Samsung Series 8 D8000

Reliable – I bought the last shop unit which was used as a display that was in 2011 only now it did die (power supply) i had a good 11 years out of it. Trying now to replace the power supply i miss it! Show details ·  1

Not bad when it does work – This is a long term review of the series 8 55" LED LCD TV. We purchased this TV back in 2012 or late 2011. Good: Its picture and sound quality are fantastic. It has a nice clean look, very thin chrome baffle and nice stand. Logo light can be turned off. Its remote has a QWERTY keyboard which is kind of nice if you need to type, although we… Read more

seldom do... It has a good amount of ports and it is pretty thin. It does do 3D and can convert a 2D video into 3D. Comes with one pair of glasses.

Bad:

Sound volume is a bit on the weak side. Its software is slow, very slow. Smarthub is virtually useless. That's why we seldom if ever use the QWERTY keyboard. Picture jerks when there is panning motion. Feels like the engine is too slow, not spec'ed correctly. Its subtitle is way too big. Feels like it was designed for a 40" or less TV or is intended for commercial use where it is mounted on wall far away from watcher so they can see the text from 15-20m away. It covers a significant portion of the screen like faces completely if it is up the top part of the screen! Why can't there be a font size selection? Why can't there by a subtitle position selection? Both are so easy to do. We don't watch 3D. So the fact that it only comes with one pair of glasses was fine for us. Friend of mine went for LG because it came with several pair of 3D glasses.

Ugly:

It died twice to-date. First time it died within warranty. Thank God we did purchase extended warranty for it, not something we usually do but it was an expensive unit when we bought it. Both times it was the power supply that died. Such a common problem that you can find youtube video about how to fix it. Shame I couldn't buy the power board from Samsung to replace myself. Second time when it failed, I told the repairman where he missed one of the five screws to remove the power board. There was class action against Samsung for below spec capacitors resulting in them popping and TV not coming on. Would have preferred to fix it myself because you can imagine a cap only costs a dollar or less and even the whole board is tens of dollars. Repair cost was $400 plus. I couldn't justify fixing it again if it fails again. Of course, manufacturers want you to buy a new one. I had grown up with Panasonic CRTs that just work and work. Sorry I don't subscribe to the concept of a throw away society.

What would I do next time? I won't buy a top of the range TV thanks to experience with this one - paying a premium for product that is not ready for the latest technology. I am more inclined (because I am not in the market for one right now and can't be sure) to going back to a reliable brand with proven track record and positive user reviews.

Keyword - user review! Review based on features and written by magazines after an hour / a day / a week of trialing the product is simply not good enough. I will also spend time to try it out properly in store. Those demo clips are useless, everybody knows.

Waste of money – I bought the TV and after 2 years it broke down. I have been out of town for about 18 months so I have only used the TV for about 6 months. No warranty and now they want 1000 Dollars to repair the TV. I had expected more for a 4000 US Dollars TV (including the DVD player) The LED display broke down and they want 1000 Dollars to repair

Awesome tv – We purchased the 55" version for our home theater and have it mounted on the wall. Wall mounting using the Samsung bracket isn't an easy job, as the power and video leads need to be in exactly the right place for it to sit flush on the wall. Once the tv was mounted, we put it through its paces. The default settings leave a lot to be desired.… Read more

Way too much sharpness to create a clean picture. This also required disabling the AnyNet feature as the tv would continually revert back to default settings. After using a blu ray calibration disk the image is flawless (with minimal clouding). 3D movies look fantastic, however the glasses get a bit uncomfortable after about an hour. In addition, after long periods of not using them, it takes a bit of time to wake/reset them to even charge them.

Connectivity is great, and connected to the NAS via WiFi, though navigating menus could be quicker. The "smart tv" features are more of a gimmick and are rarely used.

The audio connectivity is a bit limited, as there is no coax output, only optical. The delay between tv and surround decoder is massive, and tend to usually just turn down the tv volume. It looks amazing on the wall, 3D performance better than the cinema Slow menus, poor default picture settings

Almost perfect – I did a lot of online research before I bought this TV but could do no live comparisons. No retailers had it in stock to actually observe live - only the 55inch version (which was always excellent). I work in graphic design and have an in depth knowledge of digital images and quality. I was primarily concerned about how such a large unit would… Read more

display standard definition TV. Secondarily I was concerned about whether it had the processing power to faultlessly produce such a large HD image from all sources.

Speaking to sales reps I heard twice that the 55in produces a slightly better image than the 60. It concerned me that actual pixel size (something very rarely discussed about digital TVs) might be bigger on the 60 than the 55in but I spoke to 2 people at Samsung and was told that the 60 just has more of the same sized pixels as the 55.

I have a very large lounge that the TV went into so took a chance on the 60in.

I was disappointed at first. SD TV was very poor, HD TV was better but could be very juddery and motion blurred regardless of settings in TV. Video from my bluray player was blurred and juddery and suffered occasional lag/catchups where the image seemed to accelerate every so often. There is also a common issue to all LCD TVs called clouding and this is very apparent in dark scenes and annoying as hell.

We have a current 46in Samsung series 6 LED TV as well. I have spent quite some time comparing the image on the 60 to the 46. I came down to finding that the 46in was the best TV we had as far as picture quality goes when viewing SD and most HD TV . SD TV and some HD TV will look better on a smaller screen. Upscaling can only go so far and upscaling SD quality to 60in produces a blurrier image compared to the 46in. This is a logical outcome and is what the sales reps were probably talking about. Its worth noting that just because you are watching channel ONE or GO and it is being broadcast at 1080p doesn’t mean that the original program was filmed at 1080p or that the broadcast signal itself is without judder or lag effects etc. I wont bother going into frames per second and all that entails as its incredibly complicated and gets beyond me but it probably is playing a very large role as well.

In regard to image issues when viewing Bluray on my LG Bluray player I found that the Bluray player created the same effects on the smaller screen but because the image is almost 2/3 the size its much harder to see. But it was still there.

Its been a difficult comparison but in the end i have come out understanding that broadcast TV quality ranges dramatically from program to program and that 1080p broadcast can mean nothing. I have come to understand that the sheer size of the 60in makes it much easier to see faults in the program being broadcast but that the 60in is NOT making the image bad. Its like taking a magnifying glass to a tiny blemish on a photo - the bigger you magnify it the easier the blemish is to see. This analogy goes just as well for judder. The exact same juddering image on a smaller screen is just harder to see and so less noticeable.

I have seen 'almost' faultless quality SD TV on my 60in that left me confused and wondering why all SD wasn’t that good. I have seen amazing quality HD on my 60in as well as really bad stuff. All lower res and poorer quality programs looked better on the 46in – its a fact. This is the fault of the quality of the program being broadcast and not the TV. Doesn’t help the end user much but does explain what you can expect.

I have a few movies on hard drive, plugged directly into the TV by USB, and can honestly say I like them as much on the 60 as any other TV in the house (we have a few) . It does a great job and illustrates that the TV is capable of producing a great image, even of an old bw movie from 1930 – it just depends on what it is feed.

Final test was the Sony Playstation and Grand Tursimo 5. No judder, blur or lag/catchups. Extremely detailed and fast moving images across the whole screen were as good on the 60in as the 46in and I have to say the extra few inches on the 60in added to the experience over the 46in. I was very happy... unfortunately i haven’t been able to watch a Bluray movie on the playstation and compare it to the LG Bluray player to see if judder etc was different but based on gaming experience I believe it probably will be. I have been told that 3D Bluray playback is not as good played on the PS3 as a dedicated 3D Bluray player so i will be buying a Panasonic player soon and crossing my fingers that i will see improvement.

The clouding issue is a real annoyance mostly when watching movies due to the black strip top and bottom that the wide format creates. In dark scenes the unevenness is obvious and disappointing however over time I have become used to it and it rarely affects the experience. I have read a heap about it and am still not entirely sure what it is or what causes it. Do they roll out of the factory with it or does something happen in transit. I read that you can improve it by massaging the screen - I also read people saying not to be so stupid and risk damage / breaking your screen. I noticed even gently cleaning the screen causes the image to distort so I did a bit of this massaging myself and found that I definitely effected the location and intensity of clouds but i am a little afraid of making it worse and didn’t fix it by any means. Knowing me I will probably try again. I hate imperfection and in the end this is the worst issue the unit has.

last thing to say is that i bought it online ($500 less than in any store) and it had to be delivered from interstate. The online retailer assured me damage happens but it is rare and that they accepted all the risk for the chance of the unit being damaged in transit so i went ahead. The thing came by allied express. First impressions count! The delivery driver had almost no English and was poorly dressed/presented. That got me worried but when I got outside I got really concerned. The van was beat up, sticky tape holding the head light on, damage to almost all panels. He had a special method of getting the sliding door open that indicated the lock was stuffed. Inside my TV leaned up against the side of the van, resting properly on its narrow longest edge but totally loose, not tied to the side or anything. Free to flop side to side over the few remaining cartons. The handle holes had been torn out and one of the two plastic straps around the box its self had cut deeply into the box and I could see the screen through the hole. I refused the item asking the driver to wait so that I could call the retailer and see what to do but he wouldn’t wait and left. After talking to the retailer and finding out that there wouldn’t be another TV like it in the country for months and them agreeing to pick up up the TV if there was anything wrong with it at all I agreed to taking a re delivery and testing it. It arrived in exactly the same way / state as before. All I can say is that these things must be tough because I couldn’t find any damage at all. After all the research i did on clouding I do not think the clouding is related but i will be calling Samsung about it if i can’t massage it any better too see what they say. Excellent quality image from the right source Clouding

Amazing quality, design – Own the 55" model. Design is stunning, looks very stylish. Love the fact it can record to External hard drive for TV playback, connect wirelessly to internet, and use Vuse to stream movies from computer in study straight to tv. Picture as very crisp, even blacks are dark, which was the only negative comments I could find from LED backlit sets. The… Read more

tru vision refresh rate was a little off putting for around 2 days as was so incredible from the standard I was used to. Have not looked negatively from my purchase, was worth the extra cash... All my friends comment on the design and quality (they all leave wanting to buy a new TV) =) Quality, design, energy efficient, technology (i.e wireless, smart hub, recording to external hard drive, QWERTY keyboard Only downside is the remote can be a little touch if im not pointing directly at the set.. Other people Suggested the speaker quality, but seriously if the tv is THAT FLAT, it really cannot boast the best speakers. My advise... If you spent the money on the TV, splurge and get decent surroud sound. Makes for a 'IN THE MOVIE' experience.

Enthralled – We recently upgraded our TV and bought the Samsung Plasma TV 64in. We had read about high definition TV, but when we actually saw the results, we were blown away by it - the images are mind blowing! We also love the clarity, colours, performance, sound and the very thin shape. No complaints on this one! Style, shape, performance

60 inch flagship, 2 month wait, faulty after 10 days use – Waited for this 60 inch flagship product for 2 months, after 22 phone calls the tv arrived to bigbrownbox from Samsung. The TV when it arrived had scratches on the back and I queried if it was a refurb. After 10 days light use we started to get dead pixels, a pretty pink was showing when there was supposed to be black. Bigbrown box told me… Read more

that the tv is no longer being produced so it would have to be repaired, not happy that I would end up with a "refurb" on a 10 day old flagship tv that I paid over $3600 for!

They offered a refund and just waiting pick up now. However Samsung delayed this as they said the serial was invalid, so I sent photographic evidence to show that I was infact right.

I have a 55 inch version of the tv that is lovely, Samsung clearly need to get their act together, making me wait a horrendous amount of time for the tv, and now it has a fault I am not happy.

I really dont believe the price difference of $600 is valid between the 60 and 55 inch. Clear picture Broke after 10 days, 2 month wait