Gadgetory

how's it going I'm David Katz Meyer from cnet I'm standing next to the samsung pn 68000 this is a 60-inch Plasma TV this is Samsung's best television for 2012 it has more features bells whistles doodads and what have you then you could care to mention of course i'm going to try in the following video this video will apply to the 51 and 64 inch members of the series as well now the real standout feature for this TV is smart interaction it's unlike anything on any other TV there's a built-in camera and microphone that enables the TV to interpret your gestures and voice commands I went into this feature in depth you can check out seeing it for the full details but the short story is that doesn't really work all that well microsoft kinect for example is a lot better to interpreting gestures and voice and we really don't think that's all that useful unless you're you know going to lose your remote control on a constant basis speaking remotes another big step up feature is a touch remote Samsung includes two clickers with this TV one a standard multi button remote and one a touch version that actually has a thumb pad sort of like a laptop computer in practice it wasn't as sensitive as a laptop and is actually a little bit more frustrating to use in a regular remote but it's pretty useful if you're going to be you know navigating the web browser built into this TV of course if you're going to be using the web browser significantly I recommend you get the $99 optional keyboard which has a built-in touchpad it actually works with samsung's android devices as well so that's a lot cooler and worked a lot better of course i mentioned the built-in web browser it's the best found on any smart TV sweet samsung smart TV suite has more apps than any other TV manufacturers in terms of major apps they are missing amazon instant which is kind of a big knock but they more than make up for it by having exclusive access to HBO Go which for HBO subscribers is one of the best TV apps you can get samsung also offers a few custom apps like family story which enables sharing among samsung devices and a couple of other things including built-in cloud storage so you can actually upload things from the TV and vice versa to the cloud so all those are pretty unique and make for a very robust smart TV sweet one of the features samsung throws into this TV is its IR blaster that actually uses bluetooth to send commands to a cable box or a blu-ray player that means you can use your gestures or voice to control those devices although can is really rudimentary and not really worth it the smart touch remote also works with the IR blaster to allow control with a sort of harmony remote esque setup but it's really not nearly as good as a harmony and in practice we just recommend you go ahead and get a standard third-party remote like those harmonies other standout features on this set include an excellent selection of picture adjustments TenPoint gray scale and the best color management system in the business so if you're going to get this TV calibrated it should turn out very nice speaking of picture quality Samsung's eateth ousand is the best plasma the company has ever made superb black levels extremely deep it also has that very accurate color that we like to see of course it has all the plasma perks including excellent uniformity and off angle performance on the downside is shadow detail wasn't quite as good as we've seen on some of the best tvs the TV also has slightly worse ability to reject ambient light than some of the other TVs we've seen that's compounded by the fact that the 60 inch or didn't get as bright as we've seen on some other TVs of its size but I'll told the samsung PNE 8000 has excellent picture quality in 2d in 3d it's picture is also very good actually better than a competing panasonic plasma be tested recently Samsung throws in two pairs of 3d glasses they're not all that comfortable but of course they are free and that's more that can be said for a lot of TV manufacturers on the back Samsung actually has one fewer hdmi inputs with only three that might be an issue of a lot of stuff connected this TV I like the design of this Samsung as much as any plasma I've ever seen except for the stand I find that spider stand a little bit weird but of course to each his own the minimal styling around the edge however is really nice it's got a nice dark bezel very thin and of course when seen from the side it's also really thin you might mistake it for an LCD TV and that's a not so quick look at Samsung's best plasma TV for 2012 the PNE 8000 series I'm David Katz my frisina