Bluemashi's Blurty
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Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in
Bluemashi's Blurty:
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 6:27 pm |
Samsung UN46B8000 LED 46 TV Best Price Samsung UN46B8000 46-Inch 1080p 240Hz LED HDTVMuch has been said here about picture clarity, features, design, etc... Let me pass on a few different comments which may benefit those contemplating this purchase, or who have already made the purchase. To those of you who are skeptical about buying electronics online, relax. Although it is risky buying from those Manhattan online electronics resellers, every step of ordering my Samsung UN46B8000 from Amazon was perfect. Lets start with pricing. After a little web surfing, I found a site that mentioned a significant discount would appear, once the TV is placed in the shopping cart at Amazon.com. I tried it and it worked. For kicks, I printed the page and took it to Best Buy. They admitted they could not come close to matching Amazon's price. Went home and ordered it from Amazon, saving hundreds of dollars. Emails from Amazon soon followed with updates on my order. A couple days later, a phone call to schedule delivery. Two guys delivered the TV and lifted the box cover to verify no visible damage in transit. After a brief conversation, they explained they do a lot of deliveries for Amazon. BTW, I also ordered the Slim-Mount Wall Mounting Kit from Amazon. Best Buy = $250, Amazon $125. A bit about wall-mounting the TV. Two grooved, hockey puck size disks mount to the wall, spaced about 7 inches apart. Another pair of disks connected together with a cable, mount to the back of the TV. You then hang the TV over the wall disks. Like everyone else, all I could envision was my TV crashing to the ground, but it works....scary, but it works. Note, if you need help aligning vertical placement, drill your wall holes 7 inches apart and 22 inches above where you want the bottom of the TV to be. Note to Samsung: Put this in the manual. The instructions that come with the mounting kit are worthless. And now, the TV. More features than I have time for. I noticed a new firmware update had been released, so I downloaded it from Samsung. It's a single executable, which you run to unzip as a folder containing several files. Open the folder and drag the files to the root of your USB flash stick. Plug the stick in the back of the TV and perform the software upgrade. The TV wont find the files if they're still compressed or not at root level. Samsung: Put this on your website. For users connecting their TV to the Internet via the TV's RJ-45 or optional USB Wifi Stick, the process may be simpler. Other process' like deleting unwanted channels are not accurately explained in the manual, but after a few minutes of screwing around, you learn how to select the channel lineup, pick a channel then press Tools to get a pop-up menu and choose Delete. Connecting my laptop to the TV via a 15 pin VGA cable yielded a sweet, finely detailed image. If you're not planning to display movies/pics from websites via an Internet connection, you can still display content from your PC, if your PC has video out. The TV also has a 2.5mm audio in jack, so you can run audio from your PC as well. One other cool feature is by holding down the Volume Down button on the TV for 10 seconds, the Remote Control beeps making it simple to find a lost remote. All in all, a very nice TV with some cool features. This is our first flat-panel TV, so nothing really to compare to. BTW, to the guy who commented on two hot spots on the bottom black bar during movies, I'm getting none of that. Just a perfect picture from all sources: HD Cable, SD Cable, SD DVD, PC and PS2 (PS3 and Internet coming soon). Buy Samsung UN46B8000 Lowest Price, Order Now! [Click Here!] Relate Products Samsung UN46B8000 | | 2:07 pm |
Samsung UN55B7000 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTVI waited long enough for a T.V like this to come out. I have holding out on buying a T.V as they are always coming out with newer technology. I am very please with my purchase. I have not played around with the settings but this picture is truly amazing. My dad had an older Samsung and he was amazed how the picture has changed since he purchased his about 2 year ago. The slim depth is just plain mind blowing. I also got this t.v for a great price after the huge promotional discount Amazon offered. A little part of my wishes that I would have splurged for the 8000 series but I am very happier with the picture. The one concern I had after reading everyone's review is the overpowered LED bleeding through the edges of the T.V during the dark scenes. I have not really noticed this at all. I think some people are just overly critical on things. If you really pay attention to it you might notice it but if you are just watching the picture itself you can't notice it. So don't base your decision on this issue. Buy Samsung UN55B7000 Lowest Price, Order Now! [Click Here!] Relate Products | | Monday, November 9th, 2009 | | 4:39 pm |
Samsung UN46B6000 LED 46 TV Cheap Price Samsung UN46B6000 46-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LED HDTVI recently purchased a Sony 52" 52Z5100 LCD television. Ultimately, I ended up exchanging it for the Samsung on this page. Why? Well, read on. First, I had a 42" LCD projection 720p. Nice picture but time to upgrade. I always disliked glossy screened models but drooled over the thinness of the Samsung LED's. At Best Buy, I looked at all the TV's. I didn't care about 240hz b/c it's not a noticable difference over 120hz, so I was considering many displays. I kept coming back to the Sony 52Z5100 ($1899) and the Samsung UN46B6000 ($1839.) I know Sony makes good displays and I was worried about the glossiness so I purchased it and had it delivered. When I got it hooked up I was impressed but I never could quite get the picture they had in the store that was almost 3D. I know part of that is b/c they have all the settings pushed real high in-store, but even when I did that I couldn't get it. Now, don't get me wrong, it looked really good and I was really thinking of keeping it. But every time I looked at it from the side it just seemed a little bulky. The other issue I was having was the brightness. Even with the backlight turned to 1 and brightness turned down low, the display was too bright. It was fine when watching a show but if a commercial came on with a white background it sometimes hurt my eyes. It was that bright. Some would view that as a good thing but I constantly found myself adjusting the backlight and brightness. I can't say I wasn't satisfied with the display but after 3 weeks I found myself still considering the Samsung and I saw that as a sign that I should exchange it. Having had the Samsung for 2 weeks now I am happy that I made the exchange. The glossiness, while not ideal on a bright day, isn't that bad. In fact, I would say that if this TV didn't have the glossy screen it would be almost perfect. The extreme brightness on the Sony tended to wash colors out a little...something I didn't really notice until viewing the Samsung. Colors were much more saturated. Some people have mentioned uneven lighting with the Samsung. I have looked hard for it and as picky as I am I can't see it at all. The sound is also very acceptable...much better than I expected, and that's nice since I don't always want to play it through my stereo. The Samsung also gives you more control over its settings than the Sony did. Perhaps that's why I could never get the Sony to exactly where I wanted it. The only negative I would give this TV is the motion control settings. Honestly, my favorite is usually off. I don't see much blur at all with it off. Putting it on Smooth, Clear, Standard, or even Custom with the blur on 10 and judder on 0 can look somewhat artificial at times. For instance, I replayed a scene on my DVR using all the settings. During this scene the camera pans across a bunch of people sitting on a bus. While smooth looked kind of neat, it created a little "jump" or judder at one portion of the pan. In fact, all the settings except off did this. (I also tried custom with judder at various settings.) Now, many people wouldn't even notice this and by no means does it ruin the experience, I'm just left with the feeling that this whole 120hz and 240hz is much ado about nothing. Like I said, turning it off is fine...even when watching football. To sum up, by no means do I mean to imply the Sony is a bad TV - far from it. If you have recently bought one you have a very good TV with a beautiful picture. Just for me, preference wise, I prefer the Samsung. I love the thinness and deeper color saturation. Now, perhaps if I sat further from the TV (I'm at 11ft) or had this in a room with windows facing the TV (mine are to the side of it) I may feel differently. It all comes down to personal preference when you're talking about TV's of this caliber, so hopefully I've just provided a little more for you to help you decide which is for you. Happy viewing! Buy Samsung UN46B6000 Lowest Price, Order Now! [Click Here!] Relate Products | | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 5:09 pm |
Samsung UN55B8000 LED 55 HDTV Best Price Samsung UN55B8000 55-Inch 1080p 240 Hz LED HDTVThis TV is replacing a Sony 50" rear screen projection LCD HDTV that still has a great picture. However, the Sony uses a $200 projector bulb to display the tiny LCD enlarged through lenses up to the 50" screen, and that generates a LOT of heat (and only lasts a couple of years). Additionally, the Sony TV only displays up to a 720p image, which is fine, but pales in comparison to this new Samsung model. The LED-side backlit LCD Samsung TV remains cool indefinitely as it's viewed, which is a major issue if you don't use your TV to heat your living room. The first time I saw this new Samsung in a local Best Buy showroom I was immediately transfixed. The image was stunning, razor sharp, bright, and when I touched the top rear of the case, absolutely room temperature. Because the screen case is only about 1 1/4" thick the unit seems flimsy sitting vertically on its crystal plastic cylinder atop a base, but that's a minor issue to me. Many people will remove the base and hang it on the wall. I have a TV nook, so this unit sits on its base out of the way of anyone possibly bumping into it. This TV has the best image of any TV I've EVER viewed. I'm not a TV snob, just a daily viewer, but I've owned a lot of high quality TVs over the years, and this one stands out. Once I plugged my Dish PVR and Sony PS3 Slim in and looked at the picture in my living room environment, I was convinced I'd made a good decision (and I moved the Sony to another room). It's only been a couple of months since my spouse began pushing me to upgrade to 1080, but I thought my DVDs looked great on the Sony TV and didn't feel the urgency. Now, viewing those same DVDs on my PS3 Slim/Samsung 8000, they look grainy, and definitely remind me of my transitions from Beta to LD to DVD way back when. When I popped in a new Blu-ray movie I was convinced. I'm not sure I'll ever enjoy my old DVDs the same way again. The TV worked perfectly out of the box. I plugged it into a gigabit switch to my broadband connection and upgraded its firmware in a few minutes. A couple of days later my Blu-ray Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark disk arrived and I was hard pressed to change ANY settings. In fact, most of the test screens were puzzling to me, since they looked fine. The Spears & Munsil disk shows you a sample of a good image and a bad image for each test screen, and almost all of the test screens on the Samsung looked exactly like the benchmark images. There was one test image that appeared off (screen was so bright the test boxes were nearly invisible), but even with the brightness turned completely down the image didn't change, so I left it at the setup default. Bottom line, the TV was calibrated nearly perfectly already out of the box. The over saturated, super bright settings you view in the showroom are what Samsung calls Dynamic. I selected a different setting for my Dish satellite and Blu-ray viewing modes that's fine for home viewing. Of course, Samsung allows you to customize to your heart's content if the simple options don't work for you. This unit also boasts a 240Hz fast image smoothing functionality, which basically takes your standard 60Hz (or 24Hz for DVDs) signal and interpolates (creates) additional images to display something on your screen more frequently so you don't notice the jumps as fast images move across the screen. I can't say that I've noticed this in daily use. But perhaps sports fans will appreciate it, or it'll become more obvious in action movies. You can have a separate setup for each input, so I configured my Dish satellite images to bright natural tones, and my Blu-ray settings to a movie configuration (where many images are darker than commercial television). I bypass the TV for audio, using the TV as a monitor only, which is just as well. While there are four HDMI inputs, the optical out ONLY PASSES THROUGH A STEREO SIGNAL to your AV receiver/amplifier. That means NO DTS/5.1/7.1 audio if you pass all your components through your TV. So, I plug my satellite and Blu-ray video inputs directly into my TV's HDMI ports, and their optical audio connections directly into my AV receiver driving my 5.1 system. I configure my Harmony remote to turn on my TV, set the video port, and set my AV receiver to my satellite audio in when watching Dish, and my Sony PS3 Slim when I'm watching a movie. I've been researching new HDTVs for a couple of months now, and this unit is currently the most popular (including the less expensive 7000 and 6000 series units, and the just released 8500 rear-LED backlight unit) and best rated. A couple of comments I've heard and read about with this TV concerned its side-LED backlight scheme, and how that prevents the TV from darkening just a portion of the screen (vice LEDs all across the back of the screen, individually controlled). I can attest that this unit has phenomenal blacks (not dark grays, as my Sony TV has). I'm sure the 8500's rear-LED scheme will provide more discriminating dark areas on the screen, but for the moment that's not worth the extra thousand dollars to me. The blacks and dark areas on the 8000 look great. I did notice that the corners of the screen appear slightly darker where the backlights can't run into the corner, but only on the showroom models that were on all day long. I haven't yet observed dark corners on a white screen on my home unit. I've also heard that some people have experienced hardware failures after a week of home viewing, typically where the screen goes all white, which requires a repair. Best Buy told me if that happens and they can't repair it in two weeks, they'll replace the unit (they also offer a 4-year warranty for another $400). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't get a defective unit, but so far so good. The TV looks so great, I was willing to take the chance. Anyway, if it works for a month, it'll probably work forever, such is the history of electronics. Just a heads up, Samsung Customer Service is getting a LOT of complaints on the Internet for unresponsiveness to repairs. But again, the TV is so good, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. As an aside, Samsung extended their warranty to 15 months parts/labor when I registered it online, so perhaps they have noticed the hardware issues/complaints. While this TV is listed currently at $3,899 retail, its everyday price almost anywhere is ~$3,009. Sales and promotions can save you more. When Fry's Electronics offered it at $2,699 last week, we immediately went to our local Best Buy (which price matches and offers free delivery, trash take-away, and old TV take-away, if you want) and purchased it, with a table and a PS3 Slim. So far, I'm completely satisfied. This is a great HDTV and I look forward to watching it each evening. Oh, and I'm definitely going to start buying more Blu-ray DVDs.Buy Samsung UN55B8000 Lowest Price, Order Now! [Click Here!] Relate Products | | Friday, November 6th, 2009 | | 2:48 pm |
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