Review จาก Home Cinema Choice Magazine
Samsung PS64F8500
Plasma finds its bright side
Samsungs latest flatscreen reminds John Archer why plasma is the serious home cinema fans TV tech of choice
ACCORDING TO THE current AV buzz, plasma TV technology is on its death bed. Having spent a good while with Samsungs sensational new PS64F8500 plasma TV, though, I cant help but feel that plasma has never been more alive.
This is a bit surprising, actually. After all, Samsung makes no secret of its relative enthusiasm for LCD/LED technology, and last year Samsung lost ground to Panasonic with its plasma TVs. So strong is the Korean brands apparent desire never to be second-best at anything, though, that its engineers have gone into overdrive with the PS64F8500, re-engineering its panel until it delivers pictures that are genuinely remarkable.
Ill get into these pictures presently, but first Ive got some practicalities to cover starting with the sets design. This is, well, a bit chunky, actually. The Samsungs bezel sticks out more than an inch on all four sides, and its heft is emphasised by its deep, metallic grey finish and the unusual elliptical stand the TV squats down on. The overall look certainly isnt unattractive, but nor does it do much to limit the substantial impact the TV makes on your room. And those with a soundbar may look at the jutting-out stand and weep.
The PS64F8500s connections are extensive, with highlights of four v1.4 HDMIs, three USBs and built-in Wi-Fi. The AV connections are all arranged for side access too, making the set easier to wall mount. Though with this in mind, it seems bizarre that the power connector sticks straight out.
Get your hands dirty
Delving into the PS64F8500s onscreen menus reveals a startlingly expansive suite of picture adjustments, including such calibration-friendly treats as colour, gamma and white balance management, and substantial control over (almost
) all the TVs processing activities.
The highlight of the PS64F8500s operating system, though, is Samsungs new Smart TV engine. This divides content into five categories TV, on-demand, your own photos/movies/music files, social media, and a straightforward apps icon gallery each of which gets its own dedicated home screen.
Its all beautifully presented, and via Samsungs new S Recommendation engine, the TV can learn your habits and automatically recommend TV and on-demand content it thinks youll
based on your viewing history. This can be quite useful, especially as the brand informs us that it will work with Sky and Virgin Media metadata provided an IR extender cable and Samsungs smart remote is used to control the set-top box.
Samsungs online service, meanwhile, is distinguished by huge amounts of streaming video content, including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, LoveFilm, Netflix, Blinkbox, BBC News, BBC Sport, Curzon on Demand, an Explore 3D channel, Crackle and, soon, 4OD. You can also stream whats showing on your TV to Android/iOS smartphones or tablets, and can share multimedia stored on your smart device with the TV screen.
Clever and pretty though Samsungs new Smart TV interface is, its also rather inscrutable and confusing, especially before its had time to learn your viewing habits. The optional gesture and voice controls (the former delivered by a built-in, Skype-friendly camera, the latter via the secondary touchpad remote control) are still too erratic and flawed to encourage use, and talking to a TV still feels a bit odd. And the Social page bizarrely and ineffectively tries to aggregate content from both your Twitter and Facebook pages with a heavy emphasis on video recommendations activities which dont reflect how we generally consume social media.
Away from the revamped Smart portal, and far more important to AV fans, are the improvements made to the PS64F8500s panel. Here, Samsung has enlarged the panels discharge space, introduced a new discharge gas and used new high-efficiency magnesium oxide conduction materials to produce a claimed 250 per cent boost to the screens brightness.
Of course, it is contrast rather than brightness that is usually plasmas biggest attraction. But here, too, the PS64F8500 claims significant advances, including an improved Real Black Pro Filter that reduces onscreen reflections and the negative impact ambient light can have on plasma pictures; a new contrast-boosting discharge waveform; and quad-core processing, which enables the panel to scan light levels for each image line in real time, as well as being able to achieve peak brightness faster. Putting all these improvements together delivers a claimed 400 per cent contrast boost over last years models.
These claims are just numbers, obviously. But the longer I spent ogling the PS64F8500, the more evident it became that these numbers translate into awesome images.
Picture intensity
Its not the individual increases in contrast or brightness that really blew me away, though; rather its the way the two improvements combine to produce pictures of unprecedented (for plasma) intensity, dynamism and vibrancy. Whats more, while Im used to finding plasma screens losing considerable contrast and vibrancy in bright room conditions, the PS64F8500 retains pretty much all of its image quality even with my room lights turned to their highest level. This is little short of revelatory for a plasma display, and finally makes the technology a direct living room rival for LED screens, rather than it just being a premium home cinema option.
Not that the PS64F8500s unexpectedly brilliant new casual picture credentials stop it from also being a very good home cinema display. On the contrary, witnessing inky, rich yet nuanced black tones while simultaneously enjoying in the same frame bright, vibrant but still subtle and accurate colours never grows old. The remarkable combination of darkness, light and colour on show during the key poker sequences in Casino Royale, for instance, goes well beyond anything LCD technology could deliver.
Ive mentioned the PS64F8500s colours in passing already, but its worth adding that as well as combining extreme dynamism for a plasma TV with some brilliantly balanced and natural tones even where notoriously tricky reds and greens are concerned the set produces degrees of blend and tonal subtlety that exceed the plasma norm. This means that with the light auras around Gandalfs fireworks show in The Fellowship of the Ring, there was a total absence of striping or banding effects.
The PS64F8500s startling brightness pays off handsomely with 3D movies, too. Watching Prometheus and Frankenweenie using the two pairs of Active shutter glasses supplied free with the TV, its great to find a plasma 3D picture not exhibiting the usual enthusiasm-sapping lack of brightness. So punchy do the PS64F8500s 3D images remain, in fact, that you can actually watch them comfortably with the lights on something thats certainly not the case with other 3D plasma TVs.
The PS64F8500s colour range was also to the fore during 3D viewing especially during Prometheuss Peter Weyland introductory holograph sequence and its motion handling is vastly improved from previous Samsung plasma efforts, with far less judder, especially if you use the surprisingly decent judder reduction or Film processing modes.
The extreme contrast range of the PS64F8500 helps the set delineate a startlingly good sense of 3D space too, and detail levels with 3D Blu-rays are incredible, providing an eye-popping reminder of why the Active 3D format was invented.
Stopping the PS64F8500s 3D pictures short of being hands down the best weve seen is crosstalk. For while the ghosting problem isnt severe, we have seen some rival 3D TVs even a few Active 3D ones suffer with it less. All the same, for much of the time the PS64F8500s king-sized 3D performance will have your jaw hanging open in awe.
A couple of caveats
While mostly amazing and genuinely groundbreaking, the PS64F8500 isnt perfect. Its picture presets are ill-judged, for starters, with all of the TVs presets bar the Movie one pushing sharpness so hard images look fizzy and gritty, while all the preset modes push either sharpness or brightness/contrast/cell light too aggressively.
Floating blacks are sporadically apparent too, as the set adjusts the pictures brightness and black level tone so aggressively youre distracted by the shift. This still happens even if you deactivate the sets adaptive contrast setting.
Two further issues are likely connected with the huge brightness increase Samsung has delivered. First, bright, static image elements can leave a temporary ghostly residue of themselves behind. This issue should recede over time, though, so just try to limit the screens exposure to static bright images when you first get your mitts on it.
The other brightness-related issue is greenish dither noise over dark parts of the picture. This is visible to some extent on all plasma panels, but its slightly more overt on the PS64F8500, particularly over dark but subtly detailed scenes
the opening shot from Chapter 12 on the Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part II Blu-ray, where Voldemort and his army stand at night looking down at Hogwarts. However, this ditherings impact reduces the further you sit from the screen, and the more ambient light you have in your room, making it ultimately a minor distraction from the overall picture excellence.
The PS64F8500s sound, meanwhile, unexpectedly delivers an open, brilliantly detailed, harshness-and muddiness-free soundstage that actually does the huge scale of the images justice. Theres even a decent enough sensation of bass to underpin action scenes although a TV this large and costly deserves to be accompanied by an authentic surround system.
With Panasonics 2013 plasma TVs still waiting in the wings, the PS64F8500 is one hell of an opening salvo in what looks set to be an absolutely stellar year for plasma. Not bad for a technology thats supposedly on its last legs
AV INFO
PRODUCT: 64in plasma TV with Active 3D
POSITION:The PS64F8500 sits right at the top of Samsungs 2013 plasma TV range
PEERS: Panasonic TX-P65VT50; LG 60PM970T
SPECIFICATIONS
3D: Yes. Active (two pairs of glasses supplied)
FULL HD: Yes. 1,920 x 1,080
TUNER: Yes. Freeview HD, Freesat HD
CONNECTIONS: 4 x HDMI; 3 x USB; component video input; composite video input; Ethernet; stereo audio input; digital audio output; stereo audio output; CI Slot; PC input; RGB Scart
SOUND: 2 x 10W
BRIGHTNESS (CLAIMED): N/A
CONTRAST (CLAIMED): N/A
DIMENSIONS (OFF STAND): 1482.6(w) x 877.8(h) x 55.4(d)mm
WEIGHT (OFF STAND): 32.8kg
FEATURES: Built-in Wi-Fi; new multi-screen content management system; Smart TV online service including extensive video service support; USB multimedia playback; DLNA network playback; colour management system; white balance management; gamma management; built-in camera; gesture and voice control options; secondary touchpad remote
Samsung PS64F8500
HIGHS: Jaw-dropping picture quality; unfazed by ambient light; video-rich online service
LOWS: Minor floating blacks; some dithering during dark scenes; occasionally inscrutable onscreen menus; voice and gesture controls too error prone; retro styling...
Performance 5.0/5.0
Design 4.0/5.0
Features 5.0/5.0
Overall 5.0/5.0
http://www.homecinemachoice.com/news/article/samsung-ps64f8500-tv-review/15092