worry about: 3D. Samsung has provided a wide array of tools to make the experience, especially the conversion system, as comfortable as possible. Settings include: generated depth, brightness and the way the system generates the 3D effect. I noticed that bigger depth in the settings can be really nice or really annoying. It all depended on how well the conversion worked in the first place.

So with my TV calibrated it was time for some real world tests. So I did what each family does … connect a 2TB HDD with 1080p content and hundreds of movies and TV series that I legally own. But before that I watched some regular television. Please continue on page 2.

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