Samsung UN55B8500 55 Inch HDTV LED 1080p 240 Hz Discount Review

Samsung UN55B8500 55 Inch HDTV LED 1080p 240 Hz Discount Review
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How to buy cheap Samsung 55 Inch HDTV LED UN55B8500В 1080p 240 Hz Discount Review To explain I own this tv set and am not just basing this review on time put in in a store browsing. This tv set has been hard to come by and the only place I could find that had it in stock was my local Best Buy with a Magnolia section. Design: Samsung is famous for their sleek design and this tv set is no exception. Samsung claims it has a charcoal touch of color but I really didn't notice any color in the bezel. It is black and goes to clear at the outer edge. It sits on a metallic stand with a clear neck holding the tv set. At the bottom middle of the tv set below where it claims Samsung is a blue gentle which can be turned off. I noticed the gentle sparkles ever so slightly when a command is sent from the remote you are using. The tv set is Very slim. Only 1.6" at it's fattest point. This is amazing considering this tv set is a fully backlit LED unit with local dimming. Truly amazing and a design that will have your friends jealous. >Buy Now< Picture Quality: This is the best looking Lcd tv set made today. I have considered many other Lcd tv's including the Sony XBR8 and the Samsung A950 from last year and this one is the best looking I have seen. From a picture quality perspective the XBR8 is closest but not quite up to par with the 8500. Realistically if you had possibly of these sets in your house they would look spectacular. The blacks on the 8500 are so dark it approaches the level of blacks in the best Plasma tv's. In a dark room I could not tell where the tv set screen ended and the bezel commenced because the screen was so dark. The colors are superb and can be tweaked any number of ways to your liking. I prefer the "Natural" mode for everyday use and the "Motion picture" mode for watching blu-ray movies. The 240hz refresh is nice but the best thing is that you can independantly control Blue and Judder configurations. Cranking up the 240hz tends to produce what some call the "soap opera" effect but this can easily be removed by tweaking. There is also a Game mode which I use when gaming on my PS3. One interesting thing I found out was that the Motion picture mode using the Warm 2 setting is pretty much spot on from a calibration perspective right out of the box. I say that because I have a Spears & Munsil calibration blu-ray disc and when I ran the tv set through the calibration process using Motion picture mode on Warm 2 I literally only had to tweak one setting by one or two details. I could see many people just flipping again and forth between Natural and Motion picture modes, depending on what they are watching, and not bothering to calibrate the tv set as it looks great pretty much out of the box. I also wanted to mention that standard def looks good on this tv set. It doesn't look nearly as good as Hi-def but it is totally acceptable in my opinion. Sound: Having such a think profile I predicted the sound to be awful. Surprisingly it was quite acceptable. While I would recommend a surround sound system I never felt like the tv set speakers were all that bad. My wife has never mentioned anything and I have never been watching a tv set show and thought, "oh the sound stinks". I would say it's about average which is alright to me considering the tiny amount of space Samsung had to work with. While audio-philes may not like the tv set speakers/sound I think a lot of people would be totally fine with it. Viewing Angle: I sit about 9' to 10' away from the screen and have not noticed any real issues with the viewing angle. Of course no LED Lcd will have a viewing angle as good as a plasma but unless you are sitting at an extreme angle you probably won't have to worry too much about this. I think this is more of a personal choice...sure the best picture is right in the heart of the screen but I don't think sitting to the right or left a few toes makes the picture dramatically different. Maybe a video-phile would notice but my wife doesn't notice and has never said a thing. Reflection: Be aware that this is NOT a matte screen, it is a reflective screen. If you have windows directly facing the tv set then make sure you have curtains or blinds that can block out the gentle enough not to trouble you. I don't think it's any more reflective than other Samsung tv's but coming from a matte screen prior to this it was a big change for me. >Buy Now< Widgets: The tv set comes with internet connectivity for Yahoo Widgets, You Tube, Twitter, USA Today Sporting activities and several others. You can possibly buy a Samsung USB wireless stick to hook up the tv set wirelessly to your network or you can plug an ethernet cable directly into the again of your tv set. I have an ethernet cable plugged directly into the again of it. First things first, the widgets do not load fast. I'm not sure why but even using a direct internet cable into the tv set they still do not load fast. No idea why but they are slooow. Gradual enough for me to be aggravated and not use them much. It's odd because when I went to the You Tube widget and appeared up a video it played quickly and was smooth. With any luck , Samsung will have a software update to allow the widgets to load faster. Right now I would say they are just a novelty. If they can decrease the load times and add more apps such as Facebook, then I think this has potential. But people are not buying this tv set because of the widgets, they are buying it for the picture. Overall I think this is an excellent tv set. Is it expensive, indeed. Does it have the best picture of any Lcd available, indeed. If you have the money this is a great tv set. I use a Harmony One remote and it works flawlessly with this tv set. PS3 games and blu-ray movies look incredible. The only quibble I have with the tv set is the screen reflectivity and that is more a result of my room setup than the tv set alone. Whether I'm watching Hi-def football, playing a PS3 game, watching a blu-ray motion picture or watching The Office I have been blown away by the picture this tv set can deliver. UPDATE: I wanted to explain something that seems to be a bit confusing. I refer to this tv set as an Lcd tv set which it is. Samsung refers to this as an LED tv set. Basically this tv set uses an Lcd panel (thus it is an Lcd tv set) but it uses LED backlighting (as opposed to typical CCFL backlighting). Samsung marketing has had great success with the term "LED tv set" but in reality it is still an Lcd tv set but with LED used for backlighting purposes. Just wanted to make sure no person is confused when Samsung refers to it as an LED tv set and I am calling it Lcd....in a way they are both right but this can be confusing for a consumer. I also wanted to comment that I have now had this tv set for almost 5 months and it has performed incredibly. I did have an occurance of what some people had called "Crop Circles" but this was remedied with a firmware update so no issues since. Overall I am still blown away on a daily basis by this tv set. Whether it's watching the super bowl, the olympics or Lost this tv set has been spectacular. >Buy Now< UPDATE 2 Aug 23, 2010: I am now approaching 11 months of ownership and I have not had a one problem with this tv set. Picture quality is as great as the first day I acquired it. I know this tv set is hard to come by these days but it is worth your time and money if you find one for a good price. I don't bel