By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
15/02/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/tvs/0,39037585,42129292p,00.htm

It has been close to a year since the Korean introduced its M8 integrated digital TV or iDTV in Asia, and it's still the only one of its kind so far until now. Replacing it is the latest F8-series, a stepped-up model combining the stylish shell of its premium F9 LED-driven TV with all the familiar features of the original iDTV plus Motion Plus function. The latter is its first and much-belated attempt at the highly sought-after 100Hz motion enhancements.

Design

If you are drooling over the beautifully crafted Samsung LA70F91B, the LA46F81BDX is about the closest you can get without forking out a whopping S$88,888. To start off, there is the glossy black bezel with smooth sensuous soft corners. This is flanked by a pair of brushed metal trimmings which house its unique touch-sensitive and lit TV controls. Speaking of which, the bottom center blue lighting also doubles as a similarly designed power button. Beside a pleasing chime whenever the panel powers up and down, this can be further programmed to light up under different scenarios.

At 1,222.3 x 686.8 x 111mm, this sleek panel will fit readily into most tight quarters. You will, of course, need to reserve breathing space for ventilation and its left-mounted A/V inputs. Easy accessibility aside, the latter features an HDMI terminal in addition to the usual legacy jacks. And if you are wondering where the speakers are, these are stealthily lined along the sides and fired through an extremely narrow slit. Futuremore, three installation options are available complete with cable management. This ranges from the stock swivel stand to an optional manual and motorized remote-controlled wall bracket.

The ergonomic and matching remote is second only to Bravia X's equivalent. It offers manual backlighting for the commonly used volume and channel buttons, plus multifunction controls compatible with over 100 brands of DVD, settop boxes, etc. To work around the bottleneck of a single input toggle key, the F8 employs smart sensing technology. This automatically limits active selection to connected sockets, somewhat reducing video-switching elapse time. Our only major gripe here is an irritatingly lethargic response, typically requiring more than a fraction of a second for the menu to react.

In the same light, nor we were disappointed by the beefed-up software menu. There are definitely more than adequate settings to go around for just about all critical post-processing functions. The selection ranges from straightforward edge enhancement and panel backlighting adjustments to SpyderTV Pro-friendly advanced white balance cuts and gains. To get you up to speed, there are also onscreen navigation instructions and a well-written 61-page user manual. Alternatively, three custom video preset (Dynamic/Standard/Movie), a Game and Home Theater PC modes are at your disposal, too.

Features

The timely appearance overhaul aside, the F8 is no pushover in technical specifications. Its full-HD panel is now upgraded to deliver an ultra-high 25,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. That's more than a 66 percent leap over its predecessor and second only to the 2008 Bravia W's 30:000:1 rating. Furthermore, Samsung has made a slight improvement over response time now to 6ms rather than the usual 8ms. Speaking of motion reproduction, this is the first LCD TV from its flat-panel stable with frame rate-doubling technology dubbed 100Hz Motion Plus. Viewing angle, on the other hand, is pegged at an industry-leading 178 degrees.

Another notable selling point is its unique combination of an integrated DVB-T tuner and MPEG-4/AVC decoder. The former eliminates the need for a settop box and brings about the convenience of an electronic program guide, while the latter enables out-of-the-box HD reception (MediaCorp HD5 in Singapore). The implementation could have been better if there were separate aerials a.k.a. RF sockets; one for onboard analog tuner and another for DVB-T antenna. This is to cover stations yet to embrace digital and the hassle of swapping TV aerial cables, a norm really in the US and Europe with dual-format broadcasts.

To address the mousy sound from most TVs, Samsung is jazzing up the F8's sound reproduction using an elaborate 2.2 audio subsystem. The .2 here refers to a pair of bass-tuned subwoofers for that added oomph in today's hyper-aggressive movie soundtracks. The loudspeakers ensemble is driven by a respectable 20W stereo amplifier paired with a five-band graphics equalizer and SRS TruSurround XT virtual surround processing. Lest you aren't too impressed by its sonic credentials, an optical digital audio output is available, too, adding Dolby Digital playback for compatible HD broadcasts via external sound system.

Rounding up the feature set is a battery of shimmering gold-plated jacks on the rear. At the top of the echelon are two (plus one by the side) digital HDMI 1.3 terminals with Anynet function for one-remote Samsung equipment operation. One step down, there are the dual component-video sockets and a PC input. Visibly missing is an S-video equivalent, though the above-mentioned five inputs are all brilliantly capable of accepting 1080p signals. As an added bonus, we were delighted by the HDMIs' undocumented film-centric 24p frame rate compatibility: A godsend for the purist who swears by this theoretically judder-free format.

Performance

Before we touch on the actual performance, we would like to highlight two observations. To begin, proper lighting control is highly recommended to compensate for the plasma-like reflective screen. Then there is an obvious backlight leakage from the top ventilation vents on our review unit. This creates a Philips Ambilight-style effect but can also be an annoyance for the fussy. Moving on, we were able to garner some pretty positive results from its analog tuner. Onscreen pictures were mostly sharp and grain-free, though light dot crawl was an issue at times.

Nevertheless, the Samsung did pick up a couple more digital broadcasts than a standalone Humax settop box despite an identical antenna setup. This remarkable feat aside, it was a matter of clinically clean or pixilated visuals dependent on individual channel reception. It was another commendable showing for Avia synthetic test patterns and DVD clips. The LA46F81BDX was able to flawlessly tackle grayscale tracking but stumbled with a mild green dip for color decoding. We had the same sentiments for upscaled 480p DVDs which were reproduced in jaggie-free, clean and nice fidelity.

We had mixed feelings during a 1080p24 playback of Casino Royale. On the one hand, clarity was top-notch, pleasantly matched by revealing shadows and rich hues. On the other hand, colors were a shade warmer which tended to skew Caucasian skin tones. Motion Plus' artificially "accelerated" motion was another con for realism. This, however, was not an issue for animation and can be easily resolved by disabling the function. Switching to HD-HQV, the panel passed all benchmarks with flying colors except for the video-to-film frame rate conversion-based Resolution Loss test.

If you're an avid gamer, you will be hardly disappointed by the judder-free panning shots and rich saturated graphics. This applied to both HDMI and component-video through a PS3 and Xbox 360, respectively, with or without 100Hz and Game Mode enhancements. Other than the minor ghosting, we had no major complaint for PC text quality. Small fonts from a laptop's 1080p feed were legible even from afar and overall formatting was spot-on. The applause extends to its smooth color gradation for our banding test pattern, comparable to the Pioneer LX Kuro.

As expected, the dual subwoofers did wonders in whipping up a fabulous chorus characterized by generous mid-bass and extended highs. For the record, we were also able to hit reference levels comfortably at less than a quarter of the maximum volume and in rock-solid stereo imaging. The Samsung LA46F81BDX is a sure head-turner endowed with some nifty features which are ahead of the times even today. It's just a pity the Motion Plus backfired in this case, though it breeze through motion reproduction mighty well even without this redundant baggage.