TV Reviews

Of all the HDTVs that Samsung produced in 2011, the PS64D8000 has the largest viewing area and the most advanced features.

Although the size of the unit itself hasn’t been increased, the bezel around the screen is smaller, making the viewing area larger. The bezel itself has a fashionable design - silver with an acrylic border. The corners are rounded.

The unit sits on top of a four-legged stand, which may be difficult for some to install.

The PS64D8000 Plasma 3DTV prevents screen reflections with Samsung Real Black Filter technology.

The video processor chip is created by Samsung. Cheaper Samsung PDPs that were produced this year used an MStar processing chip. The Samsung chip allows for better temporal noise reduction and nonlinear scaling.

The TV has all the standard picture setup controls.

There is also a Cell Light option, which increases the peak light output of the panel. This is useful if you need to make the picture brighter in order to compensate for the lighting in the room you are in.

A contrast enhancer is available.

The MPEG noise filter can be placed on its highest setting without compromising the image quality.

The two-mode grayscale allows you to select a “Movie Mode” or “Game Mode”. According to Samsung, Movie Mode provides “cinema projector quality”.

10-point white balance control allows for almost perfect grayscale tracking.

A non-linear scaler creates smooth, round edges on 2D cartoons.

When it comes to 2D color, there is a problem with the red being undersaturated, making skin tones look too yellowish. Switching the Color Space setting from Auto to Native can help with this.

The 3D glasses that come with the Samsung PS64D8000 Plasma 3D TV have a bluish tint, which affects the image that is seen. The image that the TV itself emits appears to be naturally colored.

There are 4HDMI inputs as well as USB ports for connecting flash memory devices and hard disks. The PS64D8000 supports feeds from aerial and satellite dishes, as well as ethernet, SCART, Component and analogue VGA.

The Samsung PNC50C8000 3D Plasma TV is a lightweight 3D plasma TV - only 63 pounds, including the stand, that produces sharp 3D pictures with great color shading and contrast.

It automatically recognizes HDMI version 1.4a 3D frame packing format, which delivers movies at 1920 x 1080p at 24 Hz resolution. This means that if you begin playing a 3D Blu-ray disc, the TV will automatically switch on 3D mode.

The TV also has a 2D to 3D conversion algorithm, which allows you to transform everyday 2D movies and TV shows into 3D.

There are three dynamic contrast settings, three black level settings and an adjustment for reducing or enhancing shadow.

You can calibrate hue, contrast, saturation and basic brightness, and select red-only, green-only or blue-only modes.

Cell brightness, which depends on how hard the plasma pixels are driven, can be adjusted on a 0 to 20 scale.

A front-surface vertical polarizing filter cancels out reflections, while a glass filter that is patterned reduces unwanted brightness. This filtering does not harm image contrast.

Sometimes, ghost images will appear after the PN50C8000 3D Plasma TV has been used for a short time. This can be avoided by leaving the white test pattern or the internal scrolling pattern on the screen for about 200 hours, allowing the blue phosphors to settle.

Aspect ratio can be set in any of four different ways, and temperature settings can be set in any of five different ways.

"Eco Solution" allows you to choose between a number of different "green" energy settings.

An MPEG noise filter can be used to reduce macroblock artifacts and mosquito noise. However, this low-pass filtering software can reduce the detail of high frequency images.

The PNC50C8000 uses Auto Motion Plus by Samsung. Auto Motion Plus pulls the frame rate up to about 240 Hz, which corrects for 24-frame judder. This makes filmed content appear live or like it was originally shot as a video, since 240 Hz is the same speed that the PN50C8000 uses for 3D mode.

Menus are easy to navigate. There six image presets: Standard and Movie, which can be used for everyday viewing, Dynamic, which provides very bright pictures (possibly too bright for some viewers), Relax, ISF Day and ISF Night.

Movie Mode is also very bright and can be calibrated.

ISF Day and ISF Night can only be adjusted with a calibrator.

The Samsung PNC50C8000 3D Plasma TV has four inputs for HDMI. All of these are compatible with version 1.4a. One of the inputs will allow you to connect to a PC. You can use another to connect an external AV receiver's audio return channel.

CEC is supported by all of the HDMI connections, so when you turn on your Blu-Ray player, the TV will automatically turn on and switch to that input.

There is a luminance ("Y") connection can be which you can use as jack for composite video. There is also a single analog YPbPr component video connection.

Unfortunately, these connections are very close to the back of the TV, so they require small-diameter RCA connectors.

However, there is a threaded F-style RF connector that is surrounded by plenty of space.

All in all this is a very good TV and would be a good addition to your home.

See: Samsung PN50C8000 50-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV (Black)

The Vizio M261 VP LED LCD TV is a reasonably priced HDTV for reasonable quality.

This 26 inch set, which is designed to fit in any corner of a room, has an Internet apps feature that allows you to get the news and weather, listen to music and watch videos using the set's built-in Wi-Fi.

The Vizio M261 supports Yahoo, Amazon VOD and Yahoo widgets.

A 100,000:1 contrast ratio and a resolution of 1080p, along with 16.7 million colors means that the Vizio M261 creates clear, vibrant, natural-looking images.

For clarity of sound, the Vizio M261 has SRS TruSurround HD and TruVolume.

It has an LED backlighting LCD.

This HDTV is Energy Star 4.0 complaint. An ambient light-sensor that is built into the set helps to control the backlight so that less energy is used.

To make this set more affordable, Vizio has lowered the number of HDMI outputs to twp and reduced the refresh rate to 60 Hz.

Two HDMI outputs should be enough for most people, as they will allow them to use both the Blu-ray disc player and the gaming console.

More expensive sets have refresh rates of 120 Hz or 240 Hz. There may be a small amount of blurring on the Vizio M261.