This 59-inch Series 8 panel is a replacement for Samsung’s Series 7 plasma TVs and will be sold alongside the lower-specced Series 4, 5 and 6 panels. In a nutshell, the PS59D8000 is a Full HD (1080P), 3D-capable, internet-enabled plasma panel. It is housed in a beautifully minimalist and slim brushed-aluminium bezel (not quite as slim as an LCD set though) with an X-shaped foot. Samsung also claims to have squeezed 59 inches of screen into the same-sized housing as a standard 58-inch plasma using their +1 plasma technology.
Possibly the most notable feature of this model, when comparing it to earlier Samsungs, is the fact that it has unrestricted web access (via a built-in wi-fi adaptor). By this I mean that you can literally open up the TV’s browser and navigate to any website you wish just as you would on a computer, with full HTML5 and Flash support, rather than being restricted to a limited number of “internet services” such as YouTube or Skype.
To enable this browsing feature, the remote sports a full QWERTY keyboard on its rear side, as well as a touch-sensitive trackpad for moving the cursor around on screen. In practice I found this feature a little bit cumbersome – once you hit any sort of animation-heavy website, or end up opening multiple tabs, it seems to clog the onboard processor up and everything becomes very slow to respond.
Another internet-enabled feature is what is called Samsung Apps. Like their phones, Samsung offers a number of free downloadable applications built specifically for these TVs, including things like games, picture viewers, Twitter/Facebook apps, news feeds and even fun educational tools for the kids.
Most of the games seemed a little bit gimmicky to me, but I’m sure there are at least one or two apps in there that anyone would find useful. Rounding out the network-related features is the media-streaming capability (with DLNA compatibility). Either plug a hard drive into one of the two USB 2.0 ports, or connect directly to any media server present on your home network, and you can browse and play back virtually any format of video or audio file including AVI, DivX, MKV and MP3.
Aside from all this new-fangled networking capability, the PS59D8000 also happens to be a very awesome television. Being a plasma, it can produce deep, inky blacks, and, being a top-shelf Samsung plasma, it can do so without losing details in darker parts of the image. The night-time scenes in The Green Hornet, particularly, blew me away in this respect.
A common complaint about plasma panels is the amount of light their glass panels reflect when watching them in a bright room. The PS59D8000 still suffers slightly from this but the filters built into the panel manage to cancel out a lot of reflection and it is comfortably viewable even in broad daylight – although, like any plasma panel you will want a darkened room for optimal viewing.
One minor issue I found with the image quality is the presence of pixel noise, or what looks like colourful little dots of snow present in certain parts of the image which should actually just be a uniform colour. To be fair, this was only really noticeable up close. In fact, you had to be uncomfortably close to such a large screen to see it, so it definitely isn’t a drawback, but it is there nonetheless, and for some reason the effect was amplified when watching something in 3D.
Speaking of 3D – that would be another big drawcard for this TV. With every new 3D TV on the market I find myself asking “is it perfect yet?”, but the answer is still sadly ‘no’. It is hard to know whether to blame the display or the source for this yet, as some movies, such as Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga-Hoole, look spectacular and convincing in 3D, yet others like Shrek Forever After are quite literally a painful experience with terrible crosstalk (conflicting images sent to each eye, ruining the 3D effect).
The PS59D8000 uses an active 3D solution, and Samsung has opted to go with Bluetooth connectivity to synchronise the glasses (2 pairs included). The upside of this is that you can connect a virtually limitless number of glasses to a single TV, and you can synchronise one pair of glasses to multiple TVs simultaneously (although I doubt many people would get to take advantage of this).
The downside, if you could call it one, is that you can’t use standard infrared-controlled glasses you might have lying around, although Samsung offer a range of both battery-powered and stylish rechargeable sets which can fit over prescription glasses. Like other 3D TVs, you can convert standard 2D video into 3D. Also, like other 3D TVs, this is a total waste of time, with very little depth perception added into most material. Being an active 3D solution, you do get a noticeable drop in brightness when using the 3D mode, but the set is vibrant enough to compensate for this by adjusting the picture settings.
The set also has a digital TV tuner built-in for watching Freeview content with Electronic Programme Guide support, plus the Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC) technology allows you to control other HDMI-CEC compatible equipment in your home theatre system with the TV’s remote control. Watching any video content on the PS59D8000 is an absolute pleasure. The vibrant, accurate colours and rich contrast really brought the 1080p Blu-ray version of Avatar to life for me, and even standard definition TV channels were up-scaled well on the large HD screen.
There was a slight amount of motion judder in some content, due to the lack of any serious motion-smoothing technology built in, which is a bit of shame for an otherwise impeccable screen. Another problem is the audible buzz emanating from the panel during operation – particularly during scenes involving high-brightness levels. This can become distracting during very quiet scenes, but is barely noticeable at other times.
My last gripe is with the sluggishness experienced when navigating menus. Sometimes there is an almost half-second delay between pressing a button on the remote and the TV responding, which could be particularly frustrating when scrolling down long lists. It also never seemed to be able to load up thumbnails for video files, despite the “loading” icon flashing constantly when viewing media folders. Despite these minor flaws, the PS59D8000 is a great TV with an impressive set of media-streaming and internet-enabled features, all for a relatively reasonable price tag.
Samsung PS59D8000 3D Plasma TV – Specifications
- Full HD (1080P)
- 3D-capable
- 600Hz subfield motion
- Built-in wi-fi
- Flash and HTML5 support for web browsing
- Full QWERTY remote
- 4 HDMI and 2 USB inputs
