Samsung D8000 's 3D Material Test

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Last year, it’s fair to say that out of all the major manufacturers’ 3DTV efforts, we were most critical of Samsung’s. While none of the LCD-based 3D TVs really enthused us when it came to 3D (due to annoying crosstalk artefacts).

Samsung’s offerings had two other issues that rival LCD TV makers managed to avoid. First, the tri-dimensional modes of the company’s 2010 3D-capable displays were obviously 60hz-centric, because any European-style 50hz video input to the TV showed obvious judder in its 3D display mode. Secondly, Samsung’s 2010 3D LCDs and Plasmas featured poor quality scaling with 3D signals. Scaling in 3D is required for any content that doesn’t deliver Full HD 1080p to each eye, meaning that 720p 3D and Side-by-Side 3D sources were affected. These two issues meant that it was difficult to recommend last year’s Samsung 3DTV models for use with the Sky 3D channel in the UK, since the video signal is both 50hz and side-by-side encoded!

This year, Samsung has thankfully fixed the scaling issue, meaning that side-by-side encoded 3D material reaches the screen looking as detailed as it possibly could, without any “eroded” details. We ran our own Side-by-Side 3D resolution test chart into the UE55D8000, and were glad to see that all of the fine details were reaching the screen. As for the quality of the motion in 3D, we came across some interesting behaviour.

First, we tested a 3D Blu-ray Disc film (at the 24fps frame rate) on the Samsung UE55D8000, and noticed that the