42″ too small? Want to 1-up your neighbors? Well Samsung’s (and a few others) upcoming TVs add an inch in the same footprint. 42s become 43s, 50s become 51s and so on. A big deal? Sure, why not?
All the latest models and our take on it all, after the jump.
Samsung’s LCD and LED LCDs have been consistently good. The 3D models, though, tended to have a bit more cross talk than the competitors. From a quick look at the booth at CES, this doesn’t seem to be remedied in the latest models. Keep in mind though, this was on the show floor, and is certainly not set in stone with the shipping models.
Samsung’s plasmas, on the other hand, appeared to have little-to-no cross talk, though the demo left much to be desired. As I mentioned in my show writeup, the quality of the demos in the Samsung booth left much to be desired. Even their 3D projector, based on their highly-reviewed, non-existently marketed home projector, looked pretty terrible on an extremely high-gain screen.
As you’d expect, no pricing, availability will be by April 2011. Amusingly, neither were specific screen sizes. Expect 1″ up from last year’s models.
Several Samsung representatives were very frank, off the record, about the company’s distaste for passive 3D, at least in its current implementation. We have gathered more information about the new Passive Pattern Retarder technology and it will appear in a new article very soon.
Plasma
The top of the plasma line is the D8000 Series (pictured above), which is 3D capable, as you’d expect. It has a dark metallic bezel and Samsung’s Touch of Color boarder. A “Real Black Filter” claims to improve the black level. Samsung Apps is available thanks to built-in WiFi.
The badass Touch Control remote has a QWERTY keyboard, and can double as a portable TV thanks to its 3″ LCD touchscreen.
The D8000 packs all of Samsung’s top tech goodness into its new thinner bezel designs including Cable TV (via TWC, Xfinity and FIOS) subscribed channels via IP from the set’s Internet input. Add in deep black levels, , excellent motion resolution, improved signal processing and more and you end up with the winner of the HD GURU CES 2011 Top Pick Award for Best HDTV.
The 6500 lacks the touchscreen remote control and the cable reception without the cable box feature..
LCD
The big news was the shrinking of the bezel on most LED LCD models, now a scant 0.2†of an inch. The photos are hard to believe, and let me tell you in person they’re no less impressive looking. For the connected home, the new Search All feature is GoogleTV-like in its ability to search your network for whatever content you want.
The top of the LED LCD line is the D8000, 3D of course. It features the tiny bezel, here in brushed metal. On the tech side there’s 240 Hz, a claimed 2 ms response time, built-in Wifi, LED backlight scanning, and Micro Dimming Plus. Like the D8000 Series plasma, it comes with Touch Control.
The LED D7000 Series is 3D and has a black version of the 0.2†bezel with a hint of red. There’s also backlight scanning, Auto Motion Plus.
The LED D6400 Series is only 120 Hz, but is still 3D.
—Geoffrey Morrison
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