Samsung UN55D6400 55-Inch 1080p 120 Hz 3D LED HDTV (Black) [2011 MODEL] (2011 Model)

After weeks of research, I have ultimately found the greatest combination for 3D home viewing entertainment and it is written here to help you easily put together a stunning 3D home theater system in a snap. This I wish would have existed to help me consolidate an A plus television combo. Here is my list to you for one of the best television experiences you'll have, including the option to invite 3D films and images into your living room right in front of you. This is a bit lengthy but super informative.Copy and paste the headers into the Amazon search field to find the recommended products being reviewed.** Samsung UN55D6400 55-inch 1080p 120Hz 3D LED HDTV **Start with the 3D LED television size of choice. A big one is the best. We purchased this 55-inch screen without regret. From many angles Samsung is the leader in clarity, bright streaming color, sharp imaging, plus the most up to date features on the market today. This television does it all minus a built in processor for accessing the Internet. Which is no big deal because there is a PC input port where you can connect a PC and set up a wireless keyboard and mouse to then use the television as a computer Monitor. HDMI and USB ports galore as well as standard connections for those out of date devises. This Television also has a specific button on the hand held remote that allows standard movies to be upgraded in 3D. Mind you it is not as superior as the actual movie filmed in 3D, but it is pretty darn close. The remote is back lighted and easy to use.** Samsung SSG-3100GB 3D Active Glasses **The best choice in 3D viewing glasses as they work in conjunction with the 2011 Samsung Televisions. These are battery operated so eventually a battery replacement will be required, however inexpensive compared to other versions and perfect for getting started at a reasonable price. These we chose because they actually communicate with the television. When 3D is activated or a 3D DVD is detected in playback mode, a splash screen on the monitor will advise you to switch the glasses on. When you stop the 3D Movie or return to standard 1080 TV viewing, the glasses automatically turn off. A great feature. No worries of leaving them on and wearing down the battery. Rechargeable glasses are available from Samsung, but if you have a large family, it can get a bit pricey, so these battery operated glasses are great for starting out even if there is only one or two pair needed. They are lightweight and accessorized with a cleaning swatch. Store them out of sight in a felt lined book box to keep them clean and damage free. I picked up a box that resembles a leather bound book from a craft store and it houses them perfectly and sits on the shelf with the other books.** LG LHB536 1100s 3D Blu-ray Home Theater System with Smart TV integrated Wi-Fi. **I know it is not a Samsung, but this one had all the features to provide a great sound experience and more. This unit actually boasted the best sound over Samsung or any other brand at a midway price. This system is serious. It allows all your necessary devices to be connected to it with the need to only connect a single HDMI cable to the television. This is set up brilliantly and speaks perfectly with the Samsung Television and satellite accessories. This thing also reaches out to my home computer and displays all my shared network files on the television screen. Photos, Movies.... anything stored on your home PC can be transferred to the television screen wirelessly with the internal Wi-Fi connection. It also has the capability of connecting your PC to it for direct Internet access. Cool, I know. The one thing I really liked about this unit is I was not guessing at sound selection as with other brands. This selects the best overall surround sound and transmits it to the speakers. When a Blu-ray disc is played, HD standard or 3D, the sound is absolutely incredible. There are several speaker modes that can be manually set, such as Natural, Voice Clarity, Movie mode and best of all Equalizer. Each speaker has a volume control as well to optimize the sound per speaker depending on where you are sitting. All the speaker settings are saved until you choose to make a change. No need to set them each time you flip on the tele. On that note, the Television and Theater System returns to the last setting you turned it off at when you switch it back on again at a later time. Others take you back to a home menu and requires a few steps at selecting your choice of TV viewing, music, radio or DVD. That was way too annoying. This LG is much better as you go to the Home screen by depressing the Home button only. Aps are also available on this unit. IPod connection comes with it too. The remote control is simple to use as with any. The receiver has a few necessary soft touch keys that in my opinion should have been illuminated. They are not lit, so the DVD functions, such as eject, play and indexing forward and reverse from the receiver are a bit difficult in a low lit setting. The panels soft touch keys are not used much anyway as the remote control is ultimately the control center. This is the ONLY teensy disappointment I found with this system. Most other players had this same issue. Rectified easily by using the hand held remote control.** Mediabridge Ultra Series - High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet **This 10.2gbps HDMI Cable is fast enough to flawlessly transmits 3D images from your devises to the 3D television. This cable supports the Highest Refresh Rates Available. This includes - Transfer Rates of Up to 340Mhz or 10.2gbps - True HD Dolby 7.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio - Ethernet Channel For Sharing Internet Between HDMI Devices. We purchased three additional cables because it worked so beautifully. Nothing wrong with a spare or two.You will need one that connects the Satellite or cable box to the LG Home Theater system and one between the home Theater to the Samsung Television. This will give you Ultimate picture and sound at a prices WAY below any brand if purchased at a local electronics store. These work perfectly and you will not be overspending.** Monster HTS 1000 MKIII 8-Outlet Power Center With Clean Power stage2 **This I recommend, as it will act as a power surge protector during storms and unexpected bursts of dirty power sent to your electronic units. It handles up to 8 devises as well as your Coaxial cable (included) and an Ethernet connection (not included). This Power Center also reduces the electrical noise that can channel to all your electronics that are connected to it, which will increase the life of your units by years. This I suggest for all that is listed above especially your LED TV. The LED electronic devices need and survive on clean power. Trust me, I have learned from experience. This will save your products from harm and add years of use beyond the manufactures documented life expectancy.

After several months of using this TV, here are my impressions. Note that I'm using Antenna HD, PS3 Bluray, and DVD.Design:The thin bezel design and glass(stem) stand is gorgeous, it feels like the picture is floating on the stand. The thin bezel really enhances the picture by minimizing reflections. It's really refreshing to not have a thick glossy bezel shining at you when watching TV; although the bezel itself seems to get mighty hot after several hours of use. The screen is glass and it does have reflections in daylight. It will probably annoy those of you that have a lot of glare coming from windows.Picture Quality:HD picture quality is outstanding while SD ranges from good to OK. The SD quality really depends on your broadcasting source; higher quality SD means good SD picture. Blacks are good, but I believe the processing engine goes a bit overboard and saturates the blacks to a point where details are lost. I haven't found out how to tone down the blacks, even after shutting off all the processing. Colors seem to really pop out, if it's too much one can adjust RGB in the menus. Initially, this TV did not exhibit any noticeable clouding for several months but now I can clearly see clouding on a completely dark transition screen. I'm a bit disappointed it has developed clouding over time, but it's not bad enough that you'll notice it during tv viewing. This is an edge-lit LCD and there are inherit weaknesses. Motion picture quality is very smooth and artifacts are kept to a minimum; in fact, this is the smoothest picture I've ever seen on any HDTV.Adjustment Controls:This TV has quite a few options for tuning the picture. There's standard, dynamic, natural, and movie modes. Each mode has it's own saved settings. For my normal viewing, I started with the movie settings while in Standard mode and made a few adjustments to brighten up the screen. Movie mode has a "warm2" color tone that I changed to "standard" since I don't like warm colors for normal viewing. For movies, I use the movie mode where the colors and brightness are toned down, with relatively few adjustments made. The natural and dynamic modes are horrendous, don't even go there. There's some fine adjustments in each mode with backlight, contrast, sharpness, hue, brightness, color, etc.Connections:Has HDMI 1.4 connections, which allow 1 Audio Return and single Ethernet connections (with specific high speed compatible HDMI cables and other HDMI 1.4 devices). Has 1 composite connection and 1 component (both use supplied extension plugs). Switching between sources is a tad slow to me, wish it was bit faster. Note that the optical out connection will transfer Dolby Digital sound from the antenna input, but it will only transfer stereo sound if you are connecting a device from HDMI and outputting the sound using optical out.Sound:Sound comes from the back panel and these kinds of tvs always sound odd. It's definitely loud enough, but not as good as a tv with good front speakers. You can use simulated surround sound and it's not bad at all. The one annoying thing is your sound settings are kept the same as you change your input sources; even after you've configured one input source as having movie sound settings. You can use the equalizer to adjust the sound to your liking. I might buy a sound bar to accompany this tv.Internet apps:I took a little while to play around with the apps, they're ok but respond pretty slow. Just your standard apps, nothing impressive. It does have an app store where you can purchase more apps but I didn't try that. I found youtube to be a bit odd. I started up youtube and it showed me the annoying orange video on startup; really strange it just loaded up with that video.Other apps:The photo viewer is pretty decent, seems a bit slow in rendering the pictures from a USB stick. I've also played some AVI and MKV files on the TV and it looks good to me. MKV files do not seem to have subtitle options.3D:I bought the Samsung SSG-3100GB bluetooth glasses for 2011 3D TVs. The glasses are great and much better than the old versions I tried out on a 2010 TV. It syncs up really well and I don't notice ghosting. There is a 3D button on the remote where you can convert 2D programming to 3D; this is done on the fly using the TV's processor. The 2D-3D is applied minimally so it isn't great; you will barely notice the 3D effects on the conversion. However, watching true 3D movies is great but 46" is really small for 3D. What others say about having a 50" plus TV is true if you want to experience the depth of 3D. What truly blows me away is playing 3D games through the Playstation 3. I started Wipeout HD up and I was giggling like a silly schoolgirl for a while. It really blew my mind how the 3D enhances the fun of games.Remote:Remote is pretty decent. It has a your standard TV buttons as well as a way to control playback on other sources with fast forward, rewind, stop, play. Remote has a backlight you can activate.Settings:Here are some basic calibration settings I used.0) Standard Mode1) Backlight: 132) Contrast: 933) Brightness: 454) Sharpening: 10 (keep this low!)5) Color: 456) Tint R/G: 50, 507) Color Tone: Auto8) Dynamic Contrast: LowAdditionally, I nearly turned off all the processing (including motion plus)Verdict:Very good TV with an inherit weakness in edge-lit LED technology in that you will find some uneven lighting and clouding. This might be as good as edge-lit LED is going to get. I gave it a 4 star here but it's really more 4.5 out of 5. I won't give it a 5 because true local-dimmed LED TVs have better contrast and color consistency, but you'll be paying a lot more (unless you buy the ugly Vizio LED TVs).Update 1/13/2012:I upgraded to the newest firmware and noticed after rebooting it reset all my settings. I don't see anything different except I noticed how crappy the picture was. It's important you do not leave the it on the default settings as the picture quality is pretty horrendous. Use my settings as a baseline, especially keep sharpening low, turn off motion plus, and you will see the potential of this tv.More notes:I recently noticed that my tv was tilted down to the left a little as it sits on the supplied stand. I took out a tape measure and noticed the left end was nearly 1/4" lower than the right side. This really bugged me so i took apart the stand and slipped a piece of paper folded several times in the gap where you screw in the stand. This helped balance it perfectly.