The LA40F81BDX, or affectionately known as the F8, is Samsung’s second installment in their iDTV heritage. Nicknamed surreptitiously as “Peony”, Samsung has every right to boast about this unit for they’re the only manufacturer in Asia to engineer a Full-HD TV with a DVB-Terrestrial tuner thus far. Pitting father and son together, the F8 has two significant improvements over its M8 predecessor – a faster panel with 100Hz Motion Plus, and an impressive dynamic contrast ratio of 25,000 to 1.
It’s almost a prerequisite that Samsung TVs should sport a black glossy bezel. The 40-inch F8 is no exception in this manner. The Koreans have done away with the central circular power switch found in their M8s and have gone for touch-sensitive button lined with a blue LED silver. The navigation buttons are situated at the bottom right of the panel, and they light up splendidly in sequence once the TV is powered up. Its slim speakers are lined at the side, framed by a classy clear plastic to help throw their acoustics forward. Cosmetically, the F8 is arguably one of the sleekest looking LCD the Altaic descendents have ever products.
The F8’s clearly labeled remote is created in a similar paradigm as other Samsung AV products. By depressing the “bulb” button, the TV, channel, and volume buttons can be lighted up if need be. It’s a simple but undoubtedly handy function in dark ambient environments. The 40-inched LCD panel with a ‘superCLEAR’ coating hails from S-LCD Corporation that’s presently headquartered in South Korea, and a congenial joint-venture between Samsung and the Nippon boys, Sony. It’s powered by CCFL backlights, and equipped with a USB and three HDMI 1.3 ports to make this contribution totally invincible in HD territory.
After calibration, we took some time to explore its OSD which offered the most display tweaks we’ve seen in a TV. Aside from programming habitual suspects like the TV’s contrast, brightness, and color temperature, we focused more on the additional components. Toggling between the 100Hx Motion Plus feature (it basically inserts an additional frame in between each source frame), moving images on a HD-DVD disc (on 1080p) appeared jittery at some stages, although for the most part fast moving scenes did materialize with smoother fluidity. Overall, sharpness and clarity was unparalleled, evaluated by means of the “medium” selection on F8’s Dynamic Contrast and Digital NR option.
Moving on the HQV benchmarks, the TV’s video processor managed to upscale the 1080i signal well with insignificant jagged lines on the Diagonal Filter component. Like what we’ve observed with the High Definition playback, DisplayMate proved that the F8 is well adept at producing colors which are true and even, with the same exemplary sharpness. Correspondingly, 9-point fonts appeared crisp and sharp devoid of any noticeable artifacts. The backlight’s intensity can be tweaked, and a value of five or below was good enough to keep the black levels deep. All thanks to its subwoofer, the F8’s audio performance remains in the stratum ranks for HDTVs. The SRS surround acoustics weren’t too impressive but its overall sound was punchy and full.
Samsung’s F8 didn’t stump the AV world with any jaw-breaking technology, but it marks a new milestone in the evolution of Full-HD TVs with terrestrial tuners built in. What might the next phase be? Perhaps Samsung should marry a 1080p24 frame rate, LED backlights, and 120Hz picture processing into a definitive panel to create one Godlike package for our humble consumer congregation. But until that becomes a reality, we’ll continue to dream.
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Singapore / English
