The Samsung UN-55B7000

Guess what? I sold my old Samsung HL-S6187W this week. It was tough saying goodbye to that good old friend. I was very sad as I drove it to its new home in my Toyota Tundra. This all took place on Wednesday April 15 around 8:30 PST. Nevertheless, I followed through and completed the deal.

Naturally, this begat a frantic search for its successor. In 72 hours there were many twists and turns, frustrations and angers, and a couple of shocking discoveries. I will give you the serious low down on my technological discoveries in the next blog. I have a few sharp point to pass on to you in this short blog:

1. LED LCD has now surpassed classical DLP in terms of image quality. This could never be said before. Right now, both the internet and the major HDTV vendors are ablaze with excitement over the new Samsung B7000 series LED LCD HDTVs. They should be. This unit now offers the finest picture quality of anything on the market... at least until the B8000 hits the streets in about 1 month. That is no joke. The B8000 is scheduled to arrive inside one month.

2. The bizzare co-inky-dink is that the worlds thinnest 55inch LCD also happens to be the television with the highest image quality on the market today. This has never been true before this moment. Thin HDTVs uniformly sacrificed image quality for skinny looks, until now. Somehow, Samsung cut the Gordian Knot. They somehow packed the best picture into the thinnest form factor. It should be noted that CNET already has ranked The Samsung B7000 series as the #2 most desirable HDTV behind the Pioneer Elite Kuro, which is now defunct and discontinued. I guess that makes my HDTV the defacto #1.

3. To set the whole deal on fire, the UN-55B7000, which is the 55 inch implementation, can be had for a mere $3200 at Fry's electronics this weekend. That is $600 below retail price. How about no shipping or installation charges? Just drive 1 mile and get it now? I'll play the sales tax this time.

4. Not impressive enough? How about the fact that they will toss in a $300 Samsung BD-P1600 Blu-Ray player for free? Basically, this means you can have the world's finest 55inch thin flat for approximately $2,900.00. Shocking! This size in this form factor couldn't be touched for less than $5000 just 6 months ago. The price has fallen $2100, seemingly overnight, and the quality has gotten much better. Thanx Gordon Moore! You're doing one hell of job!

Naturally this was all too much for me to resist. I made the deal today, April 18, 2008 at about 3:00pm. The deal was cinched at Fry's electronics in Woodland Hills, just 1 mile from my apartment. It is already setup and tuned up. I have been tuning it all evening with the help of my favorite channel: The NFL network. I have just about all the team jersies, I know all the team colors intimately. Ergo this is the best place to go for color, brightness, contrast and noise calibration.

LCD is a shock to the system. The character and quality of the picture is entirely different from what most people are accustomed too. Most of us grew up watching movies on Cathode Ray Tubes and on theater projectors. DLP has all of these qualities and improves upon them. This is why high-end theaters such as the Archlight use DLP projectors. This is why many of us have found DLP to be the most pleasing movie experiance over the past several years.

As a people and a generation, we not accustomed to the look of LCD. Liquid Crystal has a totally different character from the CRTs and projection systems we grew up with in the theater and at home. It looks quite different from my old and trusted friend, the DLP. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I didn't quite like it at first. It is like the difference between eatting off a clay plate and an aluminum plate. Either way you eat, but you are conditioned to expect clay. Aluminum is better and more durable, but we have been conditioned to expect clay.

If there is a problem with this television it is found in hyper-accuracy. An old friend of mine, Ryan the Sheepdog, used to listen to his music through studio reference quality Tannoy monitors. These are the sort of studio monitors Quincy Jones would be happy to use when producing an album by Stevie Wonder. The sound was astounding. He paid a small fortune for them ($8000). Ryan used to say that the problem with these speakers is that they would sound off every flaw and every blemish in the audio signal. They were hyper-accurate. They were almost too accurate.

Well folks, the Samsung UN-55B7000 is a lot like that. If you have a flawed video signal, it will look like shit on the UN-55B7000. The DLP was much more forgiving. If you have a sensational picture, it is going to look mesmerizing and astounding on the UN-55B7000. It looks much better than on the DLP. This became crystal clear in the first hour of watching the HDTV.

Let me tell you about my experiance.

The NFL network was showing a documentary called The Top 10 Power Backs when I powered-up my new HDTV for the first time. Like all such historicals, this documentary was a hoge-podge of very old and decrepid footage, as well as very recent and high quality images. The decrepit stuff looks like utter shit on the UN-55B7000. I found this very disconcerting, and I was on the verge of a serious disappointment.

Then I discovered TBN was showing the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy back-to-back in true high definition. They were on the final leg of Return of the King when I first tuned in. Frodo was about to enter the Crack of Doom. It was pretty damn amazing. This was the first moment when the disappointment began to abate, and I started to get happy.

It just so happens that the NFL network was also re-broadcasting Super Bowl XLIII at the same time. This was our most recent Super Bowl, the Steelers vs. Cardinals. Of course, no expense was spared in broadcasting and recording this even. The signal is as good as an it gets in today's world. I flipped channels back and forth and kept calibrating. It looked pretty great right away, but there were problem. I did need to adjust the 120Hz motion smoothing. The factory settings did a lot of weird things to the slow motion instant replays. I finally decided on a custom setting of 7 for blur control and 7 for jitter control. None of the factory presets worked well for me. The jitters were very disturbing at first, but they are now under control. I recommend these settings to my fellow football fans.

Finally, it came time for a Blu-ray, arguably my favorite toy. Most friends and family members would have expected me to do this first, but I really wanted to calibrate with the NFL network before moving on to the Blu-ray. What I saw was pretty shocking. This was the moment when the UN-55N7000 convinced me that it was actually better (not just more fashionable) than my old HL-S6187W. This was the moment when two-reps of the Moore's Law became blindingly apparent. When they talk about dark inky blacks, they are understating the case. When they speak of butter-smooth imagery, they are understating the case. When they speak of razor sharp super-detailed images, they are utterly falling short of reality. The sharpness and detail is beyond belief. When they speak of dazing color, they are pretty much on track.

I have been an advocate of Blu-Ray for about two years now. I used to tell people that the difference between Blu-ray and HD Satellite is equivalent to the difference between DVD and Cable. Cable looks good. DVD looks better. Likewise (I used to say) HD Satellite looks good, Blu-ray looks better. Well folks, I am going to have reformulate that statement. That just doesn't give Blu-ray enough credit. It falls short by a long shot. The difference between HD Satellite and Blu-Ray is pretty sick. It is much, much greater than the difference between Cable and DVD. Blu-Ray makes DirectTV's HD package look poor by comparison. That is no joke. Give it a try on this HDTV and see for yourself.

If you are planning to get the UN-55B7000, you better get it this weekend at Fry's. They will toss in the Blu-Ray player for free. If you have not yet been exposed to Blu-Ray, you are going to have an absolute freak-out experience. You will know why the movie lovers, particularly profession movie critics, just love Blu-ray to death. If you already bought this TV and don't have a Blu-ray, you are missing out on the finest thing your investment has to offer you.